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Topic: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa (Read 7568 times) |
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rbarreira
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Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« on: Apr 18th, 2012, 8:14am » |
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Cyborg = Bot-assisted human Arimaa player
Has there ever been an Arimaa game involving Cyborgs? I sometimes think it would be interesting because despite the fact that my bot is much stronger than me (mainly due to tactics and overlooking responses by the bot), I can still often see that it's going in a wrong strategic direction, and I'm a weak player myself...
We can see a cyborg in two different ways - a bot with someone to correct some of its strategic flaws, or a human with a tool to correct their tactics, check for blunders and avoiding blind spots. One or the other perspective would be more accurate depending on the situation (on a very tactical endgame the human might resort to simply playing the move suggested by the bot).
At a live time control it might be hard to play in this way (at least until we start having neural-computer interfaces), as it requires some back and forth checking of different lines in order for the cyborg to show their power. But at a postal time control (1-7 days per move) it looks very feasible.
Does anyone else think this sounds interesting? Just another random idea that has been kicking around in my head for some time...
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| « Last Edit: Apr 18th, 2012, 8:18am by rbarreira » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #1 on: Apr 18th, 2012, 10:09am » |
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I am also interested in this question, because I believe chess cyborgs had some success in live "freestyle" tournaments. And hasn't computer analysis already proved fruitful for Arimaa in the postal Mob games?
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mistre
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #2 on: Apr 18th, 2012, 10:12am » |
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Very interesting idea. Yes, this would definitely work best in a postal setting.
I envision something like the bot supplying its top 3 move options and then the player has the option to choose one of them or choose their own move. At the end of the game, we could show the percentage of time the player chose their own move/vs a bot move and also see the choices on a move by move basis.
Ideally the bot should have about an equal playing strength to the player. My hunch is that a player will decide to choose a bot move increasingly more often towards the end game.
I would volunteer for such an experiment!
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| « Last Edit: Apr 18th, 2012, 10:14am by mistre » |
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Katsunami
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #3 on: Apr 18th, 2012, 12:24pm » |
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on Apr 18th, 2012, 10:09am, Fritzlein wrote:| I am also interested in this question, because I believe chess cyborgs had some success in live "freestyle" tournaments. |
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Yes, indeed. Even while the best chess engines play at supergrandmaster strength, the strength still improved when assisted by humans. The improvement is mostly strategic. The other way is also true. Humans improve tactically when assisted by a chess engine. The combination of a top grandmaster and a top engine is consistently stronger than either alone. It's estimated that such a combination of a 2800 ELO player assisted by a top engine will have a 3000+ rating.
I don't expect it to be different for Arimaa; therefore I think rbarreira's line of thinking is correct.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 18th, 2012, 12:32pm by Katsunami » |
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Adanac
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #4 on: Apr 18th, 2012, 12:57pm » |
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This article highlighted some interesting results from a cyborg chess match. Apparently knowing how to use your bot is more important than having the best bot or being the best player.
http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2010/02/why_cyborgs_are.ph p
Lured by the substantial prize money, several groups of strong grandmasters working with several computers at the same time entered the competition. At first, the results seemed predictable. The teams of human plus machine dominated even the strongest computers. The chess machine Hydra, which is a chess-specific supercomputer like Deep Blue, was no match for a strong human player using a relatively weak laptop. Human strategic guidance combined with the tactical acuity of a computer was overwhelming.
The surprise came at the conclusion of the event. The winner was revealed to be not a grandmaster with a state-of-the-art PC but a pair of amateur American chess players using three computers at the same time. Their skill at manipulating and “coaching” their computers to look very deeply into positions effectively counteracted the superior chess understanding of their grandmaster opponents and the greater computational power of other participants. Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 18th, 2012, 12:58pm by Adanac » |
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Katsunami
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #5 on: Apr 18th, 2012, 2:10pm » |
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So.... Strong player + powerful computer + optimized process = epic playing. That means that both humans and computers can still learn a lot, even in Chess.
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rbarreira
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #6 on: Apr 18th, 2012, 3:12pm » |
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I could be wrong, but I feel that in Arimaa even a weak player can make a good combination with a bot. I probably would not be able to avoid all of my bot's weak strategic moves, but still many of them. Would that be enough to give a strong player a hard time, I don't know...
If someone wants to challenge the combination of me + my bot some time, we are available.
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Katsunami
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #7 on: Apr 18th, 2012, 4:51pm » |
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You saw that Briareus was able to give chessandgo a hard time on it's own, because the bot is such a great defender.
