Short AI article

[HedonismBot]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle2002699.ece

Surely article is wrong and poker is a more difficult game for a computer to win at. Bots can obviously win against bad players and full handed tables but could one ever beat a top pro heads up? I'm guessing that will be done sooner at GO than in poker

[lastchance]

From what I know, Poki is a fairly good program capable of beating most amateurs. I don't think Go programs are at that level yet.

[clowntable]

If you can buy in short enough there should be no problem to write a bot along the lines of "The Mathematics of Poker"

I'm also pretty confident that HU can be played somewhat optimally with deep stacks vs. a pro.

Go o the other hand, well I wouldn't even know how to start writing the bot :P

[Neil S]

How many combinations does it have to work through and figure out the EV for? That's the end-all question for these game bots.

For Go, it's huge, huge, huge. We're talking about a 19x19 board. Even if you exclude plays that are known bad most of the time we can only drop that to about a 17x17, so you can see that the computer will have a lot to think about for just a few moves ahead.

The choice tree of poker, particularly limit poker (but even no-limit once you exclude known-irrational pot sizes), is much, much, much smaller. Bet, raise, fold? And once the community cards come out, the combinations of possible opponents holdings become relatively small, too, because you can generally lump together most kinds of hands that missed the flop.

[amplify]

Surely you underestimate the complexity of Go.

[Neil S]

Additionally, for Poker it's relatively easy to calculate your equity at a given point in the hand, and compare that with the pot size and a given bet. You do have to put your opponent on a hand range, but that's something a human can tune for a bot pretty easily.

For go, evaulating a board position isn't so easy. The number of interactions from stone to stone, group to group, are ridiculous.

[amplify]

Computers don't have the STONES to play Go, HAHAHAHAHA.

[DustinG]

interesting article

any places to play Go (free) online?

and good recourses to learn to play?

[amplify]

learn to play is http://playgo.to/interactive/ A+++
yahoo is actually a good place to play quick beginner games.

I'm still a beginner myself.

[Neil S]

[ QUOTE ]
interesting article

any places to play Go (free) online?

[/ QUOTE ]
IGS Pandanet is the best place once you're past the total beginner stage. There are top pros who play there from time to time even. It's free if you don't live in Japan.

[ QUOTE ]
and good recourses to learn to play?

[/ QUOTE ]For the rules, I agree with Amp's link. From there what you want to do is play games on a 9x9 board with beginners, in conjunction with study of beginner's go problems. gobase.org has some of those, as well as goproblems.com. I recommended the Graded Go Problems for Beginners book series, though. They helped me quite a bit.

I really need to play more Go. I seem to be going the year off/year on plan of improvement. Curse you werewolf, heh.

Oh, and an old go saying: It's best to lose your first 100 games as soon as possible.