[Computer-go] Fwd: News on Tromp-Cook ?

[Erik van der Werf]

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 8:52 PM, Jeff Nowakowski <jeff at dilacero.org> wrote:
> On 01/02/2011 10:17 AM, Erik van der Werf wrote:
>>
>> The playout policy I used in the 2007 version of Steenvreter was
>> developed independently of the Mogo policy.
>
> Did this policy include the idea of sequences (playing near the last move),
> and if so, was that developed independently?

Yes, the probabilities for playing near the last move were higher.
This was btw a feature I already had in my move predictor back in 2001
(which was published at CG 2002).


> Memories are notoriously faulty.

Memory is not an issue here. I can simply check my code at that time
because I have it archived and under version control (and this is
exactly what I did because I was also wondering when exactly I had
done the comparison with Mogo's policy).


> Priority has to be given to published papers and established results.

Agreed, as long as you don't deny things that were out there long
before someone wrote 'the' paper. I have seen a rather natural
progression from work of Brugman, Kaminski, Bouzy, Helmstetter,
Hamlen, etc. to where we are today. Pinpointing the invention of MCTS
in time or to a single person is simply not that easy.


> It is not enough to say some months after
> MoGo established itself and published the ideas behind the implementation
> that you would have gotten there on your own with Steenvreter.

My reason for posting was not to brag. It was my own choice not to
publish, so I accept it when laymen forget about Steenvreter. However,
I think a guy like Jan Willemson, who's now almost entirely written
out of the history of MCTS, really deserved some credit.

Erik