I think that a combination of a strong bot such as Briarius and a human, to supplement the bot's strategic play, is already stronger than the best humans of this moment.
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hyperpape
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #8 on: Apr 19th, 2012, 8:51am » |
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I suspect a lot of the trick would be interface related: creating a tree of variations, figuring out which moves the bot thinks are strong resistance, being able to easily say "look deeper at this line", etc.
Of course you can manually do this from logs and inputting positions as strings, but I imagine that it would be slower and more difficult than it would be with a good interface.
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rbarreira
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #9 on: Apr 19th, 2012, 9:16am » |
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on Apr 19th, 2012, 8:51am, hyperpape wrote:I suspect a lot of the trick would be interface related: creating a tree of variations, figuring out which moves the bot thinks are strong resistance, being able to easily say "look deeper at this line", etc.
Of course you can manually do this from logs and inputting positions as strings, but I imagine that it would be slower and more difficult than it would be with a good interface. |
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So far I have found that the plan window suffices for doing this kind of analysis with the bot.
The only thing I feel is missing is a way to exclude certain moves from analysis, which is useful both for finding the "second best", "third best" moves etc. and also to stop the bot from sticking to bad moves that it happens to like. If someone wanted to play a game like this against me I would definitely implement this and use it in my analysis.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 19th, 2012, 9:22am by rbarreira » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #10 on: Apr 19th, 2012, 10:59am » |
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on Apr 19th, 2012, 9:16am, rbarreira wrote:So far I have found that the plan window suffices for doing this kind of analysis with the bot.
The only thing I feel is missing is a way to exclude certain moves from analysis, which is useful both for finding the "second best", "third best" moves etc. and also to stop the bot from sticking to bad moves that it happens to like. If someone wanted to play a game like this against me I would definitely implement this and use it in my analysis. |
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Would you be interested in assisting briareus in our Postal Mixer game? I am curious what it would feel like, and I don't mind the hit to my WHRP if I lose.
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Dolus
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #11 on: Apr 19th, 2012, 11:35am » |
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We should try a Cyborg vs. The Mob game. 
One of our top players teamed up with a top bot, against the community.
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Hippo
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #12 on: Apr 19th, 2012, 11:48am » |
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on Apr 18th, 2012, 8:14am, rbarreira wrote:Cyborg = Bot-assisted human Arimaa player
Has there ever been an Arimaa game involving Cyborgs? I sometimes think it would be interesting because despite the fact that my bot is much stronger than me (mainly due to tactics and overlooking responses by the bot), I can still often see that it's going in a wrong strategic direction, and I'm a weak player myself...
We can see a cyborg in two different ways - a bot with someone to correct some of its strategic flaws, or a human with a tool to correct their tactics, check for blunders and avoiding blind spots. One or the other perspective would be more accurate depending on the situation (on a very tactical endgame the human might resort to simply playing the move suggested by the bot).
At a live time control it might be hard to play in this way (at least until we start having neural-computer interfaces), as it requires some back and forth checking of different lines in order for the cyborg to show their power. But at a postal time control (1-7 days per move) it looks very feasible.
Does anyone else think this sounds interesting? Just another random idea that has been kicking around in my head for some time... |
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Nice idea ... Tize could dominate this field.
I would still concentrate on developping standalone bot.
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rbarreira
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #13 on: Apr 19th, 2012, 1:16pm » |
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on Apr 19th, 2012, 10:59am, Fritzlein wrote:
Would you be interested in assisting briareus in our Postal Mixer game? I am curious what it would feel like, and I don't mind the hit to my WHRP if I lose. |
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That would be a bit messy as I would have to hack the bot to let me input a move for a game, and the postal controller to avoid thinking for your game by itself. It would be error prone too, any mistake on my part and the bot would lose by illegal move.
I agree it would be interesting though. Maybe we can set up a new postal game for it? I can even create an account starting with cyborg_ instead of bot_. The regular postal time control would be fine but a slightly slower one would be a bit more relaxed for me. What would you prefer?
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| « Last Edit: Apr 19th, 2012, 1:16pm by rbarreira » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: Cyborg vs Human Arimaa
« Reply #14 on: Apr 20th, 2012, 7:45am » |
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on Apr 19th, 2012, 1:16pm, rbarreira wrote:
Perhaps I should wait until I demonstrate that I can handle the postal games I already have before starting anything new. At the moment I really shouldn't take on new commitments. I hope you get a chance to try out the experiment somehow, though.
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