On Sat, 2007-01-20 at 15:34 -0700, Arend Bayer wrote: > Hi Don, > > On 1/20/07, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If what you are saying is true, this is a waste of time. > They should not be able to produce better quality moves > than what they produce over the board. > > This has little to do with the question of whether you can improve a > single move a lot by spending a lot of hours on it, but more with the > fact that Go has many more reasonable moves in every opening position, > so the game will leave your opening book preparation much quicker, > especially compared to the overall length of the game.
But I'm not talking about opening preparation. My point is all about just a few critical moves, not the majority of them. If you are given twice as much thinking time, there is bound to be 2 or 3 moves in a 300 move game where it makes a difference in the quality of those 2 or 3 moves. And that is worth 1 or more ranks of strength. > <snip: on improving a move in chess by spending many hours on it> > > It seems really odd to me that you are incapable of > doing this in GO, or that the games are too different. > > If that's the case, then I prefer Chess, it is a far > deeper game. I would find any game boring if it was > so limited that there is nothing to think about that > can't be seen in just a few moments. > > I think of that in the opposite way. Go is such a deep game that in > any position, there is a lot I will never be able to understand just > by spending many hours on it. There are some things I may always > misjudge that a professional will see immediately. If I think a group > is weak and needs strengthening, but a pro just sees that it can never > be attacked profitably, then that's not something where I can correct > my mistaken thinking by spending many hours on the position. I believe this is all part of the strength/time relationship curve. If there is a huge disparity in playing strength, giving you a thousand times more thinking time won't be nearly enough to make up the gap. For instance ... Even when you double the speed of a chess playing computer, you add only a tiny amount of strength - so small it's not easily measured statistically. It's the same, I believe, with humans and probably why everyone here seems to believe what I'm saying is wrong, they think that I am implying that you can spend a few minutes on a move and play champion level. But if you are given twice as much thinking time, it's not going to turn you games from idiotic to brilliant. It will improve the (average) quality of your moves, but barely enough to notice. Having said that, I believe it's a lot more in GO based on some experiments I did with Steve Uurtamo in trying to get 19x19 CGOS ready. There is an ENORMOUS strength difference between programs that think twice as long - do 2X more monte carlo play-outs. Someone on this group (I can't remember who) correctly pointed out that a 19x19 has a lot of moves in it and so just a slight improvement in "skill" translates to a large winning percentage against even a slightly weaker opponent. This appears to be quite true. > To put another perspective on it: If I had an hour for every move in a > tournament game, I might play good EGF 5d level instead of average EGF > 4d. That's a big difference from my perspective, but a small one when > you compare it with the strength difference between me and a Korean > who just became pro. This is understood. See what I said above. I don't really know how much 1 extra dan represents at this level - I think it translates to 200 or more ELO points. We can figure this out - what is the win expectancy of 5 dan over 4 dan without handicap? You said an hour per move - what are you comparing this against? 10 seconds per move? 1 minute per move? > Arend > _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
