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Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

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Re: Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

#81

Post by billforsternz »

[deleted] wrote: post #67
billforsternz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No some chess program that is at good as chess as Crazy Stone is at go. This is actually a perfectly reasonable way of framing a discussion. Chess programs are stronger than the best Chess players, Go programs are weaker than the best go players, discuss. Having said that I suspect there are problems with the two bishops and the 2100 Elo. Reading other posts, maybe it is 2 pawns or so and maybe 2600 Elo.

[deleted]

It's a common refrain that while computing has conquered Chess, it has failed miserably (to date) with Go. The article is suggesting this is changing, valaraucal is disputing the premise of the article, that's all.

Whereas the best chess engine is better than the best human, the best go engine can only beat a weak player with a big handicap. That's all valaraucal was trying to say.

I'm a chess expert but not a go expert - I don't know if valaraucal's right - but I suspect he is overstating both the weakness of the player and the size of the handicap.

Worrying about cores etc is overthinking it, they don't make that much difference (it's not a linear problem). Houdini is much stronger (or at least has a much higher rating) than Magnus Carlsen, even on a commodity laptop.

Incidentally, if you build a chess engine from scratch, it will take a bit of effort to get an engine that can beat a 2100 player with a 2 bishop handicap. I am about 2000, I spent a couple of weeks building a toy engine (available on triplehappy.com, my website). It is rated about 1500, but it will still beat me if I don't pay attention to the tactics. Illustrative of the fact that human ratings and machine ratings are not directly comparable. To get that far I had to give it some chess knowledge and some tactical ability. When you first get a chess engine playing legal chess it is going to be lamentably weak (less than 1000).

Re: Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

#82

Post by dfc »

billforsternz wrote: post #81
[deleted] wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

It's a common refrain that while computing has conquered Chess, it has failed miserably (to date) with Go. The article is suggesting this is changing, valaraucal is disputing the premise of the article, that's all. Whereas the best chess engine is better than the best human, the best go engine can only beat a weak player with a big handicap. That's all valaraucal was trying to say. I'm a chess expert but not a go exp…

I think I was too focused on the specifics of the analogy to realize it was a general statement. Thank you for clearing that up for me.

I did not mean to delete the comment you replied to. I have included it below:

It is terribly confusing analogy for me. Initially I thought the computer engine analogy was what was intended. But then I started thinking about someone rated 2100, down two bishops playing stockfish on a decent box with 3-4-5 EGTBs and a two bishop advantage. That seemed like a no brainer so I moved on to crafty, and then GNU chess and then what? I realized that I could not think of an engine that would consider a win with two bishops an accomplishment. As far as "maybe 2600 is a better target" goes you have to go all the way down to #88 on the CCRL in order to get to 2600.[^1] That is with even material and definitely not using 64 cores (the CCRL uses a AMD X2 4600+ at 2.4GHz benchmark).

I am sorry but thinking about a chess engine running on 64 cores with a two bishop advantage against a 2100 rated human is not reasonable. If I knew nothing about computers and Go I could reasonably read the 2-bishops/2100-ELO analogy and conclude that CrazyStone was laughable. I do not know much about computers and Go but I do know enough that I do not consider CrazyStone's performance laughable.

[^1]: http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/

Re: Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

#83

Post by [deleted] »

valarauca1 wrote: post #20

To put in more westernized chess terms, this would be like beating a 2100Elo master without bishops. Yoshio is a professional and very skilled, but he hasn't won a major tourniquet since 1989. Really not an achievement, its nice to see Computer Go advancing. A 4 stone handicap between master's is massive. The difference between a 9d (dan) and 1d isn't actually 8 stones. With an 8 stone handicap a 1d will play a 9d of…

[deleted]

Re: Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

#84

Post by tromp »

baddox wrote: post #50
wtallis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of deterministic games more complex than Go, even turn-based ones. But Go is still a clear outlier due to its age and the simplicity of its rules - it's completely obvious how to enumerate the game tree. Things like a real-time strategy game aren't really a fair comparison, since they are designed to approximate a continuous game space-time as opposed to the discrete board and moves of Go. You can in…

> You can inflate the game tree complexity just by switching from single-precision to double-precision, but that doesn't really make the game any harder. I think that absolutely makes the game significantly harder, just like playing Go on a smaller board is easier than Go on a larger board.

