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

tromp.github.io

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

#81
> we need from 10 to 13 servers, each with at least 8 cores, 512GB RAM, and ample disk space (10-15TB), running for about 5-9 months.

Is he sure about 512GB of RAM? That's a lot of memory. Even the 32-core memory-optimized AWS instances only have 244GB.

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

#82

I want to learn Go. I would like to practice against a bot first before I get on KGS. What is a good Go program I can run on my Mac to practice against? The AI does not need to be very good at all since I am novice. Once I get familiar with rules, I will play online against players. What is a good Go client to play online on the Mac?

GnuGo is good enough to get started but you should not play many games with it. Just a handful to get acquainted with the rules.

Playing against computers will teach you bad habits and will not be helpful past the very basics. If you want to do exercises, try e.g. Tsumego (for Android at least).

And the best way to get started is to find your local Go club, take a friend with similar level to you (ie. complete novice) and join their game night (my local go clubs meet in bars). Ask a more experienced player to over-the-shoulder for a few games. This is how I got started.

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

#83

Anyone here play? It is pretty much the ultimate boardgame. Its like game-theory the game. From the very start you are embroiled in interesting risk/reward and provoking you opponent to overextending type stuff. Great place to play is gokgs.com I actually cant play many strategy games anymore because I realize this is like go with a load of crap thrown on it. My friend and I call this 'false complexity' the game isnt…

I play and love both Go and MtG, and I think your assessment of MtG is not fair. The thing about MtG is that the real fun is not as much in playing the game itself but in the deck building. When I'm playing a game of MtG, I'm not thinking only about the current game or how to win it, but rather which cards/combos are working well, which are not working, what cards I should use instead, etc. to improve my deck for the next game.

Finding interesting combos among the thousands of existing MtG cards is also very fun and cannot be done in a minimalistic game with a very small number of components like Go. They are just games with different goals and scopes.

What I dislike about the evolution of MtG is the placeholder words that they constantly add to the rules, e.g. "lifelink" for "damage dealt by this creature also causes you to gain that much life". Cards with that ability existed before the word was introduced, so the word is unnecessary, it just makes the text of the cards shorter... but the constant extensions of the vocabulary make the rules harder to understand and remember. The actual rules are still mostly like in the nineties... in fact most, if not all, of the actual rule changes have been simplifications rather than complications (mana burn removed, meh). But they just like to make up unnecessary words, it's a pity.

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

#84
post #35

Anyone here play? It is pretty much the ultimate boardgame. Its like game-theory the game. From the very start you are embroiled in interesting risk/reward and provoking you opponent to overextending type stuff. Great place to play is gokgs.com I actually cant play many strategy games anymore because I realize this is like go with a load of crap thrown on it. My friend and I call this 'false complexity' the game isnt…

I'm not super familiar with Dota, but I have thought a fair amount about game theory as it applies to RTS games, and Dota (being a MOBA) has many similarities. The main thing (from a game theoretical standpoint) that I believe sets RTS games apart from (most) strategy board games is not the real-time nature, but the fact that RTS games are not perfect information games. Incorporating knowledge about your opponent's p…

Well go is often played online with a very tight time limit. Giving only a matter of seconds for each move. I wouldbt say its a matter of coordination, but, pattern recognition from noisy jumbled data at speed.

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

#85

> we need from 10 to 13 servers, each with at least 8 cores, 512GB RAM, and ample disk space (10-15TB), running for about 5-9 months. Is he sure about 512GB of RAM? That's a lot of memory. Even the 32-core memory-optimized AWS instances only have 244GB.

Where I'm currently working (computational neuroscience / data analysis) we've just had to upgrade our servers and 512GB is only just enough for some datasets. A couple of the labs nearby (genomics) share a cluster of ~10 machines with 1.5TB RAM each. So no, 512GB isn't stupidly high (though it's still uncommon!).

(Large SQL servers, etc, often have this much RAM)

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

#86
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Go. But from a game-theoretic view it is theoretically rather trivial, as are chess, checkers, and any other game in which players with perfect information alternate moves. The winner of a Go game is whoever more reliably predicts the ultimate result of various potential intermediate positions. The only interesting game theoretic aspects at all arise to the extent one can predict one's opponents' likely errors…

Actually, it's interesting in the sense of combinatorial game theory ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_game_theory ) not the branch of decision theory for interactive rational agents known as game theory ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory ). Two only very distantly related subjects which unfortunately have confusingly similar names.

Got it. That said, I use "game theory" in the sense in which it's defined, not least because my thesis was in the subject. :)

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

#87
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Dota for example the false complexity is what allows someone with not so great analytical thinking but great knowledge of the complexity (items and hero combinations) to fare pretty well. It helps level the field. Although comparing go to RTS is extremely misleading. RTS's have pretty deep of what I call 'continuous tactics' where you need to plan an optimal control of your character with a continuum rather than d…

> 'continuous tactics' I think the words you're looking for are "micromanagement" (if it's about dealing with more than one unit) and "mechanical skill" if it's about having twitch reaction times (for last hitting, landing spell-combos, etc.) I play DotA on and off, and thi is the part that irritates me the most :x

Twitch reactions are what make it real-time. You might be more interested in a turn-based strategy game where you can plan out your moves before striking.

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

#88

Anyone here play? It is pretty much the ultimate boardgame. Its like game-theory the game. From the very start you are embroiled in interesting risk/reward and provoking you opponent to overextending type stuff. Great place to play is gokgs.com I actually cant play many strategy games anymore because I realize this is like go with a load of crap thrown on it. My friend and I call this 'false complexity' the game isnt…

Have you tried any other strategic board games out there? There are a fair few relatively recent games that involve deep strategy that come to mind. Since board games require the players to enforce the rules of the game themselves, there's an intrinsic limit to how complicated the game can be before it becomes tedious.

Terra Mystica and Caylus are two examples that I would mention as having a decent amount of complexity and are deeply strategic games without being too complicated. However, whilst still being considered as strategy games, the mechanics and methods of thinking are very different to those used in Go, so it's difficult to compare them directly.

They also have very little randomness in them, so the players' decisions are much more impactful.

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

#89

Anyone here play? It is pretty much the ultimate boardgame. Its like game-theory the game. From the very start you are embroiled in interesting risk/reward and provoking you opponent to overextending type stuff. Great place to play is gokgs.com I actually cant play many strategy games anymore because I realize this is like go with a load of crap thrown on it. My friend and I call this 'false complexity' the game isnt…

Been playing for many years (I'm around 5k.) I also enjoy a game of backgammon (I picked it up last August) and still play casual, artificially-complex games with my friends, since they are not big go fans

Curious, what "artificially-complex" games do you play with your friends?

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

#90
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Go. But from a game-theoretic view it is theoretically rather trivial, as are chess, checkers, and any other game in which players with perfect information alternate moves. The winner of a Go game is whoever more reliably predicts the ultimate result of various potential intermediate positions. The only interesting game theoretic aspects at all arise to the extent one can predict one's opponents' likely errors…

Actually, go has some deep complexity that chess and checkers do not have, primarily from the idea of "ko". Read "Mathematical Go". https://math.berkeley.edu/~berlek/cgt/gobook.html

Interestingly, that book has a review quote by Ken Thompson. I always wondered if the naming of Go(lang) was related to the game ...
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