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Computer Cracks 5x5 Go
gustgr writes "The American Go Association is reporting that Go for the 5x5 board has been solved by the computer program MIGOS, reports the program's creator, Erik Van Der Werk, a professor at the University of Maastricht in Holland. At about a quarter of the full-board version, 5x5 go is miniscule, similar in scale to "solving" 2X2 chess. The fact that a programmer would even consider this a noteworthy challenge is itself a remarkable testament to the game's complexity. Van Der Werk's approach is described in detail in an
article at the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NOSR)."
From the friendly article:
Subject: computer-go: 5x5 Go is solved
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 15:27:04 -0100
From: Erik van der Werf
To: COMPUTER GO MAILING LIST
The fact that an editor would even consider this a newsworthy article is itself a remarkable testament to the site's simplicity.
Funny how the stock market crashed the day before 5X5 Go is solved.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Marty, this story once mattered, back in 2002, when it happened.
What is this, Classic Slashdot? Next do we get a story on the impending end of the dot-com bubble?
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It said 6x6 go is solved.
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It's nice that AI and computer science research is going into popular and well-known games like go, but a lot more complexity and interesting research can be found in a less-known game called chess
All's true that is mistrusted
I heard rumours that there was a solution for "Tic-Tac-Toe" very close to being announced. The only hold up is finding a large enough
distributed network to explore all paths in real-time.
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But what if it's 2x2 chess with all knights?
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Arm yourself against spelling flames first, Grasshopper. Only then will your math flames stand up to the foe.
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My friends and I once made a connect 4 game but the AI wasn't very good against other AIs. It occured to me that perhaps Connect 4 is solvable. Each hole has 3 possible states and there are 42 holes. So it's 3^42 possible board states. However, there is a very large number of board states that cannot happen, such as having a piece in row 2 but not row 1, etc. Someone with better math skills can calculate what the actual number of possible board states. My intuition is that it should greatly reduces the number of states enough that we can solve the entire game. The rules are simple and the AI for it is simple as well. We used a tree to represent moves and applied alpha-beta pruning to it.
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Actually, the fact that Go only has two pieces is why it's so much more complex. Chess pieces individual behavior is what usually limits the number of moves in Chess. Also, since Chess doesn't easily scale down, 2x2 chess doesn't work: QK QK Neither side can move, since any move they make still leaves their king in check. I guess that means that White looses by default, since White goes first and can't make a legal move. Unless you play by rules like with blitz and don't count check, only actually capturing the king, in which case White always wins (unless he's REALLY dumb).
I hear they are working on a "hypertext" transfer protocol -- it's kindof like Apple's hypercard where you can "link" to various media in a free-form manner. A "mouse" is used to select which links to follow, and the transport protocol sends the appropriate network packets to retrieve the data.
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I heard rumours that there was a solution for "Tic-Tac-Toe" very close to being announced.
Duh, the only solution is not to play.
Not QUITE that scale...
Two by two chess:
White: Checkmate in 0, would you like to play agin?
White: Checkmate in 0, would you like to play agin?
White: Checkmate in 0, would you like to play agin?
White: Checkmate in 0, would you like to play agin?
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