RE: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?

[David Fotland]

> Is there a price money? Or at least some sponsorship for traveling?
> 
> Chrilly
> 

You could look at their web pages :)  The last couple of years the winner
got 300,000 yen.  I won 200,000 yen in 2005 for 2nd place, which more than
covered my expenses.  For well known programs they will operate the program
for you so there is no need to travel.  I think that is how GnuGo
participates.  They don't sponsor travel.

David


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RE: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[David Fotland]

> 
> I also agree that 9x9 doesn't compare to 19x19.   I disagree that it's
> not interesting.   It would be uninteresting if, for instance, someone
> like you were just as good at the top pro's at 9x9.   It stops being
> interested when it can be "mastered."If the top players can always
> play a perfect game, it's not interesting to them, but 
> probably still interesting to me, and to a lesser extent 
> someone like you who would probably be playing close to perfect if the
> pro's were playing perfect.   There would probably be very little
> difference in someone like you and a top pro and if you 
> played a game well enough you might get some wins if you were 
> on the right side of
> komi.  But this all assumes the game is almost played out.   I don't
> think 9x9 is.

I don't mean that 9x9 is trivial.  It's just not very interesting to play
for someone who plays go.

For example, if I started talking about playing chess on a 6x6 board without
rooks and with only 6 pawns, it would still be a nontrivial game, but it's
not a game that serious chess players would want to play much.  If I put up
a server to play this 6x6 chess variant and got a lot of programmers
interested in writing programs for it, it's still nontrival, but still not
very interesting for chess players.  It's a different game.

David


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RE: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?

[David Fotland]

I was there in 2005, and KCC Igo and Go Intellect were there.
http://www.computer-go.jp/gifu2005/English/

Ogaki is very nice, but a little tricky to get to by train.

I ripped up the full board search and rewrote it last year so I'll only go
if I can get it stable and stronger by then.

David

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ian Osgood
> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 11:01 AM
> To: computer-go
> Subject: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?
> 
> 
>  From what I can tell, there has not been a clash of the Go titans  
> since the 2003 Gifu Challenge, which had all of KCC Igo, Haruka, Go+ 
> +, Goemate/Handtalk, Many Faces, GNU Go, and Go Intellect
> participating. (This was the last public competition for many of  
> these programs.) It seems with the tuning of MoGo and CrazyStone for  
> the full size board and their recent success at the Olympiad, that  
> there is a chance to knock KCC Igo (sold as Silver Star in Japan)  
> from its four year throne. Are any of the Mogo, CrazyStone, 
> and other  
> professional program authors leaving room in their autumn schedules  
> to travel to Ogaki City, Japan for this year's Gifu Challenge?
> 
> Ian
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> computer-go@computer-go.org 
> http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
> 


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Re: [computer-go] Re: Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[Brian Slesinsky]

This discussion reminds me of a naive theory that I sometimes wonder about:

Since the players in the playouts are so weak, it seems like the
improving the ability to defend a strong position from a
not-very-clever move (and not lose it via a blunder) should be more
important than improving the ability to find an attack.  If there are
two equally bad players that can easily attack each other but can't
defend, it seems like the results will be close to random, almost
regardless of starting position, unless it is very strong.  On the
other hand, if two bad players are somewhat better at defense but
lousy at seeing weaknesses in the other side, there will be less noise
and the one with more territory will tend to win, but an attack on a
mostly solid position will sometimes be found via a random move, and
given enough playouts, this will result in the probability of defense
with a weakness being slightly lower than a truly winning position.

It seems like this effect would be especially true of the endgame
where there aren't so many points to take, but a position could be
lost due to a blunder.

I'm not sure how useful that is, since to defend a position you need
to know how it might be attacked, but perhaps it leads somewhere?

- Brian
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[computer-go] malibu go party

[Ray Tayek]

Hi, Eric Cotsen (sponsor of 
) will be having a go 
party on Sunday,  August 19'th from around 10 am to around 10 pm. 
Food will be provided. Please bring a 6-pack of your favorite drink. 
Optional: If you have a favorite dish you like to make, please do so 
and bring it. There is a pool, hot tub, gym and ocean at your feet, 
so bring your bathing suit. Other games and pizzles are available for 
your significant others (my Wife like Acquire and some Auction 
thing). Well behaved children are welcome. Mr. Yang *may* be there.


The party will be at: 
. 
Check in with the guard at the gate and tell him you are going to 
Cotsen's place. If you get lost on the way, call (310) 457-2722.


Please RSVP to me at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] so I can get a head count.

Thanks

---
vice-chair http://ocjug.org/


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Re: [computer-go] Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[David Doshay]

On 9, Jul 2007, at 5:12 PM, Don Dailey wrote:


 I'm just thinking as a
purist.Any human generated GO knowledge, in some idealistic  
sense of

the word is WRONG.  In other words, unless you can formulate perfect
rules, you are introducing prejudice to the search engine.

So knowledge will help until you get to some point that it gets out of
focus, starts conflicting with itself.


I disagree. The methods that are being used to the greatest degree
today are MC. The knowledge that humans have about Go virtually
always is conditional: this shape tends to be bad, but then again we
know that sometimes making the exact same shape is the best move.
I contend that what we know about playing good Go is in perfect
alignment with what we are now using for search.

What we need is a way to be able to search known good shapes
with a reasonable distribution that keeps us in what I keep calling
the "relevant space" of a reasonable game.

I also think that it is not a bad thing to have our knowledge set
"start conflicting" with itself. That is the nature of life and the
nature of Go. It is well known in learning theory that a child builds
models of the world until they have too many inconsistencies,
and then spends some time pretty confused and less adept than
when just a little younger, but then reformulates something in
their heads and then abruptly become more adept. I do not see
that our programs should be different.

The hard part is that we have a very strong tendency to take all
of that new info out of our knowledge base as soon as we see
the drop in playing strength. I think that it is the programmer
who needs to rethink this stage in their program's learning.


Cheers,
David


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[computer-go] IGS servers

[Joshua Shriver]

What are some popular IGS servers? Right now I use (pandanet?)
igs.joyjoy.net not sure if that is the same as KDS or not.  What other
servers do you all use?

-Josh
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Re: [computer-go] Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[Don Dailey]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 15:52 -0700, David Doshay wrote:
> I agree. I really do not understand why using domain knowledge would
> be a problem for some people. It seems to me that this opinion is held
> by programmers with less Go knowledge who hope that pure search is
> an answer. Knowing what I do about Monte Carlo sampling (it was the
> subject of my Master's thesis in physics), computer Go (a mere 4
> years)
> and playing Go (almost 30 years) I cannot imagine that progress will
> be
> made without a great deal of domain knowledge.
> 
> The UCT method has clearly brought us a big leap in playing strength
> together with bringing MC methods back into the mix. I think that the
> next big trick will be in getting the domain knowledge into the form
> that the MC methods can use efficiently.


I don't really have a problem with domain specific knowledge,  I'm sure
it will be required and will be a benefit.   I'm just thinking as a
purist.Any human generated GO knowledge, in some idealistic sense of
the word is WRONG.  In other words, unless you can formulate perfect
rules, you are introducing prejudice to the search engine.

So knowledge will help until you get to some point that it gets out of
focus, starts conflicting with itself.  

This is why I believe that ultimately, go knowledge will end up being
computer generated because humans will not be able to tune it.   You
will get to a point that if you add knowledge the program gets weaker.
That would not happen if you knew how to add knowledge that is
completely accurate.   

Of course some knowledge is.  Benson life is probably more or less
flawless knowledge for instance.But even eye rules which seem almost
perfect can inhibit a program.   The eye rule all the MC program use
could not be used to create a perfect player because the rule is flawed.
However, the rule is so good right now because it prevents so many
mistakes.   A good example of a rule designed to benefit a program which
at some point outlives it's usefulness and must be replaced with a more
perfect rule. 

Now when you get to hand crafted patterns, you are really going to screw
up the program ultimately.   Very few if any are as good as the eye
rule.   So you are basically engineering a program for failure!   

Of course I admit this is a long way off - most rules are good more
often than bad and will take your program a long way.   But that's why I
find one approach pure, beautiful and elegant and the knowledge
engineering approach crude and hackish because ultimately it really is a
shortcut.  Not a clean shortcut but the kind of shortcut that gets you
into trouble eventually, like not debugging your program because your in
a hurry or something.   It's a very appealing shortcut because it gets
you somewhere very quickly, it just doesn't take you all the way!

Having said that,  Lazarus has tons of GO knowledge and patterns.  I
took the shortcut!

- Don





> Cheers,
> David 

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Re: [computer-go] Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[Chris Fant]

> I agree. I really do not understand why using domain knowledge would
> be a problem for some people.

Maybe one big reason is that domain knowledge is really hard to get
right. A lot of man power is needed to have a program with non
ridiculous go knowledge, higher than any other ideas that have been
successful in UCT.


Also, the lack of domain-specific knowledge in an algorithm probably
means that papers written on the subject will have a wider audience.
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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[Erik van der Werf]

On 7/9/07, Gunnar Farnebäck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Erik wrote:
> Sure, but that does not necessarily matter because there are many more
> end- than middle-game positions. The reason I brought it up is that I
> remembered a statement by someone (sorry forgot the source, maybe John
> or Gunnar remembers) that from all legal positions nearly all can be
> considered final. Of course one could argue about what makes a
> position final, obviously not all borders will be nicely closed and
> generally there will still be some points to be gained, but I think
> the main idea was that at that point the winner is relatively easy to
> determine (so one side would normally resign). This also makes sense
> if you simply look at the expected number of stones on the board.

I don't remember that statement. My guess, without trying it out, is
that most legal positions are rather unsettled and that the number of
positions that are final in any strong sense is a tiny fraction of the
legal positions.


Ok, then probably I'm mistaken and read it in a different context.  In
any case, my statement should be relatively easy to falsify; just
generate some positions and count the fraction that is easily solved.
If correct, a decent uct search, or maybe even a traditional solver,
would in most cases quickly converge to an extreme probability of
winning.

