[computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Joakim Mjärdner]

Another way to give handicap would be to set komi to different values
[range: -(board area - 1) .. (board area - 1)].

One advantage is that komi allows for "exact" tuning, to the last point. You
can also let the weaker player be white this way [without causing an uproar
in the go community by giving white handicap stones. ;-)]

You could go crazy and combine the two in interesting ways; say for instance
you give black two handicap stones while setting komi to 19.5. Though this
may not be appropriate for the main CGOS server, it could still be a healthy
exercise for the agents.

Cheers

Joakim


On 7/9/07, Don Dailey <drd at mit.edu> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 10:10 -0700, terry mcintyre wrote:
> > I concur with Christian Nilsson; handicap stones permit the win-loss
> > ratio to approximate 50%,  where it is more sensitive to improvements.
> > As one tweaks the program, the progress would be measurable within a
> > few games, one's handicap would decrease.
> >
> > Is it possible to tie together the handicap information and the
> > win-loss percentages into a unified ELO-type score? Would an
> > experiment be needed to measure the effect of handicap stones on the
> > probability of winning?
>
> I think the common formula is 100 ELO per stone?   I think we could
> start with this guess (or a better one) and after a few weeks of play we
> could do a statistical analysis to see if things are as they should be.
> Then we could make any adjustments if needed.
>
> CGOS would still use the same scheduling algorithm - trying to prevent
> serious mismatches.  So we would avoid matches that required many stones
> handicap although they would appear from time to time.
>
> The ELO formula is the same.  Whatever program is getting the extra
> stones is assumed (for rating purposes) to be 100H ELO stronger where H
> is the number of stones handicap.   The constant 100 might have to be
> adjusted of course.
>
> It may even be that we have to use a different constant depending where
> you are at on the ELO scale.  With enough games it might be possible to
> determine if this is needed or not.    I've discussed this with Steve in
> private emails in the past.
>
> It might not be difficult to make this auto-adjust.  If the server
> notices that some value isn't predicting the winner very accurately, a
> tiny adjustment is made.
>
> - Don
>
>
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