Re: [Bug-gnubg] Computer Olympiad

[Frank Berger]

Hi Øystein,

> Yes!
>
> I think we should view the Computer Olympiad as a tournament (as it's
> actually is), and not as an analysis of which program is best.
Total agreement agree.



> Do I read between the lines that you have matched the two against each
> other? What's the score?
S4, JF, GnuBG 0.15, BGB  1000 25 pt matches, each against each.

As I havn't done it but just has informed the author should publish  
his results. I guess it will be in the next few days.




> Frank? Can you give some details about your training algorithms.  
> Are you
> using TD-training exclusively?

Sure. I use plain TD-Lambda. SOmetimes Lambda=0, sometimes lambda =  
0.1 or 0.05 switching to 0.0 later.
Different to what was said here from time to time it works really  
amazing. The downsides:
- one tiny error and it doesn't learn at all or it stays on  
intermediate level. As an example: I had improved aigammon (another  
AI derived from eggammon) and it was stuck at the level of the  
original ai..... Many month later (when I had already developped  
TachiAI) I found the bug accidently...

- sometimes it doesn't learn at all. It happens rarely.

I tried to train it with additional positions and with starting from  
Nackgammon. If you train long enough Nack- and Back- seems to  
converge (weired but that was the result) and the net with 1500  
starting positions had no improvement from the net starting from the  
normal position, when playing against the normal net. There are  
different moves, but not a real improvement, just changes.
Those experiments were made some years ago, so with the pc of that  
time the tests couldn't made that long, so it has statistical good  
significance.


> I really appreciate that
> someone takes the time to do this kind of thing. Even though it seems
> that we do more to promote BGBlitz than anything else.
Well, I would see it the way that we promote Backgammon or Computer  
Backgammon. The promotional effect of the 2nd and 3rd win is *very*  
remote to the normal world and the BG savy people are to a high  
percentage in the GnuBG or Snowie camp anyway... altough I keep  
working on it ;)


ciao
Frank