X-Message-Number: 8477
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 07:10:21 -0700
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8474 - #8475

John Clark writes,

>When a computer became the world Chess champion a few months ago the 
>apologists for biological brains were saying there were plenty of other games 
>where humans still had a commanding lead, the two most common examples given 
>were Go and Othello. Last week a computer beat Takeshi Murakami, the world 
>Othello champion, 6 games in a row. Any bets on how long Go will hold out?

The issue with Go is that its search space is immensely larger than those
of Othello or Chess. The best computer player is "HandTalk", which has 
reached a rank of 4 kyu. 

Go is remarkable in that its rankings have greater precision than
Othello or Chess; they are measured in terms of the number of handicap
stones that one player must give another in order to have a fair game.
I'm not a strong player - I rank maybe 10 kyu. To get any respect you have
to at least reach "Shodan" - first dan - which is 10 stones better.

The best human players reach "9 Dan Professional", which is to say that they 
can beat a Sho Dan by something like 15 stones. It is thought among 
Go players that the deity of your choice could not beat a 9P by more than
two or three stones.

As to bets, I'll put $50 US on the proposition that no computer player will
beat a 9P until the invention of a quantum computer with enough qbits to 
search a significant portion of the space. There are much higher stakes on
offer for a far lesser degree of achievement ...

Peter Merel.

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