Re: [gnugo-devel] GNUgo on NNGS

[Evan Berggren Daniel]

On Sat, 4 Oct 2003, max-d wrote:

> Hi !
> What explain that GNUgo lost almost 1 Kyu on NNGS ?
> md

A large piece of this appears to be a result of external factors like
changes in opponents.  There was a period of over a month in which gnugo
lost approximately 0.7 stones without any code changes.  It has since lost
another 0.3 stones or so, I believe since the Cosmic patch was turned on.
My personal opinion is that the Cosmic patch produces too many bad moves,
but since I haven't actually taken the time to create some test cases I
don't get to complain too much ;)

On a slightly different note:  if you want to investigate the problem, it
wouldn't be too dificult.  Download a few of the recent games that it
lost, and then replay them with older versions looking for mistakes that
only appear in the new version.  To get the same random seed as the game
was originally played with, run gnugo with the random seed as the month
plus date and time from the filename.  Interesting old versions to compare
to are 3.3.16 and 3.4 (or 3.5.1 with Cosmic turned off).  There were
reports from various players that versions immediately after 3.3.16 were
weaker than 3.3.16, but this was never particularly investigated.  After
analyzing the differences... write up some test cases, and send them in ;)
If you'd like help / more detailed instructions, feel free to ask.

Anyway, hope that answers your question.

Evan Daniel