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Topic: 2008 Postal Tournament (Read 6291 times) |
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mistre
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #90 on: Sep 19th, 2008, 5:54am » |
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on Sep 17th, 2008, 7:50pm, Fritzlein wrote:| So on 41s, why not use the last two steps of your move to advance your g7-rabbit to g5 rather than relocating your elephant from f5 to e6? |
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I actually looked at that move! I can't remember why I decided not to play it. Also, I think a stronger 4th step on 40s would have been rh7s instead of rf7e preventing his rabbit from occupying h6.
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Janzert
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #91 on: Sep 19th, 2008, 12:21pm » |
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I don't know if I mentioned it in a post here, but some of you may remember that at the beginning of the postal mixer I was hoping that OpFor would have 1 or 2 wins. So winning just under 50% of its games is way beyond my expectations.
My current thoughts on why it did so well are a mixture of it surprising people, being an unfamiliar bot and the disparity in actual time spent thinking about a move.
Regarding how much stronger it could be at postal speeds than live, I think arimaa will fall within the same general area as has been shown for chess and go as regards to search scalability. Where, against fixed strength opponents, doubling the search time increases the strength between 50-100 elo. Also while there are people that argue against it, I think humans do the same if not better with longer times. So in an absolute sense I think postal opfor could be a couple hundred elo stronger than the live version. But of course the humans weren't constrained to live time controls either and were also doing proportionately better. Although since they weren't spending as much extra time per move probably were not gaining quite as much strength as opfor.
In regards to the game with you Fritzlein (76045 move 21). I actually did some fairly deep analysis back in August (two of the runs lasted over 5 and 10 days respectively). I haven't posted anything on it only because I don't completely believe the results and in order to double check it I need to add the ability to get information from opfor on more than just what it considers to be the current best move. But if the current results are to be believed then there are somewhere around 2000 moves that would not lead to a forced goal in 2.
Janzert
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #92 on: Sep 19th, 2008, 1:44pm » |
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on Sep 19th, 2008, 12:21pm, Janzert wrote:| Regarding how much stronger it could be at postal speeds than live, I think arimaa will fall within the same general area as has been shown for chess and go as regards to search scalability. Where, against fixed strength opponents, doubling the search time increases the strength between 50-100 elo. Also while there are people that argue against it, I think humans do the same if not better with longer times. |
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Yes, I think humans clearly gain more than computers per doubling of search time. Why else would blitz bots be harder to beat than slow bots? Are there people that argue human strength plateaus at some point, such that further doublings have no effect? People kept saying that about computers, and were always wrong.
Quote:| In regards to the game with you Fritzlein (76045 move 21). I actually did some fairly deep analysis back in August (two of the runs lasted over 5 and 10 days respectively). I haven't posted anything on it only because I don't completely believe the results and in order to double check it I need to add the ability to get information from opfor on more than just what it considers to be the current best move. But if the current results are to be believed then there are somewhere around 2000 moves that would not lead to a forced goal in 2. |
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Is the move that OpFor prefers among those 2000 not-losing-in-two moves the same one that Bomb prefers, namely 21w Rd2e Re2e Re1e Rf1e?
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Janzert
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Arimaa player #247
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #93 on: Sep 19th, 2008, 4:25pm » |
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on Sep 19th, 2008, 1:44pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Yes, I think humans clearly gain more than computers per doubling of search time. Why else would blitz bots be harder to beat than slow bots? Are there people that argue human strength plateaus at some point, such that further doublings have no effect? People kept saying that about computers, and were always wrong. |
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I should probably first say that since I don't agree with this side of the argument that I may be misremembering or distorting their viewpoint.
My understanding is that they believe humans gain strength through extra time only by reducing the number of blunders they make. So at some increase in time, presumably somewhere between normal live game speeds and postal speeds, there are no further blunders to catch and that increased time won't provide the human with any new insight into the position.
Quote:| Is the move that OpFor prefers among those 2000 not-losing-in-two moves the same one that Bomb prefers, namely 21w Rd2e Re2e Re1e Rf1e? |
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Yep, which is why I'd like to see at least one of the other moves that stops goal in two.
Janzert
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tize
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #94 on: Sep 20th, 2008, 11:29am » |
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Quote:| But if the current results are to be believed then there are somewhere around 2000 moves that would not lead to a forced goal in 2. |
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I think some of these moves could lead to forced loss in 2, even if opfor doesn't realize it. Because the alpha-beta will prune a line as fast as it's worse than the best found, thus the move to be pruned can be a losing move without it being proved.
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Janzert
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #95 on: Sep 20th, 2008, 2:41pm » |
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Ah, yes of course. Modifying OpFor so it searches all the root moves with a full window allows it to find that all but 15 moves are losing with a 13 step search. So most likely it will turn out to be only the one move that is not losing.
