Hello GNU Go Developers, I am an undergraduate student studying Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. I am graduating in the spring, and have been working on a thesis paper relating to GNU Go.
My paper discusses approaches taken to programming Go engines, in comparison to other games, etc. For the programming component of my project, I considered different ideas, and settled on adding pondering (thinking on opponent's time) to the engine. I see this idea has been tossed around on the gnugo-dev mailing lists previously, and would like to know if there are any pros and cons, or analysis done on the idea of pondering. From my research I understand some commercial Go engines have implemented pondering, so it may have some benefits. Currently, the modification I have is very rough, but I would be happy to give the source code to anyone who wants it. It basically ponders the top 10 expected responses, and checks back for user input between pondering each move. If the opponent has made one of the moves that has been pondered, GNU Go doesn't need to consider a response, and instantly responds. The idea is to save some time, since from what I understand GNU Go lowers its skill level when running low on time. No threads or extra processes are spawned here. Any input you have on this idea would boost my thesis enormously. Whether positive or negative, I would love to know the developers' thoughts on the idea. I would be happy to correspond my findings with anyone interested in the topic. Thank you, Steven University of New Brunswick _______________________________________________ gnugo-devel mailing list gnugo-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnugo-devel
