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Topic: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?! (Read 5062 times) |
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PMertens
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #15 on: Sep 29th, 2006, 2:20pm » |
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and one more difference: Fritzl would never forfeit a game because of restroom problems 
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Fritzlein
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #16 on: Sep 29th, 2006, 11:22pm » |
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on Sep 29th, 2006, 2:20pm, PMertens wrote:| and one more difference: Fritzl would never forfeit a game because of restroom problems |
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I confess, I have gone to the toilet in the middle of an on-line Arimaa game. Another reason to like accumulation of reserve...
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RonWeasley
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #18 on: Nov 27th, 2006, 11:09am » |
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Excellent! I watched Kramnik blunder!
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DorianGaray
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #19 on: Nov 28th, 2006, 8:46am » |
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Thanks for the link OLTI. I enjoyed watching those games. 
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DorianGaray
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #20 on: Nov 28th, 2006, 8:50am » |
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on Mar 14th, 2006, 5:43pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Yes it is a very interesting question. I expect the increase in playing strength varies directly with increase in log of computing power. So if 2 times the speed results in 50 rating points more, then 1000 times the speed results in 500 rating points more. (1000 = 2^10 and 50 * 10 = 500.)
However, not everyone expects a linear relationship to hold. Perhaps if Bomb could run a million times faster it would still fall for the elephant-horse attack, and therefore lose anyway.
We do know that Bomb performed poorly in the 2005 Postal Championship where it was thinking for hours on every move, as compared to humans thinking only 10 minutes or so. It lost games to players rated 2171, 2164, 1933, 1918, 1687, and 1556. It defeated players rated 1851, 1810, 1605, and 1471. That's a performance rating of only 1716, despite the huge thinking time.
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I don't know if anyone can tell what would be the results at those speeds. It would be like bomb having several years (with the current computer) while the human player would only have a few minutes (at most) to choose his move.
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Fritzlein
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #21 on: Nov 28th, 2006, 11:06am » |
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Wow, I (along with the whole chess world) am in shock. There are plenty of instances of chess grandmasters blundering, but I don't think the reigning World Champion of chess has ever overlooked a checkmate in one move.
I felt pretty dumb after I blundered a horse to Adanac in our game in the fifth round of the 2006 World Championship, but now I won't beat myself up no matter what mistakes I make this year. If Kramnik can be sporting and dignified after a mistake like his, I can only applaud him, and try to behave half as well myself when it is my turn to blunder horrifically.
I hope Kramnik fights back for at least one win in the remaining four games, if not a match victory. But if computers have come to dominate even the World Champion of chess by a substantial margin, there is one benefit for us: It makes Arimaa all the more intriguing.
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Fritzlein
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #22 on: Nov 28th, 2006, 11:31am » |
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on Nov 28th, 2006, 8:50am, DorianGaray wrote:| I don't know if anyone can tell what would be the results at those speeds. |
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I agree, Dorian, that we have no way of telling what pure hardware speedup would do. If we look to the history of chess, we can plot an almost linear relationship between rating of chess computers and log of computing power. But chess theory was not advancing in the way that Arimaa theory is, which could have a drastic effect on plotting a similar trajectory for the ratings of Arimaa bots.
While Fotland was still actively developing, he kept up with Arimaa theory to a certain extent. For example, when everyone began to beat Bomb with camel hostages, he tuned Bomb to keep its camel safer. But now Arimaa theory marches on while Bomb is static. Hardware speedup can't compensate for that. For example, if it turns out that swarming is a good strategy, a super-fast Bomb would play defensively super-effectively, and actually cooperate in getting itself buried under a flood of pieces.
I expect a linear relationship to hold between the log of computing power and the playing strength only if theory isn't advancing, or if developers keep putting the latest theory into their bots. Given how far ahead of bots we are strategically, I expect that any significant improvement in bot play will come from software advances rather than hardware advances. In other words, we have exactly the situation Omar hoped to create. (which is pure luck on Omar's part, I'd say  )
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nbarriga
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #23 on: Nov 28th, 2006, 7:26pm » |
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It's too bad that arimaa bots improvement has stalled a little. Bomb looked promising when actively developed, but now i think there isn't any bot near bomb, not to say near top human players. I think, to keep up the original goals behind arimaa, Omar has to come up with new ways to encourage development. the only thing i can imagine right now that would so that, is forcing WCC participants to opensource their bots.
Otherwise, all the effort put on bots that get discontinued is lost.
For example, one way of easily telling if raw computer power could improve significantly a bot performance, would be to paralelize the best bot available, to run on a cluster, or even as a BOINC(boinc.berkeley.edu) project.
This is coming from a disapointed bot developer(don't worry, disapointed at myself, not the commuty behind arimaa, you're great guys!). It is very difficult to start a bot, because you have to put all the accumulated arimaa strategy on it.
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Fritzlein
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #24 on: Dec 13th, 2006, 7:49am » |
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The thread title "The big difference between Chess and Arimaa" invites another answer: Humans can no longer compete at chess. With Kramnik losing two and drawing four in this match, and never looking close to a win, it is hard to see a top human ever beating a top computer again.
One could speculate how long humans would hold out at Arimaa if the Challenge prize were $1,000,000, but that misses the point. If the human got half a million just for defending the prize, we would have humans studying the game so hard they would be rated 3000.
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DorianGaray
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #25 on: Dec 13th, 2006, 12:22pm » |
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on Dec 13th, 2006, 7:49am, Fritzlein wrote:| ...and never looking close to a win... |
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Maybe it's just me but I believe that he was about to win the one he blundered away, don't you agree Fritz?
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Fritzlein
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #26 on: Dec 13th, 2006, 3:01pm » |
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on Dec 13th, 2006, 12:22pm, DorianGaray wrote:| Maybe it's just me but I believe that he was about to win the one he blundered away, don't you agree Fritz? |
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Other people have said that the game was dead even just before Kramnik blundered, but I'm not good enough to tell by myself. My evaluation goes like this: number of pieces is even, king safety is about even, pawn structure is about even, I don't see any way for either player to win a piece, checkmate, or queen a pawn. Ergo, it must be a draw.
But seriously, when I say Kramnik never looked to be winning, I was relying on someone else's opinion. In one game Kramnik was up a pawn, so in fact I personally did think he might have winning chances, but people who are good at chess said Kramnik was actually behind, and as it turned out he later had to sweat to hold the draw. It's best if you don't trust anything I say about grandmaster chess positions!
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chessandgo
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #27 on: Dec 13th, 2006, 3:52pm » |
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as far as I recall, they said that to avoid checkmate, Kramnik had to move his King, which would have allowed Fritz to get a draw by perpetual check ...
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Isaac Grosof
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Re: The big difference between Chess and Arimaa?!
« Reply #28 on: Sep 11th, 2007, 6:08pm » |
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In this position
5N1k/q5p1/7p/4P3/pp2Q3/8/1P4PP/2b4K b - - 0 1
After
1 ...... Kg8
2 Ng6 Bxb2
3 Qc8 Kh7
4 Nf8 Kg8
5 Ng6 Kh7
and so on with perpetual check
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Sorry about that one thing.
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