[computer-go] creating a "random" position

[Tom Cooper]

Start with an empty board and do a large number (eg 10000, depending on
how accurate you need the uniformity) of 'operations'
on it, where an operation is the following:

1) choose an intersection at random
2) toss a fair coin
3) change the occupation of the intersection according to the following table

Old occupation   Coin   New occupation
Black            H      White
White            H      Empty
Empty            H      Black
Black            T      Empty
White            T      Black
Empty            T      White

4) If the new position is illegal, undo the change and go to 1)
5) Exit




At 21:22 08/07/2007, you wrote:

>How would one go about creating a random board position with a uniform
>distribution over all legal positions?  Is this even possible?  I am
>not quite sure what I mean by uniform.  If one flipped a three sided
>coin to determine if each vertex was white,black or empty, then one
>would have to deal with stones with no liberties somehow.  Could those
>just removed?
>
>- George
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