If you are 100% effective at guessing the opponent's reply, and use all of his time to ponder, and your opponent thinks as long as you do, then you have 2x as much thinking time compared to not pondering.
Of course, a 100% rate of guessing the opponent's reply is a tall order, unless you play against a very similar program. What if you guess right, and have spent enough time to find a good reply, and are confident enough of that reply to play it immediately? You plonk it down immediately, reserving time for some later, more complex situation. Assuming a measure of "stability" which indicates when you have thought "enough" to play immediately, and when you need to expend more resources, then pondering can improve time management, for a possibly superlinear benefit. Some of the same benefits may occur with clever opening books, joseki, and so forth, of course. Terry McIntyre <[email protected]> Unix/Linux Systems Administration Taking time to do it right saves having to do it twice. ----- Original Message ---- > From: David Fotland <[email protected]> > To: Aja <[email protected]>; [email protected] > Sent: Thu, September 16, 2010 8:14:09 PM > Subject: Re: [Computer-go] Speculatively pondering > > Surely pondering can't give more strength benefit than perhaps 1.5x more CPU > power? > > Which program did you use for your experiments? > > David > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [email protected] [mailto:computer-go- > > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Aja > > Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2010 4:53 PM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: Re: [Computer-go] Speculatively pondering > > > > Actually in my experiments on 19x19, pondering gives a VERY big strength > > increase. This result is shown in our paper "Time Management for > Monte-Carlo > > Tree Search Applied to the Game of Go" to be published. > > > > Aja > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "David Fotland" <[email protected]> > > To: <[email protected]> > > Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 1:58 AM > > Subject: Re: [Computer-go] Speculatively pondering > > > > > > > Many Faces does not ponder, but it's on the todo list. I don't expect > > > pondering to give a big strength increase compared to all the other > things > > > queued up. > > > > > > David > > > > > >> -----Original Message----- > > >> From: [email protected] [mailto:computer-go- > > >> [email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] > > >> Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2010 6:45 AM > > >> To: [email protected] > > >> Subject: Re: [Computer-go] Speculatively pondering > > >> > > >> Quoting Brian Sheppard <[email protected]>: > > >> > > >> >> In other words: a strong opponent will cause a lot of ponder hits > and > > >> >> speculative pondering is the best way to search effectively. > > >> > > > >> > This makes sense, but actual measurements on CGS showed that > > >> > speculative pondering was worse. At least for Pebbles. > > >> > > > >> > That experimental result is consistent with mathematical > > >> > models, so I have confidence. > > >> > > > >> > Have you tested Valkyria both ways? > > >> > > >> No, what I wrote is just what I believe. There is a lot of things I > > >> would like to test but this is on the todo list. > > >> > > >> Currently pondering tend to be inefficient for a different reason > > >> since Valkyria have no garbage collection and quickly fills memory > > >> with 4 fast cores. In forced sequences it does not ponder at all > > >> because the tree is already full. > > >> > > >> Magnus > > >> > > >> _______________________________________________ > > >> Computer-go mailing list > > >> [email protected] > > >> http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Computer-go mailing list > > > [email protected] > > > http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Computer-go mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go > > _______________________________________________ > Computer-go mailing list > [email protected] > http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go > _______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
