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From: kfl@speech2.cs.cmu.edu (Fu Lee)
Newsgroups: rec.games.misc,comp.ai,rec.games.board
Subject: Re: intercontinental  computer - othello  match
Message-ID: <1072@speech2.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 6-Oct-87 17:04:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: speech2.1072
Posted: Tue Oct  6 17:04:05 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Oct-87 21:59:29 EDT
References: <248@nikhefk.UUCP>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 36
Keywords: othello
Xref: mnetor rec.games.misc:955 comp.ai:859 rec.games.board:435

In article <248@nikhefk.UUCP>, kvr@nikhefk.UUCP (kees van rijn) writes:
> 
>       INTERCONTINENTAL  COMPUTER - OTHELLO  MATCH
>
> Last saturday there was a computer-othello match of
> MY TURN in The Netherlands with
> BILL in the USA.
> ....

Thanks to Kees for organizing this match, and for this accurate
commentary.  There were, however, a few misunderstandings which
I hope to clarify.

> All of us agreed that it is a very hard job to improve
> strength of the programs further with known techniques.
> According to Kai-Fu, faster machines lead only to marginal
> improvement, and better search algorithm is too hard.

Actually, I believe faster machines will lead to substantial improvement,
as they did for chess.  However, making othello hardware is not as 
fruitful since current programs already outplay humans, and since there
are no incentives.  I think an improved search algorithm is both
more effective and intellectually satisfying.  However, our attempts
in the past year have not been encouraging.

>We think that most improvement of last years is from implementation
>of specific othello knowledge into the programs.

Actually, the two major contributions from BILL are: (1) encoding all 
Othello knowledge into tables for fast evaluation, and (2) Bayesian 
learning of how to combine evaluation features.

> kees van rijn
> (organizer)

Kai-Fu Lee