Live data from Hacker News

Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go

tromp.github.io

1–10 of 116 posts

Re: Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go

#3

Just because the number of legal positions is computed doesn't mean we're anywhere close to "solving" 18x18 Go, right? What's the utility of computing the number of legal positions?

No, nowhere remotely close. This is just a matter of trying to precisely characterize the state space; there are upper and lower bounds that have been established, but it's an interesting computational problem to precisely characterize exactly how many legal positions there are.

I think that there's not much utility in this work beyond "it's an interesting challenge," but, well, there's not much utility in any game beyond "it's an interesting challenge."

Re: Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go

#4

Just because the number of legal positions is computed doesn't mean we're anywhere close to "solving" 18x18 Go, right? What's the utility of computing the number of legal positions?

something something top-down dynamic programming

shuffles on, muttering

Re: Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go

#6

They got 57 legal position for a 2x2 game of go. They're counting all the symmetries. They're not pruning anything. facepalm

Rotation and mirroring only buy you a factor of 8, and that's for positions that aren't already symmetric.

Re: Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go

#7

They got 57 legal position for a 2x2 game of go. They're counting all the symmetries. They're not pruning anything. facepalm

Of course they are taking symmetries into account. They are including symmetries in their definition of what the different states are, and thus accounting for them in the count, but they absolutely are pruning symmetries in their implementation. Read the draft of the paper (https://tromp.github.io/go/gostate.ps) if you're interested in the techniques.

Re: Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go

#8
post #3

Just because the number of legal positions is computed doesn't mean we're anywhere close to "solving" 18x18 Go, right? What's the utility of computing the number of legal positions?

No, nowhere remotely close. This is just a matter of trying to precisely characterize the state space; there are upper and lower bounds that have been established, but it's an interesting computational problem to precisely characterize exactly how many legal positions there are. I think that there's not much utility in this work beyond "it's an interesting challenge," but, well, there's not much utility in any game b…

[deleted]

Re: Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go

#9
post #8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, nowhere remotely close. This is just a matter of trying to precisely characterize the state space; there are upper and lower bounds that have been established, but it's an interesting computational problem to precisely characterize exactly how many legal positions there are. I think that there's not much utility in this work beyond "it's an interesting challenge," but, well, there's not much utility in any game b…

[deleted]

Government funding, collaboration with outside companies and IP. Looks like John Tromp was affiliated with CWI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrum_Wiskunde_%26_Informatic...), which is funded by the Netherlands gov. Take a look at the "spin off companies" section in the wikipedia article. Often government funded research organisations turn some of their research into products to help fund themselves.
Post reply on HN