Erik
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Re: [computer-go] Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[David Doshay]

On 9, Jul 2007, at 4:01 PM, Sylvain Gelly wrote:


Hi,


> I'm on the other side of this issue. In my opinion all kinds of go
> knowledge are fair game and I'm rather disappointed that so small
> amounts of domain specific knowledge have been merged with the UCT
> search approaches.
>



I agree. I really do not understand why using domain knowledge would
be a problem for some people.


Maybe one big reason is that domain knowledge is really hard to get
right. A lot of man power is needed to have a program with non
ridiculous go knowledge, higher than any other ideas that have been
successful in UCT.


I agree with you that it is hard. It is easy to include simple domain
knowledge that is only sometimes right and often wrong. It is hard
start with one set of domain knowledge and add to it in a way that
improves play.


It seems to me that this opinion is held
by programmers with less Go knowledge who hope that pure search is
an answer.

Maybe they believe that there is a lot of room for improvement without
go knowledge, and other will put the go knowledge because they are
stronger in that part. Isn't it the way research goes forward?


Absolutely. I just think that the UCT method has given us the biggest
part of what it can without biasing methods that stay away from random
games and select moves that are closer to the relevant space. This is
easier in thermal physics, where the theory tells us that Boltzman
distributions are what we need. You are closer to these methods and
I am just starting to learn them, so you may be more correct than I.


(...) I cannot imagine that progress will be
made without a great deal of domain knowledge.


Depending on what you exactly mean I disagree.


I mean progress by the standard usually applied to computer Go:
programs that can beat 1D humans on a full board, and then get
better.


Progress has been made
without "a great deal of domain knowledge" and there are many
improvements in the algorithms we can make. That does not prevent
using domain knowledge!


I think that the
next big trick will be in getting the domain knowledge into the form
that the MC methods can use efficiently.


I agree that it is ONE OF the next big trick. But people with
experience in the "classical" programs are much more suited for that
than "new comers". On the other side, there are plenty of other ways
to improve.
My point is that they are not mutually exclusive.

Cheers,
Sylvain


We agree that work on algorithms as well as on data representation
are needed. I am less sure that knowledge representation in the  
classical
programs is the right expertise for its representation in the MC  
playouts.


So many thing yet to do!


Cheers,
David






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Re: [computer-go] Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[Sylvain Gelly]

Hi,


> I'm on the other side of this issue. In my opinion all kinds of go
> knowledge are fair game and I'm rather disappointed that so small
> amounts of domain specific knowledge have been merged with the UCT
> search approaches.
>



I agree. I really do not understand why using domain knowledge would
be a problem for some people.


Maybe one big reason is that domain knowledge is really hard to get
right. A lot of man power is needed to have a program with non
ridiculous go knowledge, higher than any other ideas that have been
successful in UCT.


It seems to me that this opinion is held
by programmers with less Go knowledge who hope that pure search is
an answer.

Maybe they believe that there is a lot of room for improvement without
go knowledge, and other will put the go knowledge because they are
stronger in that part. Isn't it the way research goes forward?


(...) I cannot imagine that progress will be
made without a great deal of domain knowledge.


Depending on what you exactly mean I disagree. Progress has been made
without "a great deal of domain knowledge" and there are many
improvements in the algorithms we can make. That does not prevent
using domain knowledge!


I think that the
next big trick will be in getting the domain knowledge into the form
that the MC methods can use efficiently.


I agree that it is ONE OF the next big trick. But people with
experience in the "classical" programs are much more suited for that
than "new comers". On the other side, there are plenty of other ways
to improve.
My point is that there are not mutually exclusive.

Cheers,
Sylvain
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Re: [computer-go] Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[Gunnar Farneb�ck]

Benjamin wrote:
> > I have build just for fun a simple BackGammon engine. [...]
> Interesting - did you also try it for chess, or do you think there's
> no point in this?

This is a bit of speculation since I don't know enough about chess but I
suspect that uniform random simulation in go is about as reliable an
evaluation as a plain counting of piece values in chess, except that the
latter comes without noise. So doing random simulations in chess would
only make life more difficult, unless possibly if the simulation policy
was really good.

Doing UCT search instead of alpha-beta with some deterministic
evaluation function might be an interesting experiment but I suspect
alpha-beta is more efficient in that case.

Othello seems like a better fit for UCT/MC and I suppose that has
already been tested.

/Gunnar
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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Tom Cooper]

Yes.  This number is strongly dependent on strength and board size I 
think.  Very roughly speaking, you can argue as follows
1) in a 9x9 game, the weaker player has only 1/4 as many moves in 
which to throw away the handicap advantage (compared to 19x19).
2) weak players lose so many points compared to perfect play that the 
final score (the difference between the number of points the two 
players lose) has a large variance compared to the value of a handicap stone.




According to some early experiments I have made on a database of 
games played by humans on KGS, I'd say it is more likely to be 70 or 
80 Elo points. Also, it is likely to depend on strength. I'll be 
able to give more precise data in a few weeks.


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Re: [computer-go] Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[David Doshay]

On 9, Jul 2007, at 3:35 PM, Gunnar Farnebäck wrote:


Don wrote:

Of course now we just had to go and spoil it all by imposing domain
specific rules.  I have done the same and I admit it.It would  
be fun
to see how far we could go if domain specific knowledge was  
forbidden as
an experiment.   Once patterns are introduced along with other  
direct Go

knowledge, it's still fun but it feels a bit "wrong", kind of like
cheating.   It's clear that when we do this, we introduce  
strengths and

weaknesses to the program,  making it a bit more fragile, less
"universal" or robust.  Stronger too, but more susceptible to
in-transitivity.


I'm on the other side of this issue. In my opinion all kinds of go
knowledge are fair game and I'm rather disappointed that so small
amounts of domain specific knowledge have been merged with the UCT
search approaches.

/Gunnar


I agree. I really do not understand why using domain knowledge would
be a problem for some people. It seems to me that this opinion is held
by programmers with less Go knowledge who hope that pure search is
an answer. Knowing what I do about Monte Carlo sampling (it was the
subject of my Master's thesis in physics), computer Go (a mere 4 years)
and playing Go (almost 30 years) I cannot imagine that progress will be
made without a great deal of domain knowledge.

The UCT method has clearly brought us a big leap in playing strength
together with bringing MC methods back into the mix. I think that the
next big trick will be in getting the domain knowledge into the form
that the MC methods can use efficiently.

Cheers,
David

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Re: [computer-go] Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[Gunnar Farneb�ck]

Don wrote:
> Of course now we just had to go and spoil it all by imposing domain
> specific rules.  I have done the same and I admit it.It would be fun
> to see how far we could go if domain specific knowledge was forbidden as
> an experiment.   Once patterns are introduced along with other direct Go
> knowledge, it's still fun but it feels a bit "wrong", kind of like
> cheating.   It's clear that when we do this, we introduce strengths and
> weaknesses to the program,  making it a bit more fragile, less
> "universal" or robust.  Stronger too, but more susceptible to
> in-transitivity.  

I'm on the other side of this issue. In my opinion all kinds of go
knowledge are fair game and I'm rather disappointed that so small
amounts of domain specific knowledge have been merged with the UCT
search approaches.

/Gunnar
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Re: [computer-go] Re: Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[Gunnar Farneb�ck]

Dave wrote:
> We have seen a similar effect many times in MoGo. Often we try
> something that seems like it should improve the quality of the
> simulation player, but it makes the overall performance worse. It is
> frustrating and surprising! Has anyone else encountered this?

I'm not surprised. The goal of Monte Carlo simulations should be to
provide an unbiased estimate of the true min-max value with as low
variance as possible. This has little to do with strength, unless you
happen to find a perfect simulation player, but then the whole search
business becomes moot.

The fact that many modifications of uniformly random playouts
simultaneously improve simulation playing strength and overall strength
is a red herring. Uniformly random playouts are strongly biased to
overestimate the value of having tightly connected stones since e.g. one
space jumps become cut through disproportionally often compared to what
happens in relevant paths through the min-max tree. Almost any change in
simulation policy that counters this tendency will improve overall
strength and likewise pretty much every sensible change will improve
simulation strength compared to uniformly random play.

At higher levels something that may happen is that a change in the
simulation policy improves the skill at making life in tight spots,
without changing other skills. This would likely improve simulation
strength but would cause a bias for positions where there's room for a
futile invasion that barely fails, decreasing overall strength.

Similar phenomena have turned up in GNU Go over the years. If you tune
tactical reading or life and death reading to find some new class of
attacking moves, results are likely to become worse if you don't do
matching changes in the capability to find defense moves.

There's also the classical effect of fixing an obvious mistake just to
find some regression tests starting to fail. Closer examination shows
that the tests were previously only passing because there were two
mistakes that cancelled each other and fixing one of them breaks the
balance.

/Gunnar
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Re: [computer-go] Cgos problems and resignation

[Don Dailey]

Ok,  my bad.I will take it out of the next client version.  If it
causes anyone trouble it can easily be removed from the client, just let
me know.

- Don



On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 23:24 +0200, Gunnar Farnebäck wrote:
> Don wrote:
> > On Sun, 2007-07-08 at 12:53 +0200, Magnus Persson wrote:
> > > I just had an exception in Valkyria because it recieved
> > > 
> > > "play b resign"
> > > 
> > > from the server.
> > > 
> > > As far as I know CGOS used to to send nothing to the winner when a program
> > > resigned. Am I wrong or has this something to do with the current 
> > > stability
> > > problems of CGOS?
> > > 
> > > Her is the end of the log. Game was 69653
> > > 
> > > 12:35:43C->E genmove w
> > > 12:35:45E->C = j1
> > > 12:35:45C->S j1
> > > 12:35:47S->C play b RESIGN 47144
> > > 12:35:47C->E play b RESIGN
> > 
> > It's easy to take this out of the client.   I think I have it in because
> > RESIGN is a legitimate GTP move and part of the standard. [...]
> 
> It's not. "Resign" is a valid response to the genmove command but it's
> not a legitimate move and cannot be used with the play command.
> 
> /Gunnar

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Re: [computer-go] Cgos problems and resignation

[Gunnar Farneb�ck]

Don wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-07-08 at 12:53 +0200, Magnus Persson wrote:
> > I just had an exception in Valkyria because it recieved
> > 
> > "play b resign"
> > 
> > from the server.
> > 
> > As far as I know CGOS used to to send nothing to the winner when a program
> > resigned. Am I wrong or has this something to do with the current stability
> > problems of CGOS?
> > 
> > Her is the end of the log. Game was 69653
> > 
> > 12:35:43C->E genmove w
> > 12:35:45E->C = j1
> > 12:35:45C->S j1
> > 12:35:47S->C play b RESIGN 47144
> > 12:35:47C->E play b RESIGN
> 
> It's easy to take this out of the client.   I think I have it in because
> RESIGN is a legitimate GTP move and part of the standard. [...]

