Am 14.07.2011 17:52, schrieb Don Dailey:
In theory you HAVE to cede ground as you have a lost game. Even
though I do not play much go and I'm not strong, I know that you have
to give up ground in some places to gain ground in others and that is
what separates the men from the boys.
So I can easily imagine that the best way to win when accepting a
handicap is not to try to take the whole board but to calculate what
your chances are and carve out no more than you absolutely need (not
get greedy.) Of course you have to opportunistic but the algorithm
will automatically respond opportunistically if that improves your
chances of winning. A lot of times you have to win a big group to
win at all so it's not like the program is trying to win by exact half
a point, it's just trying to win and that may require it to win by 40
stones in some positions. I think people have this idea that the
program is "trying" to throw away points but it's not like that at all
and that may even be why people are so messed up over the concept,
they don't understand what is really happening.
Having said that, I think that in handicap games there has to be a
different strategy. A thought experiment proves this:
Imagine a program that is virtually perfect, the playouts are perfect
and the game is played by the program to perfection. If the game is
winnable, the program will always win. If the game is not winnable,
such as in a handicap game, every move will be futile. How to
convert such a program into one that can win handicap games?
The most naive solution is to maximize points and as the opponent
makes mistakes the program's odds of winning continues to go up, as
does his final points on the board. But using this strategy the
program may not play in a way that gives the opponent a problem.
For example if the opponent give the computer a small group the
computer might very well conclude it's the best it can do because it's
model of the opponent is that he will play perfectly too. So it will
go for the small chain instead of playing provocatively elsewhere.
The very solution that is generally proposed to deal with this is
probably self-defeating.
A similar situation could exist in chess - if computers get almost
perfect they may conclude the game is a draw and immediately simplify,
giving humans the occasionally draw when they would be much more
likely to win by playing provocatively.
Don
The situation I assumed, was a dropping winrate from move to move as
white in a handicap game.
All I wanted to say is that it's probably not wise to readjust the
winrate in your favor be granting yourself a higher dynamic komi.
As for the strategic dilema w faces in a handicap game, I would like to
repeat a suggestion I made earlier:
Evaluate at different komi levels and add up the winrates, weighting the
lower komi levels higher.
Stefan
_______________________________________________
Computer-go mailing list
[email protected]
http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
