91–100 of 134 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read four different versions of the comparison you're describing as "very easy" (four pieces, four pawns, two bishops, a minor piece), so you'll forgive me if I don't find your statement very convincing given the lack of consensus?
You'll notice they didn't support their arguments - they were just guessing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to make a comparison like that because Go and Chess operate on fundamentally different models. Chess is about capturing a specific piece and putting your opponent in a position where they have no options but to lose; to that end, it's a war of attrition where players slowly lose resources until the game is over (note that I do not play chess at any significant level). In contrast, Go is about capturing terr…
It's hard to make a comparison like that because Go and Chess operate on fundamentally different models It is very easy. The nature of the game is completely irrelevant. The question is what expectation of winning rate a 4 stone advantage gives to a Go player. For middle ranks, one stone is about 100 ELO-equivalent, or 64% winning rate. (I think it's closer at top dan ranks, would have to look up the statistics). 4 S…
edit: Apparently kasparov gave a ~2200 guy 2 pawn handicap once, ended up winning 2.5-1.5 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1317037/Kasparov-make....
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Two bishops is still too much. An above average amateur chess player around ELO 2000 should regularly beat the world champion with two extra bishops.
More often than not, a loss of a single piece in chess results in resignation. You have to make a serious blunder to lose a game when you're ahead by one piece. I think a more accurate analogy would be playing a game of chess without a pawn, or two, maybe, but the game is so heavily based on opening lines that some might argue if you have a pawn handicap, it shouldn't be called chess.
The handicap of 4 stones seems to be very accurate. This means that crazy stones has the same level than top amateur players.
Generally, in Go, fast games are an advantage for computer. I wonder what would give a slower game.
congratulation to crazy stones.
On a semi-unrelated note, is there a decent English-speaking online Go community anywhere? I would like to try my hand at playing but I can't find anything along the lines of FICS, or even a decent-looking client for Android.
Another semi-unrelated: Can someone recommend a decent board and set of stones, that don't feel too shabby yet don't cost an arm and a leg?
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yeah; there are some people in the comments suggesting that that Ishida might not be playing at the level of a top 9p right now, but this is still pretty significant and a very impressive feat.
Yep. The difference between Ishida and a top pro today probably isn't more than 2 stones.
Combinatorically, Go is considered pretty much the most complex game in existence, and computer go programs have been historically weak, so this seems to be quite an achievement (despite that it was against 4-stone-handicapped master passed his prime). One thing I wonder, though, if computers ever catch up to humans at Go, could we simply expand the board size a few spaces, thus dramatically increasing the problem sp…
I remember watching a game around 15 years ago, Go professional (I forget who) vs a highly-ranked computer program. The computer got a 27 stone handicap, and the pro still won by more than 361 stones. Both of those numbers are crazy. The fact that computer programs are getting competitive is pretty awesome. 15 year ago, I wasn't sure they'd ever beat a competent human. But now I anticipate that 15 years from now (if…
In 2006, Crazy Stone ran on a 4 x 2-core CPU at 2.2 GHz and won gold in a tournament.[1] In 2013, the author purchased a 4 x 16-core CPU at 2.8 GHz for tournament play.[2] I would imagine that that was the hardware used for this game.
For such a slow machine the Monte Carlo method has proved devastating.[3] Consider that the the author's computer can reach 332.8 GFLOPs per 2P node[4] and the slowest supercomputer in the world's Top 500 list can reach 236,300 GFLOPs,[5] which is ~710 times faster. The Tianhe-2, for giggles, can peak at 54,902,000 GFLOPs, or ~164,970 times faster.
In theory, the Tianhe-2 could demolish a 9p, today. If Moore's Law holds out,[6][7][8] Crazy Stone will likely reach 9p in under 7 years, by virtue of hardware improvements alone. Were IBM to dedicate resources to Computer Go, a machine would be awarded a 9p rank in as few as 3 years.
[0] http://mechner.com/david/compgo/sciences/
[1] http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/09/71804
[2] http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.games.devel.go/26670
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go
[4] http://www.amd.com/us/Documents/6000_Series_product_brief.pd...
[5] http://www.top500.org/list/2013/11/?page=5
[6] http://phys.org/news/2013-05-nanowire-transistors-law-alive....
[7] http://www.advancedsubstratenews.com/2014/02/fd-soi-keeps-mo...
[8] http://www.economist.com/news/21589080-golden-rule-microchip...
Combinatorically, Go is considered pretty much the most complex game in existence, and computer go programs have been historically weak, so this seems to be quite an achievement (despite that it was against 4-stone-handicapped master passed his prime). One thing I wonder, though, if computers ever catch up to humans at Go, could we simply expand the board size a few spaces, thus dramatically increasing the problem sp…
> Combinatorically, Go is considered pretty much the most complex game in existence Is that considering "game" to include only traditional turn-based board games? Presumably it would be trivial to make a video game that's vastly more complex (at least in terms of tree or state space complexity) than Go. Any real-time strategy game should quality.
Combinatorically, Go is considered pretty much the most complex game in existence, and computer go programs have been historically weak, so this seems to be quite an achievement (despite that it was against 4-stone-handicapped master passed his prime). One thing I wonder, though, if computers ever catch up to humans at Go, could we simply expand the board size a few spaces, thus dramatically increasing the problem sp…
There's a lot of value for a human to get good at Go, regardless of the strength of computer opponents.