It's not. "Resign" is a valid response to the genmove command but it's
not a legitimate move and cannot be used with the play command.

/Gunnar
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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[Gunnar Farneb�ck]

Erik wrote:
> Sure, but that does not necessarily matter because there are many more
> end- than middle-game positions. The reason I brought it up is that I
> remembered a statement by someone (sorry forgot the source, maybe John
> or Gunnar remembers) that from all legal positions nearly all can be
> considered final. Of course one could argue about what makes a
> position final, obviously not all borders will be nicely closed and
> generally there will still be some points to be gained, but I think
> the main idea was that at that point the winner is relatively easy to
> determine (so one side would normally resign). This also makes sense
> if you simply look at the expected number of stones on the board.

I don't remember that statement. My guess, without trying it out, is
that most legal positions are rather unsettled and that the number of
positions that are final in any strong sense is a tiny fraction of the
legal positions.

/Gunnar
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Re: [computer-go] SGF parsing

[David Doshay]

Yes, without variations SGF is not hard. Unfortunately, doing it right
when you want to look at lots of variations at each move is quite
tricky. We need to do this to inspect what SlugGo is considering on
each of the many CPUs we are using, and every now and again we
need to revisit this code.

Cheers,
David



On 9, Jul 2007, at 10:31 AM, Unknown wrote:

For simple sgf, (without variations or game collections) you can  
create

a parser in a few hours.


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Re: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?

[David Doshay]

There is prize money. I think it was about $3000 US last year for  
first place.


No remote computing, so if like me you use a cluster, you must bring it.

Cheers,
David



On 9, Jul 2007, at 11:33 AM, chrilly wrote:


travel to Ogaki City, Japan for this year's Gifu Challenge?

Is there a price money? Or at least some sponsorship for traveling?



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Re: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?

[David Doshay]

I did not plan to attend this year because SlugGo has not changed  
much and we just got a new PhD student. I hope to be there next year.


Cheers,
David



On 9, Jul 2007, at 11:01 AM, Ian Osgood wrote:

From what I can tell, there has not been a clash of the Go titans  
since the 2003 Gifu Challenge, which had all of KCC Igo, Haruka, Go+ 
+, Goemate/Handtalk, Many Faces, GNU Go, and Go Intellect  
participating. (This was the last public competition for many of  
these programs.) It seems with the tuning of MoGo and CrazyStone  
for the full size board and their recent success at the Olympiad,  
that there is a chance to knock KCC Igo (sold as Silver Star in  
Japan) from its four year throne. Are any of the Mogo, CrazyStone,  
and other professional program authors leaving room in their autumn  
schedules to travel to Ogaki City, Japan for this year's Gifu  
Challenge?


Ian
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Re: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?

[Ian Osgood]

On Jul 9, 2007, at 11:17 AM, Nick Wedd wrote:

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,  
Ian Osgood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
From what I can tell, there has not been a clash of the Go titans  
since the 2003 Gifu Challenge, which had all of KCC Igo, Haruka, Go 
+ +, Goemate/Handtalk, Many Faces, GNU Go, and Go Intellect   
participating. (This was the last public competition for many of   
these programs.) It seems with the tuning of MoGo and CrazyStone  
for  the full size board and their recent success at the Olympiad,  
that  there is a chance to knock KCC Igo (sold as Silver Star in  
Japan)  from its four year throne. Are any of the Mogo,  
CrazyStone, and other  professional program authors leaving room  
in their autumn schedules  to travel to Ogaki City, Japan for this  
year's Gifu Challenge?


Do we know that the Gifu Challenge is going to happen this  
October?  Do you have a URL for it?


Nick
--
Nick Wedd[EMAIL PROTECTED]


I guess there has not been an announcement yet, though it has been in  
early October the previous two years.  Last year's pre-announcement  
was sent to the list on July 5. Perhaps the manager of the Computer  
Go Forum (http://www.computer-go.jp/index.html) has more information.


Ian
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Re: [computer-go] SGF parsing

[Jason House]

On 7/9/07, Phil G <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


HouseBot (C++)
 http://housebot.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page



More precisely, the HouseBot SGF code is available at
http://housebot.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/housebot/branches/0.5/housebot/src/sgf/

It's freely available under the GPL v2 license.
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Re: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?

[Rémi Coulom]

Ian Osgood wrote:
From what I can tell, there has not been a clash of the Go titans 
since the 2003 Gifu Challenge, which had all of KCC Igo, Haruka, Go++, 
Goemate/Handtalk, Many Faces, GNU Go, and Go Intellect participating. 
(This was the last public competition for many of these programs.) It 
seems with the tuning of MoGo and CrazyStone for the full size board 
and their recent success at the Olympiad, that there is a chance to 
knock KCC Igo (sold as Silver Star in Japan) from its four year 
throne. Are any of the Mogo, CrazyStone, and other professional 
program authors leaving room in their autumn schedules to travel to 
Ogaki City, Japan for this year's Gifu Challenge?


Ian
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Is there a date set, already ? Anyway, it is not likely I'll go because 
it usually takes place at the time of year when my classes start. Also I 
still don't know how to have Crazy Stone play with Japanese rules.


Rémi
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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Rémi Coulom]

Don Dailey wrote:

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 10:10 -0700, terry mcintyre wrote:
  

I concur with Christian Nilsson; handicap stones permit the win-loss
ratio to approximate 50%,  where it is more sensitive to improvements.
As one tweaks the program, the progress would be measurable within a
few games, one's handicap would decrease. 


Is it possible to tie together the handicap information and the
win-loss percentages into a unified ELO-type score? Would an
experiment be needed to measure the effect of handicap stones on the
probability of winning?   



I think the common formula is 100 ELO per stone?   I think we could
start with this guess (or a better one) and after a few weeks of play we
could do a statistical analysis to see if things are as they should be.
Then we could make any adjustments if needed.


According to some early experiments I have made on a database of games 
played by humans on KGS, I'd say it is more likely to be 70 or 80 Elo 
points. Also, it is likely to depend on strength. I'll be able to give 
more precise data in a few weeks.


The problem with programs is that GNU Go really does not know how to 
play handicap games. Crazy Stone and, I expect, MC programs in general, 
should handle handicap much better. Crazy Stone played a few handicap 
games against weaker humans on KGS two days ago, and it really plays 
agressive moves when it is behind.


Rémi
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Re: [computer-go] SGF parsing

[Phil G]

Joshua:

If you are looking for actual code, here are a few open source programs which 
have SGF reader/writer code:

GnuGo(C)
 http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/
HouseBot (C++)
 http://housebot.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page
GoTraxx (C#)
 
http://www.codeplex.com/GoTraxx/SourceControl/DirectoryView.aspx?SourcePath=%24%2fGoTraxx%2fGoTraxx&changeSetId=7284

I wrote the later two. The GoTraxx version is the easiest to read, at least for 
me. The SGF code is release under GPLv3 - so use freely.

I can't visually "read" SGF files; I use both GoGui and SmartGo as viewers.

Phil

- Original Message 
From: Joshua Shriver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: computer-go 
Sent: Monday, July 9, 2007 8:49:48 AM
Subject: [computer-go] SGF parsing


Besides the original specification at http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/
anyone recommend an easier to read and go specific document for
parsing sgf files?

I really like the pgn format, just viewing it you can get a feel for
what is going on. I tried to figure out the SGF format by looking at
it, and have no clue what's going on.

Any help is appreciated, trying to write a parse in C

-Josh
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Re: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?

[chrilly]

- Original Message - 
From: "Ian Osgood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "computer-go" 
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 8:01 PM
Subject: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?


From what I can tell, there has not been a clash of the Go titans  
since the 2003 Gifu Challenge, which had all of KCC Igo, Haruka, Go+ 
+, Goemate/Handtalk, Many Faces, GNU Go, and Go Intellect  
participating. (This was the last public competition for many of  
these programs.) It seems with the tuning of MoGo and CrazyStone for  
the full size board and their recent success at the Olympiad, that  
there is a chance to knock KCC Igo (sold as Silver Star in Japan)  
from its four year throne. Are any of the Mogo, CrazyStone, and other  
professional program authors leaving room in their autumn schedules  
to travel to Ogaki City, Japan for this year's Gifu Challenge?



Is there a price money? Or at least some sponsorship for traveling?

Chrilly


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Re: [computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?

[Nick Wedd]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ian 
Osgood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
From what I can tell, there has not been a clash of the Go titans since 
the 2003 Gifu Challenge, which had all of KCC Igo, Haruka, Go+ +, 
Goemate/Handtalk, Many Faces, GNU Go, and Go Intellect  participating. 
(This was the last public competition for many of  these programs.) It 
seems with the tuning of MoGo and CrazyStone for  the full size board 
and their recent success at the Olympiad, that  there is a chance to 
knock KCC Igo (sold as Silver Star in Japan)  from its four year 
throne. Are any of the Mogo, CrazyStone, and other  professional 
program authors leaving room in their autumn schedules  to travel to 
Ogaki City, Japan for this year's Gifu Challenge?


Do we know that the Gifu Challenge is going to happen this October?  Do 
you have a URL for it?


