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A comment on Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go. Parent comment

Re:Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go by CurtMonash on Sunday March 08, 2015 @10:43PM (#9168672)
I love Go. But from a game-theoretic view it is theoretically rather trivial, as are chess, checkers, and any other game in which players with perfect information alternate moves.

The winner of a Go game is whoever more reliably predicts the ultimate result of various potential intermediate positions. The only interesting game theoretic aspects at all arise to the extent one can predict one's opponents' likely errors, or that one "knows what one doesn't know" in terms of one's own calculating ability.

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Re:Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go by lambda on Sunday March 08, 2015 @11:12PM (#9168785)
Actually, it's interesting in the sense of combinatorial game theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_game_theory) not the branch of decision theory for interactive rational agents known as game theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory). Two only very distantly related subjects which unfortunately have confusingly similar names.
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Re:Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go by CurtMonash on Monday March 09, 2015 @07:27AM (#9170320)
Got it. That said, I use "game theory" in the sense in which it's defined, not least because my thesis was in the subject. :)
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Re:Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go by lambda on Monday March 09, 2015 @12:09PM (#9171733)
Yes, that is the meaning of plain old "game theory", and I also think that's the meaning that the person you were replying to meant; I just wanted to point out that there is something with "game theory" in its name which is much more applicable to Go.
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Re:Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go by Chichikov on Sunday March 08, 2015 @11:31PM (#9168860)
Sorry, did you mean to write "rational rational agents"? If so, why repeat "rational"?
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Re:Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go by lambda on Sunday March 08, 2015 @11:36PM (#9168881)
Nope, it was a typo; I edited my phrasing a couple of times, and the last edit left two copies of the word. Fixed, thanks.
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Re:Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go by fsk on Sunday March 08, 2015 @11:08PM (#9168766)
Actually, go has some deep complexity that chess and checkers do not have, primarily from the idea of "ko".

Read "Mathematical Go".

https://math.berkeley.edu/~berlek/cgt/gobook.html

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Re:Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go by jknightco on Sunday March 08, 2015 @11:28PM (#9168845)
His point wasn't concerning the complexity, but rather the fact that both players have perfect information about the state of the game.
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Re:Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go by neilh23 on Monday March 09, 2015 @08:00AM (#9170437)
Interestingly, that book has a review quote by Ken Thompson. I always wondered if the naming of Go(lang) was related to the game ...
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