Hi Don,
my replies are inlline. Thanks.
Bojun
>Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2011 10:59:31 -0400
>From: Don Dailey <[email protected]>
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: [Computer-go] Direct DX11 and graphics cards for cheaper
> simulation hardware?
>Message-ID: <[email protected]>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I don't think there is a widely accepted standard benchmark, but I think
>there are MCTS bots that do light playouts and we could probably "pick" one
>to consider a reference implementation. Some programs may provide the
>option for light playouts, or perhaps could make this an option. What
>do you mean by "light playouts?" One definition is any legal move is
>played with equal probability and another definition is "less heavy."
I refer to the latter one. Actually my question is just for defining what
"light playout" is, or, how much "less" heavy is acceptable to keep the program
showing state-of-art performance, and to make the tradoff between speed and
selectivity still within the meaningful range. Clearly, random selection on all
legal moves from uniform distribution is less valuable for building really
strong programs. But on the other hand, how "light" the playouts in a "strong"
program could be? Is there strong program (not nessarily the top programs) that
is well known to use light playouts?
>>
>> Another question ... does more playouts really provide a *consistent*
>> improvement on the ELO score, especially for those strongest programs? I
>> remember that some programs running on laptop rank very high in the
>> Olympaids, that seems imply that speed simply doesn't matter here ...
>>
>
>More playouts always consistently improves a program. Like in computer
>chess, it takes a fair increase to be easily measurable so don't listen to
>anecdotal evidence that this is not so. You might hear someone say, "I
>doubled the number of playouts and it did not seem to play any better - or
>it lost a 10 game match despite the doubling." Doubling the number of
>playouts is not going to increase the strength enough that it will guarantee
>a win in a 10 or 20 game match so when that happens some people will
>conclude that increasing the number of playouts has no effect on the
>strength, but that is nonsense.
>
>Don
>
Yeah, it's intuitive that more playouts would improve the program, but it may
also intuitive that this improvement would become more and more marginal as the
playing capability of the program increases. I heard that doubling the number
of playouts gives 50 ELO scores, but this kind of linear improvement seems
cannot hold on in my program when the score is beyond 2400. Seems the
additional playouts is more good at turning weak programs into average programs
than turning average programs into strong programs.
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