Nick
--
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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[dhillismail]

 If I took a set of game positions, generated by flipping a coin, and 
generated a histogram of

x = black_stones - white_stones

I would expect to see the distribution of x looking like a nice Gaussian, 
centered at zero. If I looked at positions generated by playing out moves, I 
would expect to see *much* more weight in the tails and the center at a 
positive value between zero and true Komi. Removing illegal positions from the 
coin flip set might change the distribution in ways that would be easy to 
measure and rash to predict.

 When I look at statistics such as this for real games, I?generally see 
measurable differences between strong and weak players.

- Dave Hillis



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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Jason House]

On 7/9/07, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


I think the common formula is 100 ELO per stone?   I think we could
start with this guess (or a better one) and after a few weeks of play we
could do a statistical analysis to see if things are as they should be.
Then we could make any adjustments if needed.




Once upon a time, people also discussed treating handicapped versions of
bots as distinct players with their own ranking.  It may be good to
experiment with handicap stones that way and then extend it to automatic
handicap and folding the results into the rankings.
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[computer-go] Who's going to the Gifu Challenge?

[Ian Osgood]

From what I can tell, there has not been a clash of the Go titans  
since the 2003 Gifu Challenge, which had all of KCC Igo, Haruka, Go+ 
+, Goemate/Handtalk, Many Faces, GNU Go, and Go Intellect  
participating. (This was the last public competition for many of  
these programs.) It seems with the tuning of MoGo and CrazyStone for  
the full size board and their recent success at the Olympiad, that  
there is a chance to knock KCC Igo (sold as Silver Star in Japan)  
from its four year throne. Are any of the Mogo, CrazyStone, and other  
professional program authors leaving room in their autumn schedules  
to travel to Ogaki City, Japan for this year's Gifu Challenge?


Ian
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Re: [computer-go] the next big challenge - handicap stones on CGOS? or komi?

[terry mcintyre]

From: Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Is it possible to tie together the handicap information and the
>> win-loss percentages into a unified ELO-type score? Would an
>> experiment be needed to measure the effect of handicap stones on the
>> probability of winning?   

> I think the common formula is 100 ELO per stone?   

I expect the per-stone adjustment to depend on the size of the board. Two 
players might be evenly matched on a 19x19 board when the first gets a 9 stone
handicap, but first player would have an easy win on a 9x9 board with the
same 9 stone handicap. http://senseis.xmp.net/?HandicapForSmallerBoardSizes
suggests that 2 stones on 9x9 would be about right; the author also proposes 
tweaking the komi. According to http://senseis.xmp.net/?AGAHandicaps, the
AGA at the 2004 Congress used no handicap stones on 9x9, adjusting the komi
instead.

Most human players are much more used to handicap stones, but adjusting the komi
is another method of compensating for differences in skill, which is much more 
fine-grained than handicap stones. 









   

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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Chris Fant]

I think it would be great to try this out.  Perhaps at 13x13.


On 7/9/07, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 10:10 -0700, terry mcintyre wrote:
> I concur with Christian Nilsson; handicap stones permit the win-loss
> ratio to approximate 50%,  where it is more sensitive to improvements.
> As one tweaks the program, the progress would be measurable within a
> few games, one's handicap would decrease.
>
> Is it possible to tie together the handicap information and the
> win-loss percentages into a unified ELO-type score? Would an
> experiment be needed to measure the effect of handicap stones on the
> probability of winning?

I think the common formula is 100 ELO per stone?   I think we could
start with this guess (or a better one) and after a few weeks of play we
could do a statistical analysis to see if things are as they should be.
Then we could make any adjustments if needed.

CGOS would still use the same scheduling algorithm - trying to prevent
serious mismatches.  So we would avoid matches that required many stones
handicap although they would appear from time to time.

The ELO formula is the same.  Whatever program is getting the extra
stones is assumed (for rating purposes) to be 100H ELO stronger where H
is the number of stones handicap.   The constant 100 might have to be
adjusted of course.

It may even be that we have to use a different constant depending where
you are at on the ELO scale.  With enough games it might be possible to
determine if this is needed or not.I've discussed this with Steve in
private emails in the past.

It might not be difficult to make this auto-adjust.  If the server
notices that some value isn't predicting the winner very accurately, a
tiny adjustment is made.

- Don


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Re: [computer-go] SGF parsing

[Unknown]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 12:46 -0400, Joshua Shriver wrote:
> Ok found some KGS games, and they make a lot more sense. With the
> specification I can see what all of the OT, AP, TM, FF, etc commads
> are. However I don't understand the way it sets the location, so far
> nothing I've seen describes it.
> 
> ;B[kr]  for example.
> I thought Go boards used A..x 1..y notation. Perhaps I'm wrong.


SGF uses a different coordinate system (making it easier to make
mistakes ...) It is all in the Fine Manual:
http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/go.html#properties
Read it.

SGF is surprisingly easy to parse; the only "special" tokens the parser
needs to recognize are ()[]; ( \n and newline escaping add some
complexity, but can _initially_ be ignored.) 

> -Josh
> 
> On 7/9/07, Joshua Shriver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Do you have a good example of a regular Go game in sgf?
> > A lot of the examples I found on the SGF spec site seem confusing, and
> > not sure if they're even for Go or backgammon, etc.

Ignore everything except for GM[1] (= go), and the generic part.

For simple sgf, (without variations or game collections) you can create
a parser in a few hours. This will probably include reading the manual
and understanding the format, too.

HTH,
AvK

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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Don Dailey]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 10:10 -0700, terry mcintyre wrote:
> I concur with Christian Nilsson; handicap stones permit the win-loss
> ratio to approximate 50%,  where it is more sensitive to improvements.
> As one tweaks the program, the progress would be measurable within a
> few games, one's handicap would decrease. 
> 
> Is it possible to tie together the handicap information and the
> win-loss percentages into a unified ELO-type score? Would an
> experiment be needed to measure the effect of handicap stones on the
> probability of winning?   

I think the common formula is 100 ELO per stone?   I think we could
start with this guess (or a better one) and after a few weeks of play we
could do a statistical analysis to see if things are as they should be.
Then we could make any adjustments if needed.

CGOS would still use the same scheduling algorithm - trying to prevent
serious mismatches.  So we would avoid matches that required many stones
handicap although they would appear from time to time.

The ELO formula is the same.  Whatever program is getting the extra
stones is assumed (for rating purposes) to be 100H ELO stronger where H
is the number of stones handicap.   The constant 100 might have to be
adjusted of course.

It may even be that we have to use a different constant depending where
you are at on the ELO scale.  With enough games it might be possible to
determine if this is needed or not.I've discussed this with Steve in
private emails in the past.

It might not be difficult to make this auto-adjust.  If the server
notices that some value isn't predicting the winner very accurately, a
tiny adjustment is made. 

- Don


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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[terry mcintyre]

I concur with Christian Nilsson; handicap stones permit the win-loss ratio to 
approximate 50%,  where it is more sensitive to improvements. As one tweaks the 
program, the progress would be measurable within a few games, one's handicap 
would decrease. 

Is it possible to tie together the handicap information and the win-loss 
percentages into a unified ELO-type score? Would an experiment be needed to 
measure the effect of handicap stones on the probability of winning?
 
Terry McIntyre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
They mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind 
masters; but they mean to be masters. -- Daniel Webster




  

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Re: [computer-go] SGF parsing

[alain Baeckeroot]

Le lundi 9 juillet 2007 18:46, Joshua Shriver a écrit :
> Ok found some KGS games, and they make a lot more sense. With the
> specification I can see what all of the OT, AP, TM, FF, etc commads
> are. However I don't understand the way it sets the location, so far
> nothing I've seen describes it.
> 
> ;B[kr]  for example.
> I thought Go boards used A..x 1..y notation. Perhaps I'm wrong.

If i remeber well:

* Real life wooden Go board uses A...x without I , 1..y 
 but
 sgf uses only letters for both coordinates (including I)

* Axes are not the same.
 for board: Ox toward East, Oy toward North
 for sgf: Ox toward south, Oy toward East

Alain
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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[Erik van der Werf]

On 7/9/07, George Dahl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:




On 7/9/07, Erik van der Werf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On 7/9/07, George Dahl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I think this is what I want.  Thanks!  So I might have to repeat this
> > a few hundred times to actually get a legal position?
>
> Are you aware that nearly all of these positions will be final positions?
>
> So I'll repeat my question: why do you need any of this? If you only
> need final positions it's probably much better to take them from real
> games, and if you actually need middle game positions you will have to
> use a different procedure...
>
> E.
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>


Won't the final positions be much more likely to be rejected since they are
much more likely to be illegal?


Sure, but that does not necessarily matter because there are many more
end- than middle-game positions. The reason I brought it up is that I
remembered a statement by someone (sorry forgot the source, maybe John
or Gunnar remembers) that from all legal positions nearly all can be
considered final. Of course one could argue about what makes a
position final, obviously not all borders will be nicely closed and
generally there will still be some points to be gained, but I think
the main idea was that at that point the winner is relatively easy to
determine (so one side would normally resign). This also makes sense
if you simply look at the expected number of stones on the board.



What is your claim about the distribution
of the number of stones on the board with this scheme?


Simply that for most interesting purposes you will have too many of
them on the board. Further, depending on the purpose, one might argue
that there are more interesting distributions to sample from (e.g.,
you could sample from all positions ever played by strong players on
KGS).



 I am hoping to use this method to help generate training data for a
learning system that learns certain graph properties of the board that can
also be computed deterministically from the board position.  I know that
might sound crazy,


Not to me ;-)


but it is working towards the eventual goal of creating
feature extractors for Go positions.  By learning to map Go positions as an
array of stones to Go positions as graphs of strings (instead of just
mapping them with a hand coded algorithm) I can take intermediate results in
the learner's computation and use it as a feature for another learner.


Well, I'm not sure whether this way you will be able to beat hand
coded algorithms, but it's certainly interesting to try. In any case I
would still think that, to make a strong program, it's better to
sample from real games, or maybe do both to see if it makes much
difference.

Erik
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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Christian Nilsson]

On 7/9/07, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I would like to get all the bugs out of CGOS and then try to find a way
to promote the 19x19 server better, perhaps adding some kind of overtime
as you suggest and even handicaps.   But I don't want to do that work if
it's isn't going to be used.


