[computer-go] Monte Carlo combined with minimax search

[Peter Drake]

On Jul 23, 2006, at 2:21 AM, Magnus Persson wrote:

> Quoting Rémi Coulom <Remi.Coulom at univ-lille3.fr>:
>
>> Peter Drake wrote:
>>> On Jul 22, 2006, at 11:19 PM, Rémi Coulom wrote:
>
>>>> I am not sure that a continuum would be better than using the  
>>>> probability of winning all the time. At least, I am certain that  
>>>> using the probability of winning all the time is much better  
>>>> than using expected territory all the time.
>>>
>>> Can you say more on this?
>>
>> When I switched from using territory to probability of winning,  
>> Crazy Stone changed from scoring 36% against GNU Go 3.6 at level  
>> 10 to scoring more than 60%, at 16 minutes per game, single CPU.
>
> I found the same effect for Viking4. I do not have any numbers, but  
> I have never
> seen such a huge improvement of a program (and that with only two  
> lines of
> code).

I just made this change in my program.  Yes, it's a big improvement,  
even if the program plays a "sloppy" endgame because it doesn't care  
about the margin of victory, just victory.

Peter Drake
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Lewis & Clark College
http://www.lclark.edu/~drake/