Hi Gian-Carlo, There is an interesting phenomenon going on when it comes to the perception and advertisement of game playing strength.
One is that people take time to accept concepts they are used to thinking differently about. I remember one human (chess) player who was pretty weak for many years, then all of a sudden he "got serious" and gains hundreds of ELO points in a couple of years - becoming a master. Many players could not accept this and it took a few years (even though he continued to play actively) for people to stop believing he was grossly overrated and be accepted as a strong player. Just a few years ago it was widely held that computers will not reach Dan level "in my lifetime" even in 9x9 Go. When it happened in 9x9 go, it was not accepted - the day it happened passed us by and nobody noticed it. It's probably still not common knowledge and it will take time for it to be generally believed. Another phenomenon, is what I call the contempt factor. In the old days of computer chess, you would buy a program or machine that was certified to be a certain strength level. But once you got comfortable and familiar with the program, you started learning it's weaknesses and got time to witness a few stupid moves - your contempt of it grew and your estimation of it's strength diminished. The same thing happens with human players but for some reason we don't hold that against them. It's not that the program is not as strong as advertised, it's just that the magic goes away once we get to take it apart and see how it works. I don't know if your program is high Dan level or not. I suspect it's "low Dan" level if I had to guess but it could be tested with a formalized match on KGS. I suggest multiple players for variety - a single player match is not a good test. - Don Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: >> On Sun, 2 Dec 2007, Russell Wallace wrote: >> >>> I haven't seen Leela before, but the claim of high dan-level >>> performance on 9x9 is certainly interesting. >>> >> I don't think 2200 ELO on the 9x9 CGOS is equivalent to 'high dan-level' >> play. >> > > I was under the impression that MoGo (approx 2350 CGOS) was > starting to cause trouble for pro players on 9 x 9. The released > Leela version is a bit stronger than the last on CGOS and uses > all CPUs, so "high dan level" was supposed to be a reasonable estimate. > > If someone has factual data[*] about 9 x 9 performance of > current bots I'll gladly revise the estimate on the webpage > on my own. > > [*] factual data is not: "I feel it's about 1kyu". Or "I played > a few games and it sucks in life & death. I had to take back a move > because I wasn't really concentrated but I beat it easily. Must be > less than 2 dan strength". > > One of the best things I found was a report from a 6 dan that > he won a match 5-2 against an older version of MoGo. That puts > MoGo at about 4 to 5 dan. I don't think what I said is > unreasonable, unless a 5 dan is not considered "high dan level". > > Arguing about this feels like a waste of time anyway. At the last > KGS tournament people were arguing that Crazy Stone is overrated > because "it can't be 1k". > > The last time I saw this was when "dan" was called "grandmaster". > > _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
