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🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Mar 8, 2016 07:06 PM UTC:

George Duke writes:

The error in 'Guardian' article is that OrthoChess has 20 possible first moves not 28.

First, here is what the article actually says:

Hassabis notes that while chess has an average of around 20 possible moves for a given position, Go gives the player about ten times as many options, resulting in a massively higher branching factor that is far harder for any AI to deal with.

This is not about the number of possible first moves but about the average number of moves for a given position. This seems incorrect, because as pieces are developed in Chess, the number of possible moves rapidly increases from 20.

Second, OrthoChess does have 20 possible first moves. These are 8 one-space Pawn moves, 8 double Pawn moves, and 4 Knight moves.


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