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Number of Legal 18x18 Go Positions Computed; 19x19 On the Horizon
johntromp writes It took about 50,000 CPU hours and 4PB of disk IO, but now we know the exact number of legal 18x18 Go positions. Seeking computing power for the ultimate 19x19 count. And it's not a heat-death-of-the-universe kind of question, either, they say: "Thanks to the Chinese Remainder Theorem, the work of computing L(19,19) can be split up into 9 jobs that each compute 64 bits of the 566-bit result. Allowing for some redundancy, we need from 10 to 13 servers, each with at least 8 cores, 512GB RAM, and ample disk space (10-15TB), running for about 5-9 months."
I played chess and go when I was a kid in China, and sucked at both.
There are approximately 100 people in the world who don't suck at chess, and even they make silly mistakes. Don't play chess in an effort to be the 'best', play chess because it's fun.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Having played both nothing transfers. The strategy level is different. Go is about unit formations and patterns. Chess is about unit tactics. There is a Japanese equivalent to Chess i.e. Shogi.
My problem isn't seeing ahead by quite a few moves. I, actually, am quite skilled at that, I can look well ahead of the current turn, figure out what the best possible strategy would be in my current situation, and do it fairly quickly. My issue is a bit different. It seems that the game itself is, actually, extremely boring, and when I start thinking about something more interesting - like porn, or popcorn - I manage to completely forget all those moves I foresaw so brilliantly, and make the absolute worst possible move I could have made instead. Then the game ends quicker, and I can go make some popcorn and watch porn. Which isn't so bad, really, in the end.
Here is the number of legal positions:
6697231142888292128927 401888417065435099377 8064017873281031833769694562442854721810521 43260127743713971848488909701 11836283470468812827907149926502 347633
Why they chose to present it like that, instead of scientific notation, I'll never know but there it is. It's so long Slash-filter won't let me post it without adding spaces.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Having played both nothing transfers. The strategy level is different. Go is about unit formations and patterns. Chess is about unit tactics.
I can play both at an intermediate level, and I agree with this. The mentality is very different. If you are starting as an adult, you are very unlikely to ever be a master, but you can easily learn the game well enough to have fun. Go has a handicapping system that allows for competitive games between people with a wide skill gap. Besides, Go tournaments, like chess tournaments, and model railroading conventions, are a great place to meet chicks.
Chess mentality doesn't transfer very well to go in my observation. Since go has vastly more plausibly good moves, chess players often find themselves not understanding how to choose where to go next. Most people I've known who like go a lot hate chess. I've known one person who likes both, and he was never able to get very good at go. Generally speaking, chess can be learned by someone who can think logically and learn the standard opening sequences. Go is more like painting. Its not necessarily a superior skill, but not all intellectually-smart people are smart in the right way.
But by all means learn, its easy to get a game on the internet. If you like it its worth it. And if you do it for ego and discover you suck, sometimes that's worth something too.
To be honest, as a kid I enjoyed chess and played with my friends right up to the point where you suddenly had to start memorizing openings and other canned sequences. At which point it felt more like a school subject than an escape from it.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I have to agree with this. I loved chess as a little kid -- probably started playing when I was 4 or so. Always just played for fun and liked the way it was more complex than something like checkers. I also occasionally enjoyed puzzling out some of those chess puzzles in the newspaper, which usually involved endgame scenarios. But then, early in middle school, I played against someone who actually "knew what he was doing," which included things like memorized openings, basic tactics, and canned strategies. He was kinda dumb but nonetheless beat me handily. I spent a month or two learning openings and such, and suddenly I could beat most of my friends (including those quite a bit older) pretty consistently too, just from the improved board positions.
At that point I realized that becoming a "real chess player" was very different from the fun I'd been having, and I completely lost interest. I've only played a handful of times since, mostly because it's really hard to have any fun playing with my knowledge -- not enough to play "real chess" against anyone who studied strategy, but too much to play against the people who know the basic rules but never learned that stuff.
I admire the grandmasters, because they have both that amazing set of memorized knowledge AND the incredible logic/intuition. But I have absolutely no desire to play the game anymore because while I'm somewhat interested in the latter, I can't be bothered with the former. It's permanently ruined for me.
I'm bad at Go (about 19k AGA, which is quite bad), but I really enjoy it. The Go community differs radically from the chess community. My experience (yours may vary) is that the Go community is more supportive, understanding, and genteel. There's a lot of tradition and protocol in Go and I think it means something.
You can be a clueless beginner (the writer raises his hand), go to a club (or online) and almost always find someone willing to give you a teaching game. If there is a club in your area, meeting some other players is a giant plus, but there are many great online sites.
I play for fun, which is the best reason, and I enjoy it immensely. Will I improve? Of course. Will I ever excel? No, but that's not the point for me.
Although a lot of knowledge is assumed on here, Go is one of the most well-known and popular board games worldwide. Probably more popular than chess, even.
Othello/Reversi, however is, not only a poor comparison but relatively unheard of. (I'm a massive fan of Othello, it has to be said).
Go is NOT like Othello at all. You have to put coloured stones on a grid-like board, 19x19 for standard Go, in such a way to "enclose" a block of your opponent's pieces. The complexity of Go is RIDICULOUSLY high, so much so that just to hold work out how many board positions there are takes months of computing time. Imagine how good the AI players are in such a circumstance!
When I was at university, 15 years ago, one of my professors (Professor Wilfred Hodges) was working on Go. It was his introductory lecture to describe the complexity of the game. It's astounding. At the time, the most powerful computer player in the world couldn't come close to beating even a seasoned amateur. They're a little closer now but nowhere near the way that Chess can be dominated by a single machine.
Go is one demonstration of how a human's pattern-matching and simultaneous processing can far outweigh anything that a computer can do at the moment. No doubt, with breakthroughs of thought and ever-increasing speed of computers, we'll eventually get there, but a human brain has been able to be there for, well, probably thousands of years already. And on a "puzzle" that's entirely logic-based and effectively ternary (white, black or no stone at all on each space).