However GTP was way better than what > preceded it and yet even the top programmers believed GMP was > sent by god and anything else was blasphemy.
I have to object to this characterization :) GMP was very good at what is was designed to do, which was to allow people to play using a 1200 baud modem, before the internet was invented. This we very useful, since there were many people in the US that had no local club. Because the link was slow and unreliable, GMP was binary, and had reties, and provision for sending text messages, etc. Once the internet was invented, GMP was immediately obsolete, but because so many programs had implemented it, it became a de-facto standard for computer go tournaments. I think tournament organizers continued to specify it since it was too hard for organizers to invent something different. > > Even things like time-control systems are very logical in > Chess, but not in Go. Time control in go is quite logical if you remember that it is traditional and was invented before electronics. You can't do fisher time control by hand. I think go puts more emphasis on tradition than go, so things that were very logical and practical before computers, are still being used. Even though computers and electronic timers enable better approaches. The traditional ranking system of Go > isn't very rational > although it's understandable how it evolved. The ranking system is also very logical if you remember that it is intended to be maintained by hand, without electronic assistance. It's very easy to track the handicap I use with the people I play with most often, and change the handicap after a few consecutive wins or losses. Chess doesn't have a similar handicap system, so it has to rank based on probability of winning. Go, instead, adjusts that handicap until the winning probability is 50%. > It may be that because GO is more of a right brained activity, it > appeals more to the emotional, visual type of person. These kind of > people are probably a bit more into the culture and history of a game > than in the pure mathematical game itself. (There are also chess > players who love the culture of chess more than the game itself.) I think you are right. I don't see many chess players talking about creating a beautiful game. > > Also, Chess has evolved more recently, there have been > fundamental rule > changes within the last 2 or 3 hundred years I believe. Go also has many recent rule changes. Go was traditionally played without written rules. Codifying the traditions is what makes Japanese rules so complex. Take a look at the Ing Ko rule sometime :) David _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
