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Othello Is Solved?

arxiv.org

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Re: Othello Is Solved?

#31

Post by kadoban »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #18
bediger4000 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this paper render the championship moot? Is any software based on the paper entered? Is Othello like checkers, where there were mostly draws in high level games?

Probably See: Le Sedol [1] after AlphaGo: "On 19 November 2019, Lee announced his retirement from professional play, stating that he could never be the top overall player of Go due to the increasing dominance of AI. Lee referred to them as being "an entity that cannot be defeated"" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Sedol

That is one player's choice, but not even close to a majority one.

Chess and Go and Checkers competitions have not disappeared after humans stopped being the best players of them.

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#32

Post by sdwr »

BlackFingolfin wrote: post #26
dist-epoch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely, those 2587 positions cover all possibilities. There are other proofs like this - the 4 color theorem one, which was also reduced to a finite number of configurations which were manually colored.

But none of this explicit. This is at best an announcement of a potential proof. But it isn't a proof yet. Also curious: in the end of the paper they talk about having "weakly solve" Othello... the paper overall reads really strangely.

This looks like a George W "Mission Accomplished" moment.

- the game is obviously known to be a draw

- but we don't have computational power to enumerate that

- so test a bunch of game states

- and confirm that none of them are wins

- ???

- it's solved! Trust me!

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#35

Post by JoeDaDude »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #18
bediger4000 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this paper render the championship moot? Is any software based on the paper entered? Is Othello like checkers, where there were mostly draws in high level games?

Probably See: Le Sedol [1] after AlphaGo: "On 19 November 2019, Lee announced his retirement from professional play, stating that he could never be the top overall player of Go due to the increasing dominance of AI. Lee referred to them as being "an entity that cannot be defeated"" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Sedol

IN what could be interpreted as irony, Lee Seedol went on to invent more board games.

https://www.dicebreaker.com/series/wizstone/news/go-player-d...

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#36

Post by addaon »

kelsey9876543 wrote: post #14
axlee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it render human games moot? Why would a software participate in a championship? The draw percentage in checkers/draught and in chess are roughly similar, (anywhere between 50% and 60% at high-level play), despite checkers being solved and chess not.

They are moot because the solution is known. When a human makes a mistake the intrigue is discovering the fix to become better. In solo copetition solved games are highly fascinating because the person is racing the TAS or the solved route. In human versus human games, we can simply look up what the human did wrong. There is no cognitive challenge in answer lookup. Its just oh, he sucks he missed the move. Since its…

> Since its two humans competing it becomes "who sucks less" but its two losers that both suck competing.

Yeah, this is my problem with bowling and golf. If you're a professional bowler, literally your only job is to knock down the pins. Why do anything else? If you miss one, you're bad at your job. Ditto with golf -- the hole is right there, just get the ball in it!

(Honestly not sure how sarcastic vs sincere I am in this comment.)

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#37

Post by sebzim4500 »

sdwr wrote: post #32
BlackFingolfin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But none of this explicit. This is at best an announcement of a potential proof. But it isn't a proof yet. Also curious: in the end of the paper they talk about having "weakly solve" Othello... the paper overall reads really strangely.

This looks like a George W "Mission Accomplished" moment. - the game is obviously known to be a draw - but we don't have computational power to enumerate that - so test a bunch of game states - and confirm that none of them are wins - ??? - it's solved! Trust me!

The concept of "weakly solved" is not original to this effort. IIRC checkers was weakly solved for years but is now strongly solved.

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#38

Post by iamflimflam1 »

Othello is a great game to demonstrate how powerful some basic heuristics can be.

There are certain squares that you should avoid placing pebble on as the game develops - equally there are squares that you should definitely try and place a pebble on if you can.

Implementing these rules can give you a fairly decent opponent and it's interesting to see how quickly people will ascribe "intelligence" to something that is very simple.

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#39

Post by axlee »

Diggsey wrote: post #8
axlee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it render human games moot? Why would a software participate in a championship? The draw percentage in checkers/draught and in chess are roughly similar, (anywhere between 50% and 60% at high-level play), despite checkers being solved and chess not.

Now that Othello is solved, there exist a set of rules a player can follow to guarantee a win or draw every game. It's possible (if unlikely) that a computer could sufficiently compress those rules to be memorizable (and then applicable) by a human.

Checkers have been solved 16 years ago and still see competition. A game being solved is not exactly the same as "apply this memorizable algorithm and you'll win", especially if the solution implies scanning 10^n positions for each move.

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#40

Post by laurentlb »

Avlin67 wrote: post #23

no, Othello is not complex, I do not remember exactly how but i did play a lot when i was you and did find a way to win consistently...

> did find a way to win consistently...

Against who? You were playing against beginners?

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