Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sbcs.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!sbcs!debray From: debray@sbcs.UUCP (Saumya Debray) Newsgroups: net.chess Subject: Re: machine checkers (Samuel's program) Message-ID: <413@sbcs.UUCP> Date: Thu, 8-Aug-85 19:49:20 EDT Article-I.D.: sbcs.413 Posted: Thu Aug 8 19:49:20 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 11-Aug-85 06:00:19 EDT References: <474@oakhill.UUCP> <4900001@ddnt.UUCP> Organization: Computer Science Dept, SUNY@Stony Brook Lines: 24 > Samuels (Samuelson?) had a checker program in the mid-fifties which ran > on an IBM 704, I think. It played a quite good game, they said. It had > an adaptive evaluation function so that it was self improving. Check > the literature. The program you refer to dates through the sixties. It had, as far as I recall, a learning component, but used the same evaluation function for its estimate of its opponent's estimate of a position as it did for its own estimate of a position, and hence was not really "adaptive". (A truly adaptive system would maintain two evaluation functions -- one reflecting its own strategy, the other its estimate of its opponent's strategy. It would use predictive-corrective methods to continuosly modify its estimate of its opponent's strategy, and then adapt its own strategy to this.) Talking of game-playing programs, Hans Berliner at CMU had a backgammon program in the late '70s - early '80s that beat the then world champion pretty convincingly. But I guess that doesn't really belong here ... -- Saumya Debray SUNY at Stony Brook uucp: {allegra, hocsd, philabs, ogcvax} !sbcs!debray arpa: debray%suny-sb.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa CSNet: debray@sbcs.csnet