Hi Ray, You mentioned that you think GO is different that Chess, let's examine if that is true with regard to being able to use extra time effectively.
In Chess, good players will spend hours analyzing openings in preparation for tournaments. They imagine that if they put a lot of thought into a difficult position that they often encounter, they will be able to find a better move than what they might come up with over the board. If what you are saying is true, this is a waste of time. They should not be able to produce better quality moves than what they produce over the board. Years ago A player in the chess club kept beating me over the head with a non-standard opening move that was difficult to refute. I got sick of this, sat down in the privacy of my own home and didn't get back up until I discovered the correct response. In effect I consulted a much stronger player, myself, given a lot of extra time. I think I spent about 2 hours on this - so it was as if I consulted a player a few hundred ELO points stronger. I found a move I had no chance of finding in 20 or 30 seconds, even after repeated ad-hoc unstructured attempts. As soon as a started playing this move, my opponent stopped using it and he had to work harder to beat me. It seems really odd to me that you are incapable of doing this in GO, or that the games are too different. If that's the case, then I prefer Chess, it is a far deeper game. I would find any game boring if it was so limited that there is nothing to think about that can't be seen in just a few moments. In every game of Chess (or GO) puzzles of varying levels of difficulty are presented. How difficult those puzzles are depend on your strength. But there will always be a few that are difficult for you, but can be solved. There will always be a few that are too difficult to solve in the time available but you are perfectly capable of solving given enough (or a little more) time. Even if only 1 or 2 positions per game are like this, you will play a stronger game if you are allowed the time to solve them. It doesn't matter if the other 150 moves you play the same and the extra time didn't help. But 1 or 2 positions per game is probably all that's required to move you up a rank. Maybe in your case it's different. I know of chess players who have been playing for many years and they have their system - they play more or less automatic, and they probably don't benefit from extra time and they never get into time-pressure trouble. But that's only because they have stopped thinking. They only need a glance at the board and they are predictable. Usually the players that get to this point are relatively strong but you will never see them make any additional improvement. They don't use time to exercise their imagination because they prefer to stay comfortable. >From your own description you imply that you are a GO player like this. You are convinced that you can't produce a move higher than your strength level no matter how much time you are given. I would quit the game if I ever felt like that. How boring is that? I also can't understand the point of correspondence chess if you are correct that extra time doesn't produce higher quality moves. I know that that the great correspondence players invest a lot of time in their moves. Do you believe they are misguided? Or are you just saying GO isn't like this? You either are strong enough to know the best move or you will never be able figure it out no matter how much time you are given. Maybe I will post about why I think humans improve MORE with time than computers. - Don On Fri, 2007-01-19 at 17:29 -0800, Ray Tayek wrote: > At 08:45 PM 1/18/2007, you wrote: > >On Thu, 2007-01-18 at 20:05 -0800, Ray Tayek wrote: > > > > > > yes. i would easily give my opponent *much* more time than a few > > > handicap stones. the effect of time making someone (or thing) play > > > better (or worse) is non-linear and probably only effective over some > > > small range of time and talent. > > > >I think the formula is probably similar to UCT or Chess, but even more > >so for humans. > > sorry, no clue about the formula. > > > Double the amount of time you have, and significantly > >increase the quality of the move. I don't think this is a limited > >effect over a narrow range of time. > > i suspect that it is in humans. i am only a 1-dan player. but during > most of the game: > > if i have a reasonable amount if time (say 1 hour or so), doubling or > trippling the time to think about one move (or for the whole game) > does not make any difference (but i have been playing for 40 years). > i tend to reach my limit of reading (look ahead). > > i would cut my time to 40 minutes for 2 stones and play for money. 30 > minutes for 3 stones, 25 minutes for 4 stones, 20 minutes for 5 stones. > > giving most 1-dans more than an hour is not going to help their game > that much. we only play so well. pro's can probably defeat this since > they can make the game complicated. > > > >I understand chess better than go, I used to be a tournament player. > >Give me time to think and I can produce moves > >of enormously higher quality over tournament time-controls. I know > >this for a fact. I seriously doubt it is different for go. > > i don't play chess. but it seems different to me in go. > > >... > >It probably is non-linear like you say - even in the more limited game > >of Chess, the curve was amazingly linear (every doubling in time seemed > > to give a fixed amount > >of ELO strength improvement) ... > > well, chess is close to 1+ battles. more look ahead should help in > some linear way perhaps. go goes off the rails fast when you consider > interactions of say the corner josekis to other corners. > > >As far as talent is concerned, some chess experiments seem to indicate ... > >I think it might work the same with humans - ... ... > > don' t know enough to comment. > > >So I think strength in humans is very much the same - perhaps even more > >scalable than with computers - subject of course to human frailties of > >attention span, sleep time, ability to focus for long periods of time, > >etc. > > i play 20-25 minute games on yahoo sometimes when i am bored. these > are moderately fast. some people play insanely fast (too me). like 10 > minutes (this is total time. no byo-yomi). ignoring what a group of > people might be able to do, i suspect that having more than two hours > of time per game for amateurs is the limit of usefulness. a pro could > probably benefit from a much larger increase in time. > > thanks > > > --- > vice-chair http://ocjug.org/ > > _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
