> This is the strategy that one uses even in even games, right? One > plays what one thinks is best given the position, and if the > opponent's reply is less than optimal one tries to punish it (with > various degrees of success, but that's another issue :-))
It's the strategy in even games, but not in handicap games. Let me put it like this. For simplification, in an even position we assume that if you play the objectively best move you will win the game (not entirely true but for all practical purposes we can assume this is true.) In other words, the quality of your opponents moves do not need to concern you. You have a simple strategy, just play the best move irregardless of what your opponent does. As the handicap grows, you become far more dependent on how your opponent plays. In fact, playing the very best move is a losing proposition from a game theoretic point of view, because there is no best move - they all lose! In fact, this is the crux of the matter. You say "play the best move" but in a losing position that is meaningless. This isn't just theoretical, it's practical, ALL moves are losing moves. So it becomes far more important to play the opponent, not the board. All your hopes and dreams depend on your opponent, not the brilliancy of your moves (all of which lose.) So it makes a great deal of sense to understand your opponent and to play in such a way that your opponent is more likely to go wrong. I'm not aware of any computers that think in these terms. However, humans do! I remember seeing a game annotated where a good player beat a program with some huge number of handicap stones. The annotations made it very clear that the human player was far more concerned with his opponent than the board. I'm fairly confident that in low handicap games where there is not a great deal of strength difference between players, this can be ignored without too many side effects. The same issues I describe exist, but we may be able to safely ignore them. I can't say that for sure since I am not a strong player. - Don On Fri, 2006-12-22 at 15:33 +0100, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote: > Hi Don, > > On 12/22/06, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > It's easy to adapt monte carlo programs to have the goal of trying to > > win as much space or territory as possible but many of us have studied > > this as see that it seriously weakens monte carlo programs. > > My (jokingly serious) point was that if you succeed solving the > "normal" game of Go, fixing it for this additional constraing should > be trivial (i.e. possibly only some 6 to 8 orders of magnitude > simpler) > > > But this is not the real problem. It seems that the handicap system > > is not reasonable in general for computers. [...] It seems that playing the > > best move possible (best in the sense of maximizing your territory gain) is > > not the best strategy when playing a handicap game. You literally have to > > play foolishly in order to dupe your opponent into losing. > > I would beg to partially disagree. The above is true if giving > handicap to a player of equal strength, or at least stronger than the > handicap would be fair for. > > IMHO if I give handicap it is because the other player is weaker, so I > don't *have* to play foolishly - he will make mistakes that I can see > and exploit. If I still can't win, it means the handicap should be > lowered... > > This is the strategy that one uses even in even games, right? One > plays what one thinks is best given the position, and if the > opponent's reply is less than optimal one tries to punish it (with > various degrees of success, but that's another issue :-)) > Best regards, > Vlad _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
