Re: current development

[Timothy Y. Chow]

On Sat, 7 Dec 2019, Nikos Papachristou wrote:
> The moral: If one needs to experience the full power of the bg bots one 
> needs to change the default settings which are configured for the 
> average user. Whatever errors bots occasionally make at their 
> evaluations, they make up by searching deeper.

I agree that changing the default settings helps, but your second 
statement is wildly optimistic.  You got lucky in this one particular 
position, but I can easily produce many positions where the bots are 
obviously confused no matter what search depth or move filter or rollout 
setting you use.  The easiest examples concern superbackgames and snake 
rolling.  Put five black checkers on each of the 6pt, 4pt, 2pt of black's 
home board, and put five white checkers on each of the 5pt, 3pt, and 1pt 
of black's home board (so it's a "superbackgame").  Now ask for the cube 
action.  Whatever setting you use, you'll get nonsense.

Or try putting 2 white checkers on each of black's 1pt, 2pt, 3pt, 4pt, 
5pt, 6pt, and 3 white checkers on black's 7pt.  Put two black checkers 
somewhere else on the board.  Now sit back and laugh as you watch the bot 
try to roll white's prime around the board.

Tim