[computer-go] Re: 9x9 vs 19x19 (was: computer-go Digest)

[Don Dailey]

On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 16:52 -0700, Dave Dyer wrote:
> I figured that a credible anchor player for 19x19 might
> need a lot of cycles, and need to play a lot of games
> at first, so spreading the load would be a good idea.

Yes, that's true.  When the server first goes up,  there
are no rated players and the games of 2 unrated players
have no affect on each other.    It takes a long time
for ratings to converge in this case.

When I started the 9x9 server I seeded it before opening
it up to everyone.   I played a few hundred matches between
the anchor, gnugo and other players I had access to so
that there would be reasonable rating pool to start
with.

It's actually not a big problem if you pick a default
rating that is close to the average - unfortunately
you don't know what the average will be in advance!

I will probably make some stable and common version
of gnugo be the anchor for 19x19.   If others want to
run an instance of it I can set them up as anchors
too - I just need to know the names of any bots set up
to be anchors.  

I'll put up a 19x19 version tomorrow on boardspace at
30 minutes per game.     


- Don