Adding handicaps would probably attract a lot more programs. This is
one of the reasons my program hasn't shown up on the 19x19 server yet.
The anchors and most other programs on it are way too strong.. making
just about every game it plays totally useless ( I dare say that it
would _never_ win against the anchors ).

If instead it could be given say 9 stones it may actually stand a
chance. Thus making it quite possible to track progress. This would
also make the ratings more accurate in my opinion.

/Christian Nilsson
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Re: [computer-go] SGF parsing

[Don Dailey]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 12:27 -0400, Joshua Shriver wrote:
> Do you have a good example of a regular Go game in sgf?

You can download examples from CGOS.  Nothing fancy, just simple game
results.

An here is an example of a pgn go file that my old autotester produces:


[Event "Autotest Sequence"]
[Site "Local Site"]
[Date "2005.10.08"]
[Round "1"]
[Black "fl_2_64"]
[BlackTime "00:01:17"]
[White "fl_3_16"]
[WhiteTime "00:02:57"]
[Boardsize "9x9"]
[Komi "5.5"]
[Rules "Tromp/Taylor"]
[Final "29-52"]
[Result "0-1"]

1. f7 e5 2. g4 f3 3. f5 d5 4. g3 e4 5. f6 g2 
6. f2 c6 7. e3 f4 8. e2 d3 9. d7 c7 10. d2 c8 
11. g5 c2 12. c3 f8 13. d4 c4 14. b5 b3 15. c5 d3 
16. d6 b4 17. e6 d4 18. d8 h2 19. b2 a5 20. e8 b6 
21. f1 g1 22. d1 c1 23. b7 e1 24. f2 f1 25. c9 h3 
26. j2 f9 27. d1 e2 28. d9 a6 29. a4 b8 30. h4 a2 
31. b5 j5 32. a8 b9 33. h5 h6 34. g6 a7 35. h7 h9 
36. b1 j1 37. e9 j4 38. h8 j3 39. g7 j6 40. j8 a3 
41. g9 c5 42. g8 f9 43. f8 a9 44. j9 a1 45. b1 b2 
46. j7 d2 47. pass pass 



> A lot of the examples I found on the SGF spec site seem confusing, and
> not sure if they're even for Go or backgammon, etc.
> 
> Also is there a command line go conversion program kinda like
> pgnextract that lets you modify sgf datasets. Like strip comments,
> etc. All I really want from a program perspective is move lists and
> user ranking.
> 
> -Josh
> 
> On 7/9/07, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 11:49 -0400, Joshua Shriver wrote:
> > > I really like the pgn format, just viewing it you can get a feel for
> > > what is going on. I tried to figure out the SGF format by looking at
> > > it, and have no clue what's going on.
> >
> > SGF has a real grammer associated with it and is technically superior.
> > It provides support for marking up boards and things.  However for
> > simple storage requirements, you probably don't need that.
> >
> > However, PGN is wonderfully readable and for what you want more useful
> > in a practical way.   Unfortunately, it is not "standard" for GO and you
> > will be sorry if you want to be able to see a game using a reader for
> > instance.
> >
> > I would stick with SGF for Go.  It's isn't that difficult to figure out.
> > You can grab an SGF from somewhere and use it as an example.
> >
> > What we be really useful, is a conversion utility so that you could use
> > both.  PGN is more compact but if you zip or compress games it probably
> > doesn't make any difference.
> >
> > - Don
> >
> >
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Re: [computer-go] SGF parsing

[Joshua Shriver]

Ok found some KGS games, and they make a lot more sense. With the
specification I can see what all of the OT, AP, TM, FF, etc commads
are. However I don't understand the way it sets the location, so far
nothing I've seen describes it.

;B[kr]  for example.
I thought Go boards used A..x 1..y notation. Perhaps I'm wrong.

-Josh

On 7/9/07, Joshua Shriver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Do you have a good example of a regular Go game in sgf?
A lot of the examples I found on the SGF spec site seem confusing, and
not sure if they're even for Go or backgammon, etc.

Also is there a command line go conversion program kinda like
pgnextract that lets you modify sgf datasets. Like strip comments,
etc. All I really want from a program perspective is move lists and
user ranking.

-Josh

On 7/9/07, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 11:49 -0400, Joshua Shriver wrote:
> > I really like the pgn format, just viewing it you can get a feel for
> > what is going on. I tried to figure out the SGF format by looking at
> > it, and have no clue what's going on.
>
> SGF has a real grammer associated with it and is technically superior.
> It provides support for marking up boards and things.  However for
> simple storage requirements, you probably don't need that.
>
> However, PGN is wonderfully readable and for what you want more useful
> in a practical way.   Unfortunately, it is not "standard" for GO and you
> will be sorry if you want to be able to see a game using a reader for
> instance.
>
> I would stick with SGF for Go.  It's isn't that difficult to figure out.
> You can grab an SGF from somewhere and use it as an example.
>
> What we be really useful, is a conversion utility so that you could use
> both.  PGN is more compact but if you zip or compress games it probably
> doesn't make any difference.
>
> - Don
>
>
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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Don Dailey]

Brian,

The idea of moving towards 13x13 appeals to me too.   I would even
consider removing the 9x9 server and going to 13x13 instead if I didn't
think it would cause an out-rage.  

At some point sticking with 9x9 is going to inhibit progress in my
opinion.  And a really strong 13x13 program is more likely to be strong
at 19x19.  

- Don


On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 09:32 -0700, Brian Slesinsky wrote:
> On 7/9/07, David Fotland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > Very unlikely.  I'm a strong player (but not very strong - 3 dan amateur),
> > and I've played perhaps a dozen 9x9 games with people who were just learning
> > the rules.  I played in a couple of 9x9 tournaments on the crazy go day at
> > the go congress (along with 3-d go, hex go, etc).  Most beginners only need
> > a couple of games on 9x9 before they start paying 19x19.  9x9 go is not very
> > interesting to strong players, since it's not really go.  I might as well be
> > playing checkers or 9 men's morris :)
> 
> I agree that 9x9 is not that interesting for very long, even for
> beginners, but I'd like to put in a good word here for 13x13.  I'm at
> about 25 kyu on dragongo; nearly all my games are 13x13, and I think I
> would be having much less fun at 19x19.  There seems to be quite a bit
> of room for strategy at this smaller board size (for example, room
> enough for joseki patterns, though their significance is probably
> different) but games are over much quicker, which is an important
> consideration if you want to have fast games on a non-real-time
> server.  Games take long enough as it is, and quicker feedback is
> useful for learning.
> 
> It seems like 13x13 would be a good intermediate step for computer go.
> 
> - Brian
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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[David Doshay]

On 9, Jul 2007, at 8:37 AM, George Dahl wrote:




On 7/9/07, Erik van der Werf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On  
7/9/07, George Dahl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think this is what I want.  Thanks!  So I might have to repeat  
this

> a few hundred times to actually get a legal position?

Are you aware that nearly all of these positions will be final  
positions?


This depends upon the distribution function for w/b/e. The greater  
the % given to empty the further from "endgame" you will be.



So I'll repeat my question: why do you need any of this? If you only
need final positions it's probably much better to take them from real
games, and if you actually need middle game positions you will have to
use a different procedure...

E.
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Won't the final positions be much more likely to be rejected since  
they are much more likely to be illegal?


Probably, but again, it will depend upon the distribution function.

What is your claim about the distribution of the number of stones  
on the board with this scheme?


 I am hoping to use this method to help generate training data for  
a learning system that learns certain graph properties of the board  
that can also be computed deterministically from the board  
position.  I know that might sound crazy, but it is working towards  
the eventual goal of creating feature extractors for Go positions.   
By learning to map Go positions as an array of stones to Go  
positions as graphs of strings (instead of just mapping them with a  
hand coded algorithm) I can take intermediate results in the  
learner's computation and use it as a feature for another learner.


Have you read Ken Friedenbach's thesis Abstraction Hierarchies: A  
Model of Perception and Cognition in the Game of Go (UC Santa Cruz  
1980)? From what you are saying it sounds like you should.



- George




Cheers,
David



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RE: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Don Dailey]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 09:12 -0700, David Fotland wrote:
> > I'll bet there have been millions of 9x9 games by very strong 
> > players, they are probably just not readily accessible.  
> 
> Very unlikely.  I'm a strong player (but not very strong - 3 dan amateur),
> and I've played perhaps a dozen 9x9 games with people who were just learning
> the rules.  I played in a couple of 9x9 tournaments on the crazy go day at
> the go congress (along with 3-d go, hex go, etc).  Most beginners only need
> a couple of games on 9x9 before they start paying 19x19.  9x9 go is not very
> interesting to strong players, since it's not really go.  I might as well be
> playing checkers or 9 men's morris :)

You are in a better position to understand this than I am.  I just know
I've seen very strong players play 9x9 games on KGS - and over a period
of years I would expect there to be a large number although it obviously
wouldn't begin to compare to the real game.   I don't remember what I
actually saw, perhaps it was a match with a weaker player or odds game
or something. 

I also agree that 9x9 doesn't compare to 19x19.   I disagree that it's
not interesting.   It would be uninteresting if, for instance, someone
like you were just as good at the top pro's at 9x9.   It stops being
interested when it can be "mastered."If the top players can always
play a perfect game, it's not interesting to them, but probably still
interesting to me, and to a lesser extent
someone like you who would probably be playing close to perfect if the
pro's were playing perfect.   There would probably be very little
difference in someone like you and a top pro and if you played a game
well enough you might get some wins if you were on the right side of
komi.  But this all assumes the game is almost played out.   I don't
think 9x9 is.

I have no argument that any particular individual may not find it
interesting as a matter of personal choice.   For instance there are
many things I don't find interesting even though I haven't mastered
them.Or your point of view may be that the bigger board is much MORE
interesting, so why bother with smaller ones?   But that doesn't take
away from the fact that 9x9 is still "interesting" and still a deep
profound game.   If you belittle 9x9,  indirectly you detract from 19x19
because you imply that the whole game isn't very interesting unless you
can put on a massive board. 



