On Jan 3, 2011, at 10:47 AM, Joona Kiiski wrote:
Hi everyone!
In last few years I've spend a lot of time with computer chess,
but in general I found Go much more interesting than chess.
I have zero experience in writing go program, but I've read with
great interest about Monte Carlo playouts being a highly effective
new weapon in computer go.
Question 1: How does one playout go? Are you using completely
random moves or something smarter?
Biasing the playouts to "smarter" moves often helps, although there
can be paradoxical behavior. One basic trick almost everyone uses is
to never play in a
"possible eye", which is a vacant point surrounded orthogonally by
friendly stones, with no more than one (away from the edge) or zero
(at the edge or corner) diagonal neighbors occupied by enemy stones.
Question 2: Are there some (preferably high-quality) open-source
programs around? I took a look at GnuGo, but it's terribly complex
and seems to presents era before MC-breakthrough.
A very clean, readable version of Orego will be released in the next
week. Several people have used it in their research, and it's a good
place to start (assuming you know Java). In tournaments, Orego
generally comes in above the weak programs and below the very strong
programs.
Question 3: Are there standardized protocols which allow programs
easily play against each others? Are there GUIs or tourney managers
to easily play a lot of engine-engine matches.
GTP is the standard protocol:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~gunnar/gtp/
Tournaments are held monthly on the KGS Go Server. Watch this list for
details.
If the conditions are right, I might want to try Go-programming in
near
future...
Joona Kiiski
Best of luck!
Peter Drake
http://www.lclark.edu/~drake/
_______________________________________________
Computer-go mailing list
Computer-go@dvandva.org
http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
