[computer-go] Speed of generating random playouts

[Martin Møller Skarbiniks Pedersen]

On 12/11/2007, Petr Baudis <pasky at ucw.cz> wrote:

> I have rewritten it so that it now picks a random point at the board,
> then searches the whole board starting from that point and picks up the
> first valid point.

That is a bad way to random choose a point. Some point will be choosen
a lot more often than others.

Eg.

XXXXXO..X

The first . will be choosen 7/9 of the times (the six X points and itself) and
the second . will only be choosen 2/9 of the times (the O points and itself)

Regards
Martin