> > But with something like CGOS a program like Mogo has bragging 
> > rights. It's possible one of the  commercial programs is 
> > better than Mogo, or
> > perhaps another amateur program is better.   But in most 
> > peoples minds,
> > Mogo is the best at 9x9 because it was willing to take the 
> > risk on CGOS
> > (in all likelihood, it really IS the best and few doubt 
> > this.)
> 
> I can confirm that Mogo is quite a bit stronger than the commercial programs
> at 9x9 go.  I'm not very interested in 9x9 go.  Most of the commercial
> programs have algorithms that don't scale well down to 9x9, since they are
> all designed for 19x19 go.  The 19x19 knowledge that makes them strong does
> not apply at 9x9.  Since people don't play 9x9 go, there is no incentive
> commercial program authors to make their programs strong at 9x9.

Most of my comments are directed to 19x19 go.   I lay out one possible
plan to produce a very strong 19x19 player.  

I'm interested in 9x9 only as a stepping stone.  It's far more
manageable and if you can't "whip" 9x9, you have no chance going bigger.
It's way easier to test and get quick results in a methodical way.

 
> > Here is what we need in order to achieve a Dan level 19x19 
> > player within a couple of years in my opinion:
> > 
> >   COMPETITION
> > 
> > Not once a year, but constant.   A very high profile occasional
> > competition however is still a great and useful thing to have.  
> > 
> >   FEEDBACK
> > 
> > You need to always know where you stand so you can constantly  be goal
> > oriented.   Where you stand in relation to others that is.  
> > 
> >   STATUS
> > 
> > There must be some kind of recognition, highly visible 
> > acknowledgment of
> > the pecking order to stimulate and motivate the competitors.  
> 
> I agree.  Progress was very swift in the Ing competition, with programs
> improving from about 25 kyu to about 5-8 kyu.  Since 2000 the competition
> and status has been missing, so progress has stopped, or at least is not
> visible.  The algorithms that worked well on a 33 MHz 386 with 0.5 MB memory
> are very different from what is possible on today's machines.
>  
> > 
> > Once money and status come into the picture big time,  then cheating
> > will start to play a major role. 
> 
> Cheating did play big role.  Even though Ing and FOST had on-site
> tournaments, there was still the issue of reverse engineering the top
> programs.

YES!  I remember that and I thought it was a real travesty.   

> > I also have to say that Nick Wedd's monthly tournaments are 
> > critical

Re: [computer-go] SGF parsing

[Don Dailey]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 11:49 -0400, Joshua Shriver wrote:
> I really like the pgn format, just viewing it you can get a feel for
> what is going on. I tried to figure out the SGF format by looking at
> it, and have no clue what's going on. 

SGF has a real grammer associated with it and is technically superior.
It provides support for marking up boards and things.  However for
simple storage requirements, you probably don't need that.  

However, PGN is wonderfully readable and for what you want more useful
in a practical way.   Unfortunately, it is not "standard" for GO and you
will be sorry if you want to be able to see a game using a reader for
instance. 

I would stick with SGF for Go.  It's isn't that difficult to figure out.
You can grab an SGF from somewhere and use it as an example.  

What we be really useful, is a conversion utility so that you could use
both.  PGN is more compact but if you zip or compress games it probably
doesn't make any difference.  

- Don


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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Brian Slesinsky]

On 7/9/07, David Fotland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Very unlikely.  I'm a strong player (but not very strong - 3 dan amateur),
and I've played perhaps a dozen 9x9 games with people who were just learning
the rules.  I played in a couple of 9x9 tournaments on the crazy go day at
the go congress (along with 3-d go, hex go, etc).  Most beginners only need
a couple of games on 9x9 before they start paying 19x19.  9x9 go is not very
interesting to strong players, since it's not really go.  I might as well be
playing checkers or 9 men's morris :)


I agree that 9x9 is not that interesting for very long, even for
beginners, but I'd like to put in a good word here for 13x13.  I'm at
about 25 kyu on dragongo; nearly all my games are 13x13, and I think I
would be having much less fun at 19x19.  There seems to be quite a bit
of room for strategy at this smaller board size (for example, room
enough for joseki patterns, though their significance is probably
different) but games are over much quicker, which is an important
consideration if you want to have fast games on a non-real-time
server.  Games take long enough as it is, and quicker feedback is
useful for learning.

It seems like 13x13 would be a good intermediate step for computer go.

- Brian
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Re: [computer-go] SGF parsing

[Joshua Shriver]

Do you have a good example of a regular Go game in sgf?
A lot of the examples I found on the SGF spec site seem confusing, and
not sure if they're even for Go or backgammon, etc.

Also is there a command line go conversion program kinda like
pgnextract that lets you modify sgf datasets. Like strip comments,
etc. All I really want from a program perspective is move lists and
user ranking.

-Josh

On 7/9/07, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 11:49 -0400, Joshua Shriver wrote:
> I really like the pgn format, just viewing it you can get a feel for
> what is going on. I tried to figure out the SGF format by looking at
> it, and have no clue what's going on.

SGF has a real grammer associated with it and is technically superior.
It provides support for marking up boards and things.  However for
simple storage requirements, you probably don't need that.

However, PGN is wonderfully readable and for what you want more useful
in a practical way.   Unfortunately, it is not "standard" for GO and you
will be sorry if you want to be able to see a game using a reader for
instance.

I would stick with SGF for Go.  It's isn't that difficult to figure out.
You can grab an SGF from somewhere and use it as an example.

What we be really useful, is a conversion utility so that you could use
both.  PGN is more compact but if you zip or compress games it probably
doesn't make any difference.

- Don


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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[Chris Fant]

In that case, you would probably rather have actual Go positions,
right?  Just grab a bunch of CGOS games (assuming you are studying
9x9) and pick a game and move number at random.


On 7/9/07, George Dahl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:



On 7/9/07, Erik van der Werf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 7/9/07, George Dahl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I think this is what I want.  Thanks!  So I might have to repeat this
> > a few hundred times to actually get a legal position?
>
> Are you aware that nearly all of these positions will be final positions?
>
> So I'll repeat my question: why do you need any of this? If you only
> need final positions it's probably much better to take them from real
> games, and if you actually need middle game positions you will have to
> use a different procedure...
>
> E.
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Won't the final positions be much more likely to be rejected since they are
much more likely to be illegal?  What is your claim about the distribution
of the number of stones on the board with this scheme?

 I am hoping to use this method to help generate training data for a
learning system that learns certain graph properties of the board that can
also be computed deterministically from the board position.  I know that
might sound crazy, but it is working towards the eventual goal of creating
feature extractors for Go positions.  By learning to map Go positions as an
array of stones to Go positions as graphs of strings (instead of just
mapping them with a hand coded algorithm) I can take intermediate results in
the learner's computation and use it as a feature for another learner.
- George

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RE: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[David Fotland]

> I'll bet there have been millions of 9x9 games by very strong 
> players, they are probably just not readily accessible.  

Very unlikely.  I'm a strong player (but not very strong - 3 dan amateur),
and I've played perhaps a dozen 9x9 games with people who were just learning
the rules.  I played in a couple of 9x9 tournaments on the crazy go day at
the go congress (along with 3-d go, hex go, etc).  Most beginners only need
a couple of games on 9x9 before they start paying 19x19.  9x9 go is not very
interesting to strong players, since it's not really go.  I might as well be
playing checkers or 9 men's morris :)

> But with something like CGOS a program like Mogo has bragging 
> rights. It's possible one of the  commercial programs is 
> better than Mogo, or
> perhaps another amateur program is better.   But in most 
> peoples minds,
> Mogo is the best at 9x9 because it was willing to take the 
> risk on CGOS
> (in all likelihood, it really IS the best and few doubt 
> this.)

I can confirm that Mogo is quite a bit stronger than the commercial programs
at 9x9 go.  I'm not very interested in 9x9 go.  Most of the commercial
programs have algorithms that don't scale well down to 9x9, since they are
all designed for 19x19 go.  The 19x19 knowledge that makes them strong does
not apply at 9x9.  Since people don't play 9x9 go, there is no incentive
commercial program authors to make their programs strong at 9x9.

> 
> 
> Here is what we need in order to achieve a Dan level 19x19 
> player within a couple of years in my opinion:
> 
>   COMPETITION
> 
> Not once a year, but constant.   A very high profile occasional
> competition however is still a great and useful thing to have.  
> 
>   FEEDBACK
> 
> You need to always know where you stand so you can constantly  be goal
> oriented.   Where you stand in relation to others that is.  
> 
>   STATUS
> 
> There must be some kind of recognition, highly visible 
> acknowledgment of
> the pecking order to stimulate and motivate the competitors.  

I agree.  Progress was very swift in the Ing competition, with programs
improving from about 25 kyu to about 5-8 kyu.  Since 2000 the competition
and status has been missing, so progress has stopped, or at least is not
visible.  The algorithms that worked well on a 33 MHz 386 with 0.5 MB memory
are very different from what is possible on today's machines.
 
> 
> Once money and status come into the picture big time,  then cheating
> will start to play a major role. 

Cheating did play big role.  Even though Ing and FOST had on-site
tournaments, there was still the issue of reverse engineering the top
programs.

> 
> I also have to say that Nick Wedd's monthly tournaments are 
> critically important and unquestionably a big part of the 
> sudden progress in
> computer GO.   I think those tournaments and CGOS complement 
> each other
> in a beautiful way.   Probably more credit goes to Nick Wedd's
> tournaments than CGOS.   Those tournament inspired CGOS and they also
> motivated (in my opinion) a lot of progress in computer chess before
> CGOS was even up and running.But they do complement each other -
> CGOS provides instrumentation that KGS is lacking.  

Nick's tournaments and CGOS have made a huge difference in revitalizing
computer go.  I'd like to see both expanded to 19x19 with 30 minute per
player time limits and some overtime.
 
> 
> - Don

-David Fotland


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[computer-go] SGF parsing

[Joshua Shriver]

Besides the original specification at http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/
anyone recommend an easier to read and go specific document for
parsing sgf files?