[Edit: Yep it now shows all other moves to be losses after 45 minutes and a depth of 15]
Janzert
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| « Last Edit: Sep 20th, 2008, 3:35pm by Janzert » |
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aaaa
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #96 on: Oct 30th, 2008, 11:31pm » |
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Congratulations to Fritzlein for winning all his games in the mixer.
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chessandgo
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #97 on: Oct 31st, 2008, 1:10am » |
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Yep, well done Karl !
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RonWeasley
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #98 on: Oct 31st, 2008, 3:41am » |
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Fritzlein is the master of all owls.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #99 on: Oct 31st, 2008, 1:56pm » |
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Thanks, guys. I certainly didn't expect to go undefeated after getting into a lost middle game as Silver against chessandgo. Also my swarm in my other game against him was looking very unpromising at first, and against Adanac I gave up my camel hostage in exchange for only a cat: both of those games could have gone either way. And the fact that I overlooked a forced goal in five against RonWeasley just before he gave me a forced goal in three gives new meaning to the phrase "double-edged".
I'm convinced that, as usual, I spent more time on the games than any of my opponents, which probably provided the extra edge in all those close games. Nobody complained that they were too swamped by real life to play well, but chessandgo in particular burned through his whole reserve and had to make hurried moves anyway. I'm as happy to take a win from commitment as from skill, though. I hope I keep my time advantage next year too.
I'm happy about winning my games, but even more happy that, for the first time in four Postal Tournaments, I finally played somewhat experimentally. For example, against mistre I managed to get into a position I completely failed to understand. We know too little for it to make sense to play every game the same way; we can count on what we think of as being the "right" way to play actually being proven wrong in time. It's much more fun to play loosely and take each position as it comes, rather than being committed to any specific idea.
Ron, I think your clear second place finish means you are simply going to have to play in the World Championship this year. We can't tolerate having a contender for the crown on the sidelines. If necessary, we will all chip in to buy you a computer that works for live games.
Thanks everyone for some fun and challenging games. I'll see you all again next year!
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| « Last Edit: Oct 31st, 2008, 1:58pm by Fritzlein » |
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camelback
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #100 on: Oct 31st, 2008, 3:20pm » |
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on Oct 31st, 2008, 1:56pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Ron, I think your clear second place finish means you are simply going to have to play in the World Championship this year. We can't tolerate having a contender for the crown on the sidelines. |
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If chessandgo wins RonWeasley, then the second place would be ambiguous. In my opinion Adanac, RonWeasley and chessandgo have a 3-way tie for 2nd place.
I was also wondering why RonWeasley not playing interactive games and would certainly vote for "The Moderator" to show his wizardry in live games.
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RonWeasley
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #101 on: Nov 3rd, 2008, 6:03am » |
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on Oct 31st, 2008, 3:20pm, camelback wrote:
If chessandgo wins RonWeasley, then the second place would be ambiguous. In my opinion Adanac, RonWeasley and chessandgo have a 3-way tie for 2nd place.
I was also wondering why RonWeasley not playing interactive games and would certainly vote for "The Moderator" to show his wizardry in live games.
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Second place is kind of hard to define. We had different numbers of games and different opponents. I was very pleased with my result as I escaped some bad positions and won against many good players. And I almost won against Fritzlein. But since there's no prize for second on the line, everybody can tie for second if they want to.
As far as interactive games, I can play them now. The issue for me is time. I am either at Hogwarts, where I'm supposed to be studying, or at The Burrow, where I have many family responsibilities. And there is competition for computer time. Finding a continguous hour to play games is very rare for me. That's why I play by owl. We are getting another computer at The Burrow soon and this may make it possible to play interactive there occasionally.
I think we would find that my interactive rating is not very high and I am certainly not a contender for the title. Still, I think I could provide interesting competition and the community would be entertained. Realistically, I may try to compete in the WC next year. Thanx for asking.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #102 on: Nov 3rd, 2008, 6:14pm » |
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With the last two games drawing to a natural close, I thought I'd give one more measure of the great success this year, namely the number of games ending in resignation or timeout.
| Year | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | | Players | 16 | 19 | 20 | 15 | | Games | 80 | 95 | 85 | 84 | | Not Finished | 20 | 31 | 18 | 8 | | % Not Finished | 25.0 | 32.6 | 21.2 | 9.5 |
It's a new record for committed play! This is a lesson to me not to go around twisting everyone's arm to sign up for the tournament even if they aren't sure they want to and/or not sure they will have enough time. Yes, we had fewer people sign up this year, but we had the most completed games ever.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 4th, 2008, 12:31pm by Fritzlein » |
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omar
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Re: 2008 Postal Tournament
« Reply #103 on: Dec 24th, 2008, 2:33pm » |
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I have sent the refunds of the registration fees for 2008 Postal Mixer. If you were expecting a refund and did not receive it, please let me know through the contact page.
Thanks everyone for taking part. Hope to see you again in the next one.
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