But Go can still be surprisingly hard on tiny board sizes. There are, for instance, 386,356,909,593 possible 2x2 games. (under the positional superko rule which says you cannot repeat any earlier position.)

Re: Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

#85

Post by hyperpape »

valarauca1 wrote: post #20

To put in more westernized chess terms, this would be like beating a 2100Elo master without bishops. Yoshio is a professional and very skilled, but he hasn't won a major tourniquet since 1989. Really not an achievement, its nice to see Computer Go advancing. A 4 stone handicap between master's is massive. The difference between a 9d (dan) and 1d isn't actually 8 stones. With an 8 stone handicap a 1d will play a 9d of…

What are you basing this on? It seems wrong both in terms of the size of the handicap and the strength of Ishida.

Ishida first: while he is certainly not top 100 in the world anymore, he is quite probably top 1000 (there are something like 1500 professionals out there, and he is probably above average for Japanese professionals, maybe above average for all the countries (see https://www.google.com/search?q=yoshio+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fi...). So he's closer to a grandmaster than a master. And in any case, other professionals have lost at four stones (see http://www.computer-go.info/h-c/index.html).

Second, regarding the handicap: I am not knowledge enough about chess to say, but it sounds high. In Go, I have beaten players who officially should give me three stones (though as you approach professional strength, it is true that players would be better at preserving that advantage and converting it into a win). I'd estimate the handicap as somewhere between 400 and 600 GoR points (which are similar in spirit to ELO ratings--http://senseis.xmp.net/?EGFRatingSystem). It is worth noting that the best European players take two to three stones from strong Asian professionals.

Re: Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

#86

Post by thinkpad20 »

Retric wrote: post #70
thinkpad20 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is my thought. It seems, for example, that precisely calculating the optimal strategy would be quite tenable on a 9x9 board, because the problem space is so small. On a 19x19 board, the space is absolutely immense. It doesn't seem to make a huge difference with humans, though, because we are so adept at pattern-matching. So it seems like while a larger board would certainly make things more difficult to a…

Solving go on a 5x5 board takes something like 2hours on a modern PC. So, optimal play for 7x7 may be within reach but 9x9 is much much harder. PS: "Center opening results in Black taking the entire board. First play on the edge results in White taking the entire board."

Interesting, no idea! Thanks, learned something.

Re: Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

#87

Post by thinkpad20 »

tromp wrote: post #84
baddox wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can inflate the game tree complexity just by switching from single-precision to double-precision, but that doesn't really make the game any harder. I think that absolutely makes the game significantly harder, just like playing Go on a smaller board is easier than Go on a larger board.

But Go can still be surprisingly hard on tiny board sizes. There are, for instance, 386,356,909,593 possible 2x2 games. (under the positional superko rule which says you cannot repeat any earlier position.)

How is this possible? Every game that I can imagine on a 2x2 board ends in about 5 or 6 moves. It seems there'd be 4 x 3 x 2 choices for the first 3 moves. Then the fourth move would capture two pieces, leaving two spaces open, so up to 48. I don't think I quite have the whole picture, but either way I can't possibly fathom how it could reach a number like you've given. What's the source of that?

Re: Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

#88

Post by yetanotherphd »

apetresc wrote: post #54
89vision wrote: post #39

confusing title, I was expecting golang

Now you know how all of us Go players have been feeling for the last four years.

That's unfortunate. Have you considered renaming the game to gogame?

Re: Crazy Stone computer Go program defeats Ishida Yoshio 9 dan with 4 stones

#90

Post by lukas »

valarauca1 wrote: post #20

To put in more westernized chess terms, this would be like beating a 2100Elo master without bishops. Yoshio is a professional and very skilled, but he hasn't won a major tourniquet since 1989. Really not an achievement, its nice to see Computer Go advancing. A 4 stone handicap between master's is massive. The difference between a 9d (dan) and 1d isn't actually 8 stones. With an 8 stone handicap a 1d will play a 9d of…

This is a huge achievement. I'm an amature 5-dan (aga) and I would not bet on myself against a 9d pro with a four stone handicap. It's amazing how far computer go has come in the last few years.
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