I really like the pgn format, just viewing it you can get a feel for
what is going on. I tried to figure out the SGF format by looking at
it, and have no clue what's going on.

Any help is appreciated, trying to write a parse in C

-Josh
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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[George Dahl]

On 7/9/07, Erik van der Werf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


On 7/9/07, George Dahl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think this is what I want.  Thanks!  So I might have to repeat this
> a few hundred times to actually get a legal position?

Are you aware that nearly all of these positions will be final positions?

So I'll repeat my question: why do you need any of this? If you only
need final positions it's probably much better to take them from real
games, and if you actually need middle game positions you will have to
use a different procedure...

E.
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Won't the final positions be much more likely to be rejected since they are
much more likely to be illegal?  What is your claim about the distribution
of the number of stones on the board with this scheme?

I am hoping to use this method to help generate training data for a
learning system that learns certain graph properties of the board that can
also be computed deterministically from the board position.  I know that
might sound crazy, but it is working towards the eventual goal of creating
feature extractors for Go positions.  By learning to map Go positions as an
array of stones to Go positions as graphs of strings (instead of just
mapping them with a hand coded algorithm) I can take intermediate results in
the learner's computation and use it as a feature for another learner.
- George
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Re: [computer-go] Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[Jason House]

On 7/9/07, Jason House <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:




On 7/9/07, Nick Wedd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> >Also, HB04 does not show up in the names of programs page. Of course,
> >the housebot logins are piling up:
> >HouseBot: Intended for stable version of HouseBot. It's the only
> >ranked account.
> >HB04 - Very old HouseBot 0.4 - Extremely fast play based on 1-ply move
> >heuristics
> >HB05 - HouseBot 0.5 - Global alpha-beta search
> >HBotSVN - Latest and greatest version of HouseBot, generally
> >experimental. Once upon a time, it was version 0.5 . In this last
> >tournament, it was version 0.6.
>
> I've added all that now.  Thank you for explaining these differences,
> and for pointing out the other errors.
>

There's still one problem...
The description of HB04 says "Old version 0.4 of HouseBot. Uses MC/UCB, no
UCT".  In reality, it does not do MC (or UCB) at all.  It votes on moves
based on simple heuristics such as descending to protect a group's skirt,
placing stones in atari, forming benson unconditional life, etc...  It's
1-ply logic like UCB, but has absolutely no MC element.  That's why it plays
blazingly fast...  Games of HB04 vs. IdiotBot have been known to finish in
seconds.



I should have added a few more things to this...
* The UCB version was HBotSVN, but I wouldn't recommend adding that to the
description of it.  (Actually, the UCB simply represents the configuration
for the tournament)
* The old entries for the various flavors of HouseBot were left on the bot
names page.  While I would recommend deleting those old entries, I'd
appreciate it if you kept the link to the homepage:
http://housebot.sourceforge.net 
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Re: [computer-go] Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[Jason House]

On 7/9/07, Nick Wedd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>Also, HB04 does not show up in the names of programs page. Of course,
>the housebot logins are piling up:
>HouseBot: Intended for stable version of HouseBot. It's the only
>ranked account.
>HB04 - Very old HouseBot 0.4 - Extremely fast play based on 1-ply move
>heuristics
>HB05 - HouseBot 0.5 - Global alpha-beta search
>HBotSVN - Latest and greatest version of HouseBot, generally
>experimental. Once upon a time, it was version 0.5 . In this last
>tournament, it was version 0.6.

I've added all that now.  Thank you for explaining these differences,
and for pointing out the other errors.



There's still one problem...
The description of HB04 says "Old version 0.4 of HouseBot. Uses MC/UCB, no
UCT".  In reality, it does not do MC (or UCB) at all.  It votes on moves
based on simple heuristics such as descending to protect a group's skirt,
placing stones in atari, forming benson unconditional life, etc...  It's
1-ply logic like UCB, but has absolutely no MC element.  That's why it plays
blazingly fast...  Games of HB04 vs. IdiotBot have been known to finish in
seconds.
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Re: [computer-go] Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[Nick Wedd]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 
elife <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes

Hi Nick,
  The Formal division result in http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/28/index.html 
is different with the http://www.gokgs.com/tournEntrants.jsp?so
rt=s&id=300 about dpthought
and MonteGNU. Which one is correct?


The KGS page is correct.  See my reply to Hideki Kato.  It is reassuring 
to see that people actually read these reports properly  :)


Nick
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Re: [computer-go] Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[Jason House]

On 7/9/07, Nick Wedd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


In message
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jason
House <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Open Division Round 5
>- I personally thought the IdiotBot/HBotSVN game had an interesting
>end position. Despite the extreme weakness of HBotSVN (simply using
>the UCB algorithm), the position was problematic for several monte
>carlo engines. HBotSVN thought it had a 100% chance of victory though
>the bulk of the end of the game because the random playouts assumed
>idiotbot would fill one of its eyes.

I am interested to see that UCB does indeed have that effect.  We were
discussing it this morning, and wondering if a pure UCB program would be
happy about its opponent have a two-point group, expecting one of them
to get filled in.

But I doubt this would be of general interest to programmers?



UCB has nothing to do with it.  UCB is simply 1-ply UCT.

The interesting part is the anti-eye-filling rule used as part of the MC
playouts.  As far as I know (and this was mostly confirmed in the computer
go chat room), eye-points are detected by the same means.  All adjacent
points (4 directions) must be the same color, and the surrounding points (8
directions) must have no more than one break, where the edge is included.

Here are ALL of the legal eye patterns if you allow them to be rotated.
XXX
X X
XXX

XX
X X
XXX

XXO
X X
XXX


|XX
| X
|XX

|XX
| X
|---


The edge group in the game was something very close to the following:
|XXX
|X X
| XX
|XX

Note how the lower eye fails to be detected as an eye.  There are other
examples that can be created that are not detected as eyes, but this is what
came up in the game.
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Re: [computer-go] Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[elife]

Hi Nick,
 The Formal division result in
http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/28/index.html is different with the
http://www.gokgs.com/tournEntrants.jsp?sort=s&id=300 about dpthought and
MonteGNU. Which one is correct?
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Re: [computer-go] Re: Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[Nick Wedd]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Hideki Kato 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes

Hi Nick, thank you for the tournament.

I have two questions. One is the start time of the tournament.
According to the page: http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/index.html,
it started 16:00 GMT but it started 24:00 JST (+900). I guess it
started 15:00 GMT. #DST problem?


Yes, my mistake, a DST problem.  Some software automatically allows for 
DS, some automatically converts times to remove the DS correction.  It 
always confuses me.  I envy you living in a country where the clocks 
tell the right time throughout the year.



The other is about the result. The results on
http://www.gokgs.com/tournEntrants.jsp?sort=s&id=300
and one on http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/28/index.html
are different. Which one is correct?
# Either is OK for me.


The former is correct, the latter was my error, which I have now 
corrected.  And this was not a copying error by me (as many in the past 
have been).  I assume that I copied the results from the KGS results 
page after all the games were over, but before I had "closed" the 
tournament, so that two of the games had somehow not registered.


Thank you for pointing out these errors.

Nick
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Re: [computer-go] Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[Nick Wedd]

In message 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jason 
House <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes

Open Division Round 1
 - You mention AyaBot2 joining it's game with CrazyStone.  That should
be HBotSVN.


Yes, my mistake, now corrected


 - "Printing name and version number" happens when the bot crashes,
kgsGtp terminates, and a script automatically reconnects the bot, and
the cycle repeats.  It may be better to say that the SimonBot engine
kept crashing when trying to score the game?


Yes.  Now rewritten as you suggest.


Open Division Round 5
 - I personally thought the IdiotBot/HBotSVN game had an interesting
end position.  Despite the extreme weakness of HBotSVN (simply using
the UCB algorithm), the position was problematic for several monte
carlo engines.  HBotSVN thought it had a 100% chance of victory though
the bulk of the end of the game because the random playouts assumed
idiotbot would fill one of its eyes.


I am interested to see that UCB does indeed have that effect.  We were 
discussing it this morning, and wondering if a pure UCB program would be 
happy about its opponent have a two-point group, expecting one of them 
to get filled in.


But I doubt this would be of general interest to programmers?


Also, HB04 does not show up in the names of programs page.  Of course,
the housebot logins are piling up:
HouseBot: Intended for stable version of HouseBot.  It's the only
ranked account.
HB04 - Very old HouseBot 0.4 - Extremely fast play based on 1-ply move
heuristics
HB05 - HouseBot 0.5 - Global alpha-beta search
HBotSVN - Latest and greatest version of HouseBot, generally
experimental.  Once upon a time, it was version 0.5 .  In this last
tournament, it was version 0.6.


I've added all that now.  Thank you for explaining these differences, 
and for pointing out the other errors.


Nick
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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Don Dailey]

Very well said Jacques.  I agree with  everything you said.  
A couple of comment below.

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 12:02 +0100, Jacques Basaldúa wrote:
> Except for the relation between not finding 9x9 games
> which is *not* real go, you can find as many 19x19 games
> as you want, I agree with Chrilly.

I'll bet there have been millions of 9x9 games by very strong players,
they are probably just not readily accessible.  

> Let's accept it. We are amateurs, all except those who
> are paid by some University to research on go. And even
> some of them are, because a serious go project takes many
> years and some have one semester. We have other jobs and
> (at least myself) try to work less for the money and dedicate
> 20 hours per week to go programming. We would be very happy
> to work 60 hours a week on go programming if someone else
> paid the bills, but that's not the case. I my opinion, the
> most important software project of the decade, i.e.
> writing a non-Microsoft _compatible_ operating system, is
> called wine http://www.winehq.org/ and also looks amateurish.
> (I don't really know who works there.) 3D studio and other
> successful projects started as amateur job, so there is nothing
> wrong in being amateurs.

I use wine but I personally don't place a great deal of importance on
it.  I put linux as the single most important amateur project (at least
as it started that way) because it is an open source high quality
operating system that competes favorably with it's only serious
competitor, non-free Unix.  

