Re: [gnugo-devel] GNU Go 2.6 compilation issue on Debian GNU/Linux

[Daniel Bump]

> The level settings have never been intended to limit strength, but to 
> limit time. Obviously these are correlated, but the focus was always to 
> make the engine as strong as possible with a tradeoff against speed. The 
> differences between 2.0 and 3.8 are quite big and far from everything is 
> related to searches.

One thing to remember is that processing power is
much greater than when GNU Go was written, back in
the late 1990's when a typical processor was a 486.

Some design decisions were made for weaker processors,
such as splitting off the reading code (which tries to
decide if a string can be captured by a forced
sequence such as a ladder) from the owl code (which
very selectively tries to read out life and death).

Therefore if GNU Go was written today it would be written
differently.

Even at level 10, GNU Go is not very strong compared
to modern programs. It is something like 10 kyu.
So intentionally weakening it by running it at a lower
level might be interesting to complete beginners, but I
think if someone has been playing for a few months
they will want to run it at level 10.

Dan