> An interesting line from this article on pattern matching, including
> computer Go:
> ...
> http://news.csu.edu.au//director/latestnews.cfm?itemID=C712563AEEA8398B7655D520C442F510&printtemplate=release
A nice article; curiously the issues I had with it are almost the
opposite of the ones Mark Boon had.
“It's a bit like acquiring a good accent in a foreign
language. At quite a young age, the sounds of one's
first language get set and are very difficult to
change later.
I suspect this is just a myth. I've been fortunate to meet many adult
learners of languages who have mastered the accent. Native English
speakers learning the hard languages of Japanese and Chinese. And native
Japanese speakers learning English.
I think the reason most adult learners of foreign languages tend to
speak with a heavy accent is simply that they don't put the effort in.
I.e. they are adults, they need to communicate in that language as
adults, and don't have time to mess around investing the time to get
perfect. They stop at the point where they are understood.
More evidence that adult learners can learn new accents: the existence
of impressionists.
The first phase of the research showed that people's
knowledge undergoes dramatic reorganisation when they
move from amateur to professional rank.
“The change takes place not just in the areas of
‘deep strategy’, where one would expect the big gains
to be, but also there is a radical reorganisation at
the perceptual level,”
This is fascinating if they show it scientifically. It is something I've
observed indirectly. First professionals emphasize the importance of
tesuji and life and death study, whatever your level. I.e. they claim
you can never have too many patterns. But the main observation is that
their rank ordering still holds when you take away the stronger player's
19x19 strategical knowledge.
A side story: when I was a teenager my chess-playing uncle came to stay
with us. He beat me every time, normally in the first few moves. Being a
brash, over-confident teenager I knew I was cleverer than him, so I came
up with a plan to allow my intellectual superiority to take hold: I
suggested we play chess on the 18x18 go board. Thus taking away all his
opening knowledge.
He captured my king in 6 moves because he immediately realized the
mobile pieces were even more powerful now.
Back to go, the way I have observed this is on the small boards:
A pro 9-dan will consistently beat a pro 5-dan at 9x9 go.
A pro 5-dan will consistently beat a pro 2-dan at 9x9 go.
A pro 2-dan will consistently beat a ama 5-dan at 9x9 go.
An ama 5-dan will consistently beat an ama 2-dan at 9x9 go.
I've not personally done the experiments but another way to take away
strategic knowledge is to setup a random board (the players use komi
bidding to decide who is black or white). Again, you will observe that
the 9-dan will beat the 5-dan, consistently.
Darren
P.S. For 9x9, I'm using the word "consistently" to mean they will win
more than they lose, in a statistically significant way. I don't mean
they'll win 100%, or even have as high a winning percentage as they do
on 19x19: 19x19 gives the stronger player more chances to turn around a
game from an early mistake.
--
Darren Cook, Software Researcher/Developer
http://dcook.org/work/ (About me and my work)
http://dcook.org/blogs.html (My blogs and articles)
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