[computer-go] Hello / Pondering

[Joel Veness]

Hi Don,

Thanks for all your comments.

I should have mentioned in my initial post that I have a bit of a
chess programming background - which means I know option A quite well.
I have implemented pondering with both the Winboard and UCI protocols,
so I am confident that I know what needs to be done (and hopefully,
how to avoid those nasty bugs) in terms of the implementation.

> One might argue that your time is better spent on algorithmic
> improvements to make your program play better moves.   This argument is
> based on the fact that this kind of improvement is the type of thing you
> might imagine being applied to a polished program that is being made
> ready for competition and that it is easier to get improvements doing
> other things.

Yes, I can see why many people would think this.

My goal is not to improve my programs ELO strength as fast as
possible, rather I want a solid framework by the end of the year.
Since pondering is one of those messy implementation details, I felt
it important to try to nail the design early on in the process. I
definately think it fits into the 'low hanging fruit' category,
especially in my case where I have implemented it before.

> By the way,  Lazarus predicts approximately 21% of the opponent moves.
> However I believe in reality is more effective that this would indicate.
> When playing strong opponents it predicts more moves.  Near the end of a
> game the prediction rate becomes meaningless because it's just filling
> the board (more or less) randomly.  My 21% is based on all opponents,
> all moves of the game.

Thanks for this statistic - it is a strong argument for preferring
method A. As you say, having a high prediction rate in the earlier
parts of the game is much more important with method A - you simply
save more time for future moves.

I will definately do some experiments later, but not until my program
is at least 1900 on CGOS (since the results would be meaningless).

Joel