[Computer-go] MiniGo open sourced

[Brian Lee]

Hi everybody,

I'm happy to announce MiniGo is now open source.

https://github.com/tensorflow/minigo

We're not aiming for a top-level Go AI; we're merely aiming for a correct,
very readable implementation of the AlphaGoZero algorithm and demonstration
of Google Cloud / Kubernetes / TensorFlow. (The code currently clocks in at
around 2000 lines of Python; 3000 with tests.) Of course, in the end,
strength is the best way to tell that your implementation is correct :)

A few Googlers, including myself and Andrew Jackson, have been working on
this, but we're otherwise completely unaffiliated with DeepMind and the
AlphaGo project.

We intend to be as open as possible in our development of MiniGo and
welcome your contributions!
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[Computer-go] Pisa: International Conference on Research in Mind Games

[Ingo Althöfer]

Hello,

this is the Call for Papers for the Conference
"Research on Mind Games", to take place during
the European Go Congress in Pisa, Italy.

Keynote speaker will be Gian-Carlo Pascutto, head
of the Leela Zero project.

There exists a video appetizer on the European Go Congress 2018:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7wqT4DLsp0

See you in Pisa, Ingo.


**
International Conference on Research in Mind Games
August 7-8, 2018 at the EGC in Pisa, Italy

Both original and review papers are welcome from all fields of research in mind 
games. In particular, from mathematics, computer science and social sciences.
The conference will take place during the 62nd European Go Congress and the 1st 
World Mind Sport Championship in Pisa. It will cover all mind games, e.g. 
Chess, Droughts, Shogi, Bridge, Amazons, Poker, Backgammon, Blokus etc. The 
scope of the conference includes, but is not limited to the topics:

- Computer Play by Neural Networks
- Learning Games in Zero Mode
- Evaluation of Games by Computer Programs
- Game design with computer help
- Cheating in Game Play (E-Doping) and Cheater Detection
- Solving Games
- Games and Education
- Serious Gaming
- Games and LEGO®
- Optical Recording of Games
- Computer-Aided Analysis of Master Games etc.

Keynote Lecture:
Gian-Carlo Pascutto (Belgium), head of the Leela Zero project, 
an open source project following Google’s Alpha Zero.

Tentative schedule 
August 7: Social dinner 
August 8: Presentations, discussions, Pair-Go with mixed human-computer teams; 
Participants can take part on an excursion on August 9. (Details will be 
announced.)

Venue: Congress Palace, Pisa (Italy), 
within the European Go Congress 2018 (see www.egc2018.it)

Conference home page:
The papers of the conference will be published online on 
mind.uni-trier.de and www.egc2018.it

Conference fee:
The conference itself is free of charge, dinner and excursion are not included, 
participation on further events at the European Go Congress requires 
registration, see www.egc2018.it for details.

Important Dates:
Deadline for Submission of Extended Abstracts (pdf, 1-2 pages): March 31, 2018
Notification of Acceptance: May 2, 2018
Submission of Full papers and updated version of the extended abstracts: June 
30, 2018
Submissions by email to: ingo.althoe...@uni-jena.de


Main organizers:
Prof. Ingo Althöfer, University of Jena Prof.
Marc Oliver Rieger, University of Trier
 
Local organizing committee:
Carlo Metta, University of Florence
Prof. Maurizio Parton, University of Chieti-Pescara
Dr. Francesco Potortì, CNR-ISTI, Pisa
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[Computer-go] Final CFP: IEEE Transactions on Games: Special Issue on "Game Competition Frameworks for Research and Education"

[Jialin Liu]

[Apologises for multiple postings]

Call for Papers - IEEE Transactions on Games (ToG)
Special Issue on Game Competition Frameworks for Research and Education

Editors: Jialin Liu, Diego Perez-Liebana, Tristan Cazenave, Ruck Thawonmas


Submission Deadline: 8 February 2018

* IEEE Transactions on Games (ToG) is the former IEEE Transactions on 
Computational Intelligence and AI in Games (TCIAIG).


Games are an ideal domain to study computational intelligence methods because 
they provide affordable, competitive, dynamic, reproducible environments 
suitable for testing new search algorithms, pattern-based evaluation methods, 
or machine learning concepts.Diverse game competitions have been designed for 
different research purposes and some of them have been successfully organised 
for 10 years, such as the game Go competition series and PacMan competition 
series. The past game competitions organised in conferences, industry or as 
private leagues have covered various games, from single-player board/video 
games to real-time strategy games. In different competitions, the participants 
are invited to submit an agent to play a specific game or a set of unknown 
games without intervention of human at least as good as professional human 
players, or to submit an agent to design a game or game rules. These have not 
only received submissions from academic institutions, but also attracted the 
attention of the games industry. Dozens of universities have used different 
game competition frameworks in modules of Game Design, Artificial Intelligence 
or Machine Learning. 

The following is a list of suggested, not exclusive, competitions for this 
special issue:
Angry Birds Level Generation
Computer Game Olympiads (including Chess, Amazons, Backgammon, Bridge, Chinese 
Chess, Dots and Boxes, Draughts, Go, ...)
Dota2 Bot
Fighting Game AI
Game Data Mining
General Video Game AI
Geometry Friends Cooperative Game AI
microRTS AI
Ms. Pac-Man Vs Ghost Team
Showdown AI
StarCraft AI
Text-Based Adventure AI
Visual Doom AI
We invite the submission of papers about high quality work on game competition 
frameworks, entry submissions, their use as research testbeds to obtain novel 
experimental results, or as educational and teaching material. Regular, short 
and letter papers are invited to this special issue, with the following 
suggestion for these lengths: 
Letter papers detailing use of competitions as educational or teaching material 
OR describing competition entries; 
Short papers with a technical description of the game competition framework 
(including link to the released code of the benchmark) OR a description of 
competition entries; 
Regular papers describing work using a competition benchmark as a research 
environment for novel experimental results, OR description  of the game 
competition including analysis of the top entries and final results.
Competition organisers and participants are encouraged to communicate and 
collaborate with each other to avoid duplicating descriptions of framework, 
rules, entries, etc. For more information, see the special issue webpage 
.

Authors should follow normal TOG guidelines for their submissions, but clearly 
identify their papers for this special issue during the submission process. 
Extended versions of previously published conference or workshop papers are 
welcome, provided that the journal paper is a significant extension, and is 
accompanied by a cover letter explaining the additional contribution. See here 

 for author information and page length limit.___
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[Computer-go] Final CFP: IEEE WCCI/CEC Special Session - Computational Intelligence for Games

[Jialin Liu]

[Apologises for multiple postings]

Call for Papers: Special Session on Computational Intelligence for Games
IEEE WCCI / CEC 2018  - Rio de Janeiro, 
Brazