On Sunday, May 8, 2022 at 8:37:15 PM UTC+1, Axel Reichert wrote:
"[email protected]" <[email protected]> writes:
In this game, one of the sides had a large stack on on the 6, another large stack on the 4 and a single checker on the 5. Assuming the
other side had a smooth position, the other side is doing better than Isight thinks, because Isight doesn't know that there's likely to be
an ugly gap on the 5, which the present Isight count is ignoring.
Sounds a bit like the "surface criterion" from
https://www.bkgm.com/articles/GOL/Dec00/pipples.htm
I like this concept, which is elegant and intuitive, but I think it
needs further simplification. Over the years since the Isight method has been published, I have received a couple of e-mail suggestions for improvements (presumably not quantified, but based on gut feeling), all
of them too complicated for my taste. At least for me, my method neatly occupies the sweet spot between accuracy and effort, which should be no surprise, because I optimized on both.
In Seret's there is also a "zero criterion", which also fits your
example from above.
Maybe I will play around a bit, but maybe I should wait a bit more:
After all, your feedback is very valuable and you got "hooked" to my
method just recently. So I am hoping for more to come. (-:
Best regards
Axel
I have noticed a surprisingly large number of positions in my games where the threshold is reached exactly.
For example, I'm deciding whether to take or drop and the difference (7/6 * opponent's adjusted count - my adjusted count) is exactly 2.
In these exact-border positions, does Isight score much better than 50%?
For example, if we called these positions, "point of first drop" instead of "point of last take", would the algo perform worse?
I'd kind of be surprised if so, to any significant degree.
So these might be candidates for my idea of looking for factors not considered by Isight.
But you're right that it would be obviously bad thinking to say "But I have a big ace point stack so that makes me worse."
Well no, because Isight has already considered that. We correct for things that Isight hasn't considered like potential weaknesses
that aren't evident now, but are looming.
This reminds me of my grandmother who didn't like it when a distant relative visited her, made several necessary phone calls concerning
a problem with the relative's son, and then paid money (a cheque + cash) to compensate my grandmother for the higher phone bill.
The conversation went like this:
Grandma: "Her visit was terrible! She left me with a phone bill of £60 [a large amount in those days]"
Ma: "But she took that into consideration when she paid you the extra money." Grandma: "But she only paid me £15!"
Ma: "No, she paid you £15 cash but she also left you a cheque for £15. That makes £30."
Grandma: "But the phone bill was £60! Not £30! She totally ripped me off!" Ma: "But the rest of the money was your phone bill"
Grandma: "But my phone bill should never be £60!"
Ma: "No, your phone bill was £30. The extra £30 you paid was taken into account by the money she left you."
Paul
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