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Topic: State of the Challenge 2012 (Read 6076 times) |
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mistre
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #15 on: Feb 1st, 2012, 3:03pm » |
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on Feb 1st, 2012, 10:33am, Fritzlein wrote:
I personally believe that I am capable of playing at a substantially higher level than I do now, but achieving that goal stands in conflict with passing my classes.  |
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Ahh, that is where the bots have the advantage. They don't have time constraints on their play and they don't get rusty when they don't play.
I think a big factor on what year the challenge actually falls is how much the top players are able to play.
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tize
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #16 on: Feb 2nd, 2012, 3:34pm » |
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Here is my predictions/thoughts about the challenge:
* A bot will eventually win the challenge
* It won't be until 2015 that a top 10 player from the WHR list loses.
* All years after the first top 10 player falls then the challenge bot will always win at least one of the best of three matches.
* The bot winning the challenge will be alpha-beta based.
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Fritzlein
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #17 on: Feb 3rd, 2012, 5:58am » |
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on Feb 1st, 2012, 10:33am, Fritzlein wrote:| I expect that if the seven players at the top of the list played a twenty-fold round-robin even at blitz, the humans would gain net rating points. |
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Ho ho, so I say, and then last night manage only a 2-2 split with Sharp2011Blitz, last year's version running on a single core. I need to stop underestimating the bots.
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Fritzlein
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #18 on: Feb 4th, 2012, 11:56am » |
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on Jan 16th, 2012, 8:04pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Meanwhile humans seem not to have been forging ahead as anticipated. Three years ago I expected new players to emerge who would push the envelope of our strategic understanding of Arimaa. Tuks did manage to beat me out for third place in the 2011 World Championship, but the WHR ratings still show chessandgo, Adanac, and me ahead of Hippo, Nombril, Tuks, and rabbits. |
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Shame on me for having left hanzack out of this calculation. Now that he has knocked off chessandgo and Adanac in successive rounds, it is starting to look like some new player is indeed pushing the envelope of human understanding. Also I have belatedly noticed that hanzack's 1-7 record against Sharp2001Blitz is really a 6-2 record, with wins in a wide variety of position types, and with crushing wins on the tail end. He is dominating the bot against which I can barely eke out a 50% score. (I was 3-3 again last night.) I'm certainly going to do my best to beat hanzack if we meet in later rounds of the World Championship, but my personal interest in winning aside, it would be fantastic for Arimaa if we were to have a new human champion. Hurray for progress!
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| « Last Edit: Feb 4th, 2012, 11:57am by Fritzlein » |
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mistre
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #19 on: Feb 4th, 2012, 2:10pm » |
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on Feb 4th, 2012, 11:56am, Fritzlein wrote:
Also I have belatedly noticed that hanzack's 1-7 record against Sharp2001Blitz is really a 6-2 record, with wins in a wide variety of position types, and with crushing wins on the tail end. |
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This was the point I was trying to make about him resigning games. At first it disguised his rating, but now that he has to play all games unrated except event games, his rating will eventually go up. However, if he keeps resigning games, it makes it very difficult to figure out his actual strength vs various bots.
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aaaa
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #20 on: Feb 8th, 2012, 4:45pm » |
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My prediction is that if bots ever were to become stronger than humans, that the transition will not be clean; here, this would mean that a bot would win the Challenge in such a way, that it will come across as a bit of a fluke and a slight embarrassment, it being pounded back into submission by vengeful members of Homo Sapiens afterwards as its weaknesses become manifest.
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rbarreira
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #21 on: Feb 8th, 2012, 5:52pm » |
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on Feb 8th, 2012, 4:45pm, aaaa wrote:| My prediction is that if bots ever were to become stronger than humans, that the transition will not be clean; here, this would mean that a bot would win the Challenge in such a way, that it will come across as a bit of a fluke and a slight embarrassment, it being pounded back into submission by vengeful members of Homo Sapiens afterwards as its weaknesses become manifest. |
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Not a bad prediction. But I don't think it would be that embarassing if a non-learning challenger winner had exploitable weaknesses, such is the nature of static bots.
The more embarassing scenario I can think of is the challenge being won only/mostly due to things such as timeouts (that would be bad...) or terrible blunders a la Kramnik...
