[computer-go] CGOS Monte Carlo Simulations

[Don Dailey]

Yes, I considered doing something very similar - if a program name has a
hyphen in it,  I consider the portion before the first hyphen the base
program name and the portion after the first hyphen the version number
and let the new version inherit (as a starting value) the old programs
rating.  I might also require the passwords to be the same.

This isn't as explicit as your scheme.  But many programmers are already
using this simply naming convention so this would just work
transparently to them with no changes from their point of view.   If
there were many version I would use the "latest" version and publish how
cgos views the collating order.   It's not a big deal anyway, it's just
a hint to make the ratings converge more quickly.

- Don



On Mon, 2006-09-11 at 16:07 +0200, Magnus Persson wrote:
> Quoting Don Dailey <drd at mit.edu>:
> >> Having the possibility to start the rating from an "expected rating" 
> >> would be
> >> good. So that, the rating would converge more quickly. I don't know if we
> >> must think of a way to avoid cheating like "I expect a rating of 10000 :-)".
> >> Limiting the expected rating to a realistic range, and starting with a high
> >> K-factor would be sufficient.
> >
> > The way I rate unknown players is sub-optimal.  There are more efficient
> > ways to get a quicker convergence for a new player and I will probably
> > implement something much better for this.
> 
> Here is a simple idea. When a new version logs in for the first time it could
> inherit the rating of an old version if the name and password for the old
> version is sent as extra parameters. Using the rating of the old 
> version is the
> best guess because most changes to a go program do not change playing strength
> measurably and if there is a change it is rarely an improvement. (If strength
> always improved when you changed the program most programs would be 
> very strong
> now).
> 
> -Magnus
> 
> 
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