Hi Steve, What you fail to take into considerations is that a monte/carlo player may ruin it's chances before the weaker player has a chance to play a bad move. The monte carlo player sees all moves as losing and will play almost randomly.
In botnoids game against mogo, once mogo achieved a "hopelessly won" position, it conceded a lot of territory. Mogo only won by 1 or 2 stones because winning big either conflicted with the goal of winning, or at best didn't matter. But the converse also applies. Had Mogo been in a hopelessly LOST position, it would not have cared about saving face and a random move again would have sufficed (in a lost position only losing moves exist, so one is as good as another.) In a high handicap game, a monte carlo program is likely to play the first few move randomly. Statistically they won't be able to see how C3 is any better than A19 and so they will inadvertently give the weaker opponent the win. Presumably the handicap gives both player equal chances, so the stronger player, despite his superiority, cannot be doing this. - Don On Fri, 2006-12-22 at 06:46 -0800, steve uurtamo wrote: > > IMHO if I give handicap it is because the other > > player is weaker, so I > > don't *have* to play foolishly - he will make > > mistakes that I can see > > and exploit. If I still can't win, it means the > > handicap should be > > lowered... > > and any go program would operate the same way. > it would look hopeless at the first move (as it > does to any white player who is giving a handicap), > but as soon as a mistake was made, white would > exploit it and his probability to win (or whatever > measure he's using) would increase. yes, it > would look entirely desperate until those inefficient > moves were played by his opponent, but it always > does to humans as well. > > in a 9-stone game, you can expect a move *that you, > as white, can see is inefficient* in, say, the first > 5 moves. in a 2-stone game, perhaps the first 50. > to a "probability of win" program, this would just > look like a massive jump in white's probability to > win. which is good news for white. > > depending upon when you see them and how bad these > moves are, the handicap should be effectively > negated before or just after the start of yose. > > MC (for instance) shouldn't have any trouble with > this. > > s. > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