Wine is important - no question about it - because the marketing genius
behind Windows has created a huge software base.  Some of this software
is high quality stuff that linux users are even willing to use.  

> There is no program today which is so much better than free
> programs that is worth paying for it, so we can't blame
> the users. We should blame ourselves for not being able to
> write a program that is worth its price.

I think computer Go could take off if it were promoted correctly.   I
don't think it was a complete coincidence that 9x9 computer GO really
took off when Nick Wedd starting having monthly computer tournaments and
later when CGOS went up.CGOS was created by the computer Go
community - a response to a strong desire in the community to have
something like it.It provides competition,  instant feedback and to
a certain extent a sense of status or reward for accomplishing something
good. 

The progress has been enormous in a short time.  When CGOS went up I
think the strongest program was about 1700 by the CGOS scale.   But now
1700 is a pretty mediocre rating on CGOS!I was completely astounded
because I did not believe 2000 would be attained any time in the near
future - but even 2000 is a modest rating on CGOS now.   

The progress would still of course be there without CGOS,  because the
Monte Carlo paradigm was alive before CGOS.But 9x9 would have
remained basically unmeasured except in invisible private testing.   One
might have heard claims of advancements and papers would be written but
with such things you almost always have to trust the paper author and
his statistics.   There is little or no independent verification of
results possible.

If we want to see rapid 19x19 progress, we need these 3 elements:

   1.  competition
   2.  feedback
   3.  status.

This is what something like CGOS provides.  The rating and rank provides
status and of course the competition is intense and the feedback is
instant.

Also, it's hard to beg-off when you have something fairly visible like
CGOS.  If you have a strong commercial program,  and you are in the
business of making money,  it's very tempting to rest on your laurels.
You can advertise victories and championships but once you have obtained
them,  playing in further competitions risks spoiling your reputation
(and thus your income.)  

But with something like CGOS a program like Mogo has bragging rights.
It's possible one of the  commercial programs is better than Mogo, or
perhaps another amateur program is better.   But in most peoples minds,
Mogo is the best at 9x9 because it was willing to take the risk on CGOS
(in all likelihood, it really IS the best and few doubt this.)There
are many reasons you might NOT play on CGOS or in tournaments, but most
people will probably believe (whether true or not) that you have nothing
substantial to show.   Of course you simply may not care and that's ok.
But you can't make viable claims unless you show up at tournaments, or
play on CGOS or in some way take the necessary risks to prove what you
have.Tournaments are quite useful and provide visibility and status,
but they are infrequent,  a very high investment in time and expense for
programmers and to be quite frank,  they don't really make clear who the
best player really is.   Any good program has a chance to win a
tournament.


Here is what we need in order to achieve a Dan level 19x19 player within
a co

[computer-go] Re: Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[Hideki Kato]

Hi Nick, thank you for the tournament.

I have two questions. One is the start time of the tournament. 
According to the page: http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/index.html, 
it started 16:00 GMT but it started 24:00 JST (+900). I guess it 
started 15:00 GMT. #DST problem?

The other is about the result. The results on 
http://www.gokgs.com/tournEntrants.jsp?sort=s&id=300
and one on http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/28/index.html
are different. Which one is correct?
# Either is OK for me.

-gg

Nick Wedd: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>  which was the undefeated winner of both divisions in yesterday's KGS 
>bot tournament.  My report is at
>http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/28/index.html
>
>Nick
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Re: [computer-go] Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[Jason House]

Open Division Round 1
- You mention AyaBot2 joining it's game with CrazyStone.  That should be
HBotSVN.
- "Printing name and version number" happens when the bot crashes, kgsGtp
terminates, and a script automatically reconnects the bot, and the cycle
repeats.  It may be better to say that the SimonBot engine kept crashing
when trying to score the game?

Open Division Round 5
- I personally thought the IdiotBot/HBotSVN game had an interesting end
position.  Despite the extreme weakness of HBotSVN (simply using the UCB
algorithm), the position was problematic for several monte carlo engines.
HBotSVN thought it had a 100% chance of victory though the bulk of the end
of the game because the random playouts assumed idiotbot would fill one of
its eyes.

Also, HB04 does not show up in the names of programs page.  Of course, the
housebot logins are piling up:
HouseBot: Intended for stable version of HouseBot.  It's the only ranked
account.
HB04 - Very old HouseBot 0.4 - Extremely fast play based on 1-ply move
heuristics
HB05 - HouseBot 0.5 - Global alpha-beta search
HBotSVN - Latest and greatest version of HouseBot, generally experimental.
Once upon a time, it was version 0.5.  In this last tournament, it was
version 0.6.


On 7/9/07, Nick Wedd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


  which was the undefeated winner of both divisions in yesterday's KGS
bot tournament.  My report is at
http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/28/index.html

Nick
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[computer-go] Congratulations to Crazy Stone!

[Nick Wedd]

 which was the undefeated winner of both divisions in yesterday's KGS 
bot tournament.  My report is at

http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/28/index.html

Nick
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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[Darren Cook]

>> I think this is what I want.  Thanks!  So I might have to repeat this
>> a few hundred times to actually get a legal position?
> 
> Are you aware that nearly all of these positions will be final positions?
> ...if you actually need middle game positions you will have to
> use a different procedure...

(The procedure from Paul Pogonyshev is repeated below.)

On average it will have 54 stones, 27 empty points. It you want a more
middle-game-ish position, increase the probability of an empty point
(e.g. empty 0.6, black 0.2, white 0.2). This will also give you a legal
position more frequently.

Darren


  1. create a really random position, i.e. traverse all intersection and
 assign a black/white/empty state at random to each;

  2. if it happens to be not legal, discard and repeat step 1.
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Re: [computer-go] 9x9 games wanted and the next big challenge

[Jacques Basaldúa]

Except for the relation between not finding 9x9 games
which is *not* real go, you can find as many 19x19 games
as you want, I agree with Chrilly.

Let's accept it. We are amateurs, all except those who
are paid by some University to research on go. And even
some of them are, because a serious go project takes many
years and some have one semester. We have other jobs and
(at least myself) try to work less for the money and dedicate
20 hours per week to go programming. We would be very happy
to work 60 hours a week on go programming if someone else
paid the bills, but that's not the case. I my opinion, the
most important software project of the decade, i.e.
writing a non-Microsoft _compatible_ operating system, is
called wine http://www.winehq.org/ and also looks amateurish.
(I don't really know who works there.) 3D studio and other
successful projects started as amateur job, so there is nothing
wrong in being amateurs.

There is no program today which is so much better than free
programs that is worth paying for it, so we can't blame
the users. We should blame ourselves for not being able to
write a program that is worth its price.

Also, I don't even doubt that the day computer go can challenge
the strongest pro player, the media will understand the importance
of the event. (In fact, computer go is already in the media: The
Economist, The Times, Scientific American, Abcnews, Reuters, have
all written articles in 2007.) And companies will understand that
if they want their names related to a historical event like that
with no possible repetition in the future, something like the
first man on the moon, they will have to pay for it. The money
payed for deep blue will be like comparing 1950s with 2007s
football contracts. "Go is played only by a small freak community."
That's not true. Like chess players were admired in the previous
century as superintelligent human beings and today no one is
interested in chess except the chess community. Go still keeps the
"supreme form of intelligence" myth. And after go, there is void.
Of course, you can always invent new games, but you cannot invent
millenary games with millions of players.

Someone is going to make millions with this. Don't know when, don't
know how. I wish I knew ;-)


Jacques.
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Re: [computer-go] Re: 9x9 games wanted

[Martin Møller Skarbiniks Pedersen]

I want to prepare an opening book and I am looking for a 9x9 games
collection. So far I have only found in total 244 games, which is for a book
much too less (I am used to have the CB-Megabase).
Is there a larger collection with at least >= 5 Amateur Dan Level available?
If the price is reasonable, I am willing to pay for a professionally made
collection.


I have collected 9x9 games from nngs.
http://tusk.dyndns.org/archive/go/1995-2000-go9.zip

Regards
Martin
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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[Erik van der Werf]

On 7/9/07, George Dahl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I think this is what I want.  Thanks!  So I might have to repeat this
a few hundred times to actually get a legal position?


Are you aware that nearly all of these positions will be final positions?

So I'll repeat my question: why do you need any of this? If you only
need final positions it's probably much better to take them from real
games, and if you actually need middle game positions you will have to
use a different procedure...

E.
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Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position

[Harri Salakoski]

I think this is what I want.  Thanks!  So I might have to repeat this
a few hundred times to actually get a legal position?
- George


Implemented that and my test serie of number of rounds needed to generate 
legal board position is quite expected.


count=111, count=36, count=28, count=20, count=14, count=150, count=78, 
count=13, count=149, count=113, count=186, count=43


count=149, count=178, count=103, count=57, count=21, count=23, count=47, 
count=25, count=221, count=44, count=82


So it is actually 1.2% according ( 
http://homepages.cwi.nl:80/~tromp/go/legal.html) .

So average is fortunately less than hundred, so it is quite usable.
t. Harri
- Original Message - 
From: "George Dahl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 8:55 AM
Subject: Re: [computer-go] creating a "random" position



On 7/8/07, Paul Pogonyshev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

George Dahl wrote:
> How would one go about creating a random board position with a uniform
> distribution over all legal positions?  Is this even possible?  I am
> not quite sure what I mean by uniform.  If one flipped a three sided
> coin to determine if each vertex was white,black or empty, then one
> would have to deal with stones with no liberties somehow.  Could those
> just removed?

As I remember from theory of probability, you can create such a uniformly
"random" position this way[1]:

  1. create a really random position, i.e. traverse all intersection and
 assign a black/white/empty state at random to each;

  2. if it happens to be not legal, discard and repeat step 1.

I believe it should be very fast, and this mustn't be difficult to check.
I.e. rate of discards should be low enough for speed of algorithm to be
speed of step 1 times C, where C is small.

However, this will tend to give you very artificial-looking positions.
Whether it is fine for your use-case, you know better.

  [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_sampling

Paul



I think this is what I want.  Thanks!  So I might have to repeat this
a few hundred times to actually get a legal position?
- George
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