[computer-go] Speed of generating random playouts

[Christoph Birk]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007, Heikki Levanto wrote:
>>> I may be wrong, but I suspect most of bots specify the total number of
>>> simulations to play, not per move candidate. Thus, your '1000' should be
>>> compared against a '81000' in the beginning of the game. That sounds like an
>>> overly large number to me.
>>
>> Oh! I must have misunderstood the Monte Carlo algorithm description in
>> that case.

My code (myCtest-xxxx on CGOS) works like yours. But when I (and others)
refer to 10k playout that's still the total (not per candidate move).

My (not very optimized) C-code plays 12k games per seconds from the
opening position. The average game length is about 109 moves using
an early-termination rule when a "big" group gets captured that leaves
"most" stones beeing from one color.

I strongly recommend using CGOS for tests as you get a lot of games
against a great variety of (computer) opponents. It allows you in
particular to verify your (basic) algorithms:

pure MC     10k     1050 ELO
             50k     1350
AMAF        10k     1450
             50k     1450
UCT         10k     1300
             50k     1550

All algorithms above are "basic" playouts. No Go knowledge, except
the "dont-fill-your-1-pt-eye" rule.

Christoph

ps. 3.2 GHz Pentium4, Linux (Fedora Core-5)