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Othello Is Solved?

arxiv.org

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Re: Othello Is Solved?

#111

Post by probablynish »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #89

This is cool. I solved a simpler game about 15 years ago that my brother and I used to play: an African game with about 10 pits on each side of the board that hold stones. I coded up an alpha-beta engine for it, and discovered crazy always win strategies to match how my brother and I played. Suddenly I would win all the games, and then he never wanted to play again. This was a classic match up of a computer scientist…

I played this game growing up (we called it Bao) - now I know what my next party trick is going to be

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#113

Post by SomaticPirate »

notfed wrote: post #101
anigbrowl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boo. The paper is cautiously written, addresses a very tractable and well-defined problem, confirms what experts expected, and is straightforward to implement (the source code is on Github). And yet this posturing is the #1 comment on this thread right now.

Great, then let's name it "Othello claimed to be solved", then pound it with peer reviews and reproductions for a bit, then we can phrase it as "Othello is solved".

The source code is on Github? Why not run it yourself and perform the peer review? The implementation is quite straightforward

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#114

Post by coldtea »

fbdab103 wrote: post #58
uxp8u61q wrote: post #51

Correct title: an unknown author from an unknown startup claims in an arXiv preprint (listed somehow in the cs.AI archive) that Othello has been solved. The paper is 13 pages long. I wish that the superconductor debacle (and many others) had taught people critical thinking and skepticism. And yet this is the #1 post on HN right now.

Trust but verify. People were excited, but pretty much the first thing on everyone's mind was looking for replication. In contrast, this is not spouting a revolution in physics, but a mathematical puzzle that is mostly trivia. I suspect that the best computer Othello algorithm can already trounce a human.

>Trust but verify

Given that most papers don't replicate, and most hype ends up BS, "don't trust until it's verified" is a much better rule.

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#115

Post by CyberDildonics »

notfed wrote: post #85
klyrs wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was watching every development of that superconductivity claim. I was quite enthused! But never once did I move beyond "groundbreaking if true ." This doesn't even have the potential to be groundbreaking. Get over yourself, let people get excited about little stuff.

> Get over yourself, let people get excited about little stuff. Some people are looking for facts and science, and some are looking for enthusiasm and excitement. Can't discount either one, I suppose.

Can't discount either one, I suppose.

People getting each other excited by pretending fiction is reality is called religion. That's fine if people are honest about it.

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#116

Post by sonofhans »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #89

This is cool. I solved a simpler game about 15 years ago that my brother and I used to play: an African game with about 10 pits on each side of the board that hold stones. I coded up an alpha-beta engine for it, and discovered crazy always win strategies to match how my brother and I played. Suddenly I would win all the games, and then he never wanted to play again. This was a classic match up of a computer scientist…

That is super cool. I’ve played Mankala for years and would love to hear more.

It’s instructive to see old Africans playing Mankala. They play very fast. It can become more like poker, where deceit is a part of the game. If you spam down your stones fast enough sometimes you can skip a bowl, or drop an extra stone, in order to gain advantage.

I’m not facile enough to play this way, and I play with family and so don’t cheat. It’s a very different thing, though. Like the difference between British ladies playing slow Mahjong over tea, versus people playing for money in a gambling room in China.

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#117

Post by [deleted] »

lcuff wrote: post #53
charcircuit wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That means it's still possible to win a game by intentionally deviating from the perfect sequence Someone with perfect strategy would have an answer for any deviation. Playing imperfectly would likely get you into a losing position. There is no way to go from a game being drawn if played perfectly to being winning if the then loser were to be using perfect strategy.

I agree. As a nuance, (and I'm not an Othello player, but a chess player) in many positions in chess, there are many moves that, while not the best, are just slightly worse. Finding the 'refutation' for a weaker move is the measure of the strength of a player, and playing a few slightly weaker moves in a row will almost certainly take even high level players out of 'book' (the memorized sequence of best moves). At th…

[deleted]

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#118

Post by CyberDildonics »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #89

This is cool. I solved a simpler game about 15 years ago that my brother and I used to play: an African game with about 10 pits on each side of the board that hold stones. I coded up an alpha-beta engine for it, and discovered crazy always win strategies to match how my brother and I played. Suddenly I would win all the games, and then he never wanted to play again. This was a classic match up of a computer scientist…

Mancala and connect four are classic examples of solved games.

computer scientist vs. an optometrist.

What does being an optometrist have to do with anything?

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#119

Post by klyrs »

notfed wrote: post #85
klyrs wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was watching every development of that superconductivity claim. I was quite enthused! But never once did I move beyond "groundbreaking if true ." This doesn't even have the potential to be groundbreaking. Get over yourself, let people get excited about little stuff.

> Get over yourself, let people get excited about little stuff. Some people are looking for facts and science, and some are looking for enthusiasm and excitement. Can't discount either one, I suppose.

You can be enthusiastic and excited while looking for facts and science. In fact, my interest in rooting out truths tends to go hand in hand with my passion for the topic. Negative results are important for scientific advancement, and I was just as excited to see LK99 fully analyzed, despite it not turning out to be the holy grail. We always knew that was a longshot; I enjoyed the journey regardless of the destination.

My admonition "get over yourself" is a response to this ridiculous idea that science should be a joyless affair. It isn't, and must not be. Historically, fuddy-duddy downers don't make the big discovaries.

Re: Othello Is Solved?

#120

Post by coldtea »

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…

>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 two humans competing it becomes "who sucks less" but its two losers that both suck competing. Thats the problem with competitive play of solved games, it must be solo competition against the solution.

I don't think you understand the purpose of games.

This is like saying since we have cars, why do people still race?

Or "why even do shooting competitions, when a robot or a person with a laser scope can easily win them?"

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