
Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning - tzhenghao
https://sites.ualberta.ca/~szepesva/RLBook.html
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lego_bot
Does RL work in practice? I have seen many impressive applications of end-to-
end deep learning, but nothing impressive at all when it comes to RL in the
real world (especially when compared to control theory in robotics domain).

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fridsun
What do you mean by "nothing impressive"? DeepMind's AlphaStar has beaten the
world's best Protoss player 5-1 in Protoss vs. Protoss.

[https://deepmind.com/blog/alphastar-mastering-real-time-
stra...](https://deepmind.com/blog/alphastar-mastering-real-time-strategy-
game-starcraft-ii/)

~~~
onorton
Maybe best foreigner (non-Korean) Protoss player. The match that AlphaStar
lost had actions restricted to a single screen. Before AlphaStar could see and
control everything that was not in the fog of war simultaneously. Still quite
impressive though.

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AlexTelon
I agree with you and would like to add that he is probably not the best non-
korean Protoss either. The blog presenting AlphaStar itself only claims he is
one of the worlds strongest players and link to this post:
[https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/2018_StarCraft_II_World_Ch...](https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/2018_StarCraft_II_World_Championship_Series_Circuit/Standings)
showing Mana at 5th best non-korean Protoss players in the World Championship
series.

AlphaStar has gotten critisism for it having unfair advantages. It was 5-0
against Mana when it could see and control the whole map at once for example.
But after a camera-restriction was given (so it sees the map like humans) it
lost 0-1.

With all this said, it is still impressive. Best bot we have by far in sc2!

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pmalynin
Great book from one of my favourite profs at UofA. It's very focused and
provides examples on how to implement what I would call classic RL algorithms,
and can serve as a decent intro. Don't expect to read it and implement Deep RL
right away however.

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integricho
Any ETA on the printed edition of the updated version of the book?

