Interestingly, recent advances in computer Go have come from ignoring much human expertise and incorporating Monte Carlo approaches into the evaluation function.

It works like this:

• 1) Choose the move to be evaluated.
• 2a) Search the game tree by having players make random moves for many turns after the initial move is made.
• 2b) Score each randomly generated "far future" game state by using a very simple evaluation function, such as counting the number of stones on the board of each color.
• 3) Repeat steps 2a and 2b lots of times, generating lots of randomly played games.
• 4) Average the score of the randomly generated games. The result is the score for the move.

Very little human knowledge is incorporated into this method, but it has produced some of the strongest computer Go players so far.

Source: Wired