[computer-go] Monte-Carlo Go Misnomer?

[Weston Markham]

Unfortunately, it's just not that simple, because it depends far more
on _how_ the playout is improved, rather than, say, the ELO numbers
that measure that improvement.  For example, programs exist that are
good (in part) because they entirely disregard some lines of play.
They may be correct to disregard these lines in almost every case,
which generally makes the playout program stronger.  However, for the
few cases where this heuristic pruning is not correct, the calling
program will suffer greatly, because these lines of play become
completely invisible to the random playouts, no matter how many
playouts are performed.  As an extreme example, consider programs that
play completely deterministic strategies.  These are obviously useless
as random players, yet it is in principle possible to construct ones
that play arbitrarily well.

Weston

On 2/7/07, Ephrim Khong <dr.khong at gmx.net> wrote:
> Is there any known (by theory or tests) function of how much a increase
> in the strength of the simulation policy increases the strength of the
> MC/UCT Program as a whole?