Re: [gnugo-devel] Re: zergling

[Daniel Bump]

> There are no key difference between the algorithms of mfgo and gnugo. GnuGo
> is stronger now.  You correctmany bugs ,add many patterns and tune the
> porformance. But the architecture is same.  I think mfgo is mature enough,
> but it still play like an amateur.

The architecture of GNU Go is evolving. How similar it is to
Many Faces I can't say.

> Game like go, chess etc are search based. There is a game-play theory based
> of search.  But there are some differece between go and chess. Chess has
> little knowledge except the rules.  People play chess is mainly based of
> search. But if u want to play go well, u should get many knowledge. But this
> knowledge is generated from search. Because at the first there are nothing
> except the rules and game-play theory. So I am a little surprised why gnugo
> use search to judge connection, death and life etc, but has not a search in
> the main body.  It is not global search, it is just a search base of the
> result of local search.

GNU Go is not finished. You are critical of the current architecture.
We are well aware that the current architecture won't produce a
strong program but the architecture will change over time. The
experiments in pattern-based search that we are doing now will
be useful later.

Global search is hard, and before you can master it you have to master
local search. I think you have to learn to solve the easy problems
before you can solve the hard problems. And you do that not by
speculating how it is done. You do it by trying and seeing what you
can do.

GNU Go reads (searches) to study life and death. This is local
search. The next step is semeai, where there are two groups,
and this is beginning to resemble global search. GNU Go has a
semeai module that uses search, but it is still not good. This is
because it takes a long time to get it right.

Dan