Regular readers of the blog know I enjoy playing the ancient asian game of GO. Wired Magazine has an interesting article online about computers playing GO and the fact that programmers have been frustrated by trhe complexities of GO created by it's simplicity.
In Go, you don't capture pieces, and so it's very difficult to say that black is ahead or white is ahead just by looking at the board. In order to survive, a group of stones needs to surround two "eyes" -- empty areas that can't be invaded by the opponent.
On a 19-by-19(-line) board, you'll have plenty of stones whose life or death status is undecided, and this is extremely difficult to analyze statically. This is different from the situation with chess or (checkers), where you can look at the board and say, "I have one more pawn than you."
Here's the article Wired News: AI Invades Go Territory.
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