Effect of Potential Model Pruning on Official-Sized Board in Monte-Carlo GO

Monte-Carlo GO is a computer GO program that is sufficiently competent without using knowledge expressions of IGO. Although it is computationally intensive, the computational complexity can be reduced by properly pruning the IGO game tree. Here, I achieve this by using a potential model based on the knowledge expressions of IGO. The potential model treats GO stones as potentials. A specific potential distribution on the GO board results from a unique arrangement of stones on the board. Pruning using the potential model categorizes legal moves into effective and ineffective moves in accordance with the potential threshold. Here, certain pruning strategies based on potentials and potential gradients are experimentally evaluated. For different-sized boards, including an official-sized board, the effects of pruning strategies are evaluated in terms of their robustness. I successfully demonstrate pruning using a potential model to reduce the computational complexity of GO as well as the robustness of this effect across different-sized boards.