Quoting Martin Mueller <[email protected]>:
I beg to disagree. I think the book is just one of four or five
components, which are all equally important.
- search
- simulations
- hardware
- general Go knowledge
- book (9x9 only)
If you are lacking in one of the first four, a book won't save you.
All a book does is help you survive the opening and achieve a
non-inferior position from where you can start fighting. Playing
without a book against a well-prepared opponent, you may lose
without a real fight. However, see the performance of Many Faces
which does quite well on 9x9 even without a book.
I agree with your general comments completely. But I think the top
programs will need to be a little more diversified. Looking at CGOS
games there are many positions where for example Fuego played
Manyfaces many times (and almost no other programs) with a completely
predictable result. Proabably because Fuego follows some lines very
strict and Manyfaces playing almost deterministic in many cases.
The point being is that a good book should be hard to exploit and lead
to postions where the other factors determine the outcome. Without a
book it might be able to exploit a single program weaknesses.
Excessive exploitation however might lead exploatation from a 3rd
program which mimics the 1st program but plays stronger moves later.
Here is a thought of what could become more diversified. Currently all
top program only play the center point E5 as black on the first move.
Therefore E5 looks really good in the statistics
E5 53.6 65066
F5 47.8 25949
F4 46.1 15535
G5 41.6 4696
G4 40.8 14549
G3 38.3 3406
But maybe this is just a self fulfilling prophecy? Maybe F5 and F4 is
also playable when some good lines are chosen as black. There seems to
be some lines where a fair fight is possible but the number of games
is very few so it might be just random anomalies in the statistics. No
doubt playing F5 and F4 is much harder than E5.
Best
Magnus
_______________________________________________
Computer-go mailing list
[email protected]
http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