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| « Last Edit: Feb 8th, 2012, 5:55pm by rbarreira » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #22 on: Feb 8th, 2012, 11:13pm » |
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on Jan 17th, 2012, 10:11am, mistre wrote:| It might be too early to rule Boo out as a prodigy. He has only been playing for 7 months and a little over 200 games and is already ranked 11th in WHR for active players... |
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And in the three weeks since you wrote that, Boo moved up to 9th, hanzack beat chessandgo and Adanac back-to-back to jump up to 3rd, and tharkun appeared from nowhere to beat the bot ladder. Maybe the next wave of human improvement is happening right now just to teach me not to complain that it isn't happening!
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| « Last Edit: Feb 8th, 2012, 11:17pm by Fritzlein » |
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tharkun
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #23 on: Feb 9th, 2012, 2:47pm » |
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on Feb 8th, 2012, 11:13pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Maybe the next wave of human improvement is happening right now just to teach me not to complain that it isn't happening! |
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Who knows... I think the best chance to push the limits of human strategic understanding and general playing strength is an increase in the total number of Arimaa players. A pyramid can reach higher when the base is larger. Or maybe we could try to convert players of go, chess and the like. I think it is no coincidence that Boo has risen fast through the ranks. I noticed a chess grandmaster among our new members and he is still on 100% so far; if he starts to play Arimaa for earnest he might go places 
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Boo
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #24 on: Feb 19th, 2012, 9:12am » |
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Quote:| Be the first to get one of your rabbits to the other side of the board. |
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I start thinking that this rule is favouring computers a lot. It creates lots of tactical possibilities and contradicts to the game idea of 'easy for human, hard for computer'.
If it was changed to something like 'Friendly rabbit on the other side of the board is lost if no other friendly piece is sitting next to it.', that would create much more strategical play. So that in order to score a goal, a player would need one of his pieces and a rabbit next to it.
The endgame should remain strategical.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 19th, 2012, 9:29am by Boo » |
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Nazgand
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #25 on: Feb 19th, 2012, 11:19am » |
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I have a proposition for 'the hanzack problem'.
We could start with the assumption that if there is a forced win in 1, hanzack noticed it.
So we could have a script that would mark all his games as won if there is at any point in the game a forced win in one. This would, no doubt, cause him to start winning by forced win in two without having previously done a forced win in one.
When he becomes an expert at that, we write a script to mark all his forced win in two as won, so that he will start winning by forced win in three.
We repeat this until he is consistently winning by forced win at setup, where he would have completed his training and would be the most powerful Arimaa player ever.
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chessandgo
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #26 on: Feb 19th, 2012, 11:24am » |
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on Feb 9th, 2012, 2:47pm, tharkun wrote:
I noticed a chess grandmaster among our new members and he is still on 100% so far; if he starts to play Arimaa for earnest he might go places |
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Really, who's this?
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chessandgo
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #27 on: Feb 19th, 2012, 11:26am » |
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At some point he'll be resigning games on move 1 as Silver, and we'll say: hey, Arimaa is a win for Silver!
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| « Last Edit: Feb 19th, 2012, 11:29am by chessandgo » |
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tharkun
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #28 on: Feb 19th, 2012, 5:00pm » |
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on Feb 19th, 2012, 11:24am, chessandgo wrote:
His nickname is Carrot. He was introduced to Arimaa by Harren.
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Fritzlein
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Re: State of the Challenge 2012
« Reply #29 on: Feb 19th, 2012, 8:12pm » |
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on Feb 19th, 2012, 9:12am, Boo wrote:| I start thinking that this rule is favouring computers a lot. It creates lots of tactical possibilities and contradicts to the game idea of 'easy for human, hard for computer'. |
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You are right that the endgame is so tactical that it favors the computers. For humans to beat the best bots, we have to win the opening and middlegame.
I am afraid, though, that your suggestions to change the rules are too late. For better or worse, we are stuck with the Arimaa rules as they currently exist. You must know this from chess: even though chess is broken, with too many draws among grandmasters, try suggesting that the stalemate rule should be changed, and you will get nowhere. 
I am very pleased that Arimaa is not showing any flaws, except perhaps not being as computer-resistant as Omar hoped. We don't have color imbalance, we don't have stereotyped openings, we don't have draws or stalemates, while we do have games that are tense and dramatic, featuring a variety of styles and conflicting strategic priorities that are still being worked out. If the only thing wrong with Arimaa is that computers eventually win the Arimaa Challenge, I'd say we are doing pretty well. 
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