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XG settings for backgames

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Tuesday, 2 September 2014, at 3:36 p.m.

In Response To: XG settings for backgames (Martin)

This is somewhat uncharted territory. The conventional wisdom is that stronger rollout settings are preferable, but I don't think that this has been tested systematically.

If you find this sort of thing interesting, then I'd recommend rolling the same position out using different rollout settings to see if it makes a difference. Then post your results so that the community can benefit.

Several outcomes of such an experiment are possible:

1. The rollout settings might not make much difference. This doesn't necessarily mean that they can be trusted, because the computer could be screwing things up badly in all cases. Certainly if the backgame gets extreme enough, the computer will get confused and the rollout results will be meaningless regardless of the settings. However, the specific position you posted doesn't look too extreme to me. If the computer is really confused, often changing the rollout settings will give widely varying results, and moreover the rankings of the plays won't seem to make any sense. So if in your sample position, you get consistent results with different rollout settings, then I would (with some caution) conclude that the rollout results are reasonable, and moreover that stronger settings aren't mandatory after all.

2. The rollout settings might make a noticeable difference. If they are wildly different and/or unintelligible, then as noted above, this would be a reason to distrust all of them. However, the interesting case would be that there is a noticeable difference but it is possible to come up with a plausible explanation. This would then point the way to further investigation, which could turn up specific examples where (say) 3-ply and 4-ply play differently. Then we would get some insight into the effect of changing the rollout settings, rather than just blindly trusting that "stronger settings are better."

This may be more work than you bargained for, but I believe it is important to fight the growing cult of blind bot worship, and that requires effort.

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