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From: dont@tekig1.UUCP (Don Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.games
Subject: Re: go?
Message-ID: <1475@tekig1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Nov-83 03:04:22 EST
Article-I.D.: tekig1.1475
Posted: Tue Nov 15 03:04:22 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Nov-83 23:16:15 EST
References: <140@cae780.UUCP>, <283@eosp1.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 19

The spectre of the impossible complexity of go playing programs, is constantly
raised.  Each time I hear this, I see the parallels with the chess playing
programs.  There was near total agreement that chess was impossible to program,
the complexity was simply too great.  Shannon showed that the computation needed
was out of the question, and the only plausible solution was the design of a
"plausible move" generator, direct attack of the problem was demonstratably
impossible.  Along comes a man named Jennings, I think, with a KIM and 2kb of
memory.  He sat down and wrote a poor, but suprisingly passable player.  He was
not the only person who contributed, and alpha-beta cutoff certainly had a
major part in things.  The point is that a group of people working on a problem
can come up with startling solutions.  The creation of a poor program, could
fire someone else to show a better solution to the problem, and we would be off.
I cannot see the problem as impossible, mearly unsolved.  The 361! is not a
realistic estimate.  The WORST case, is worse than that, consider captures, and
even that figure is too low, but actually, the tree is only more bushy than one
for chess, and there have been estimates of what sort of factor is involved
                                                           Don Taylor
                                                   tektronix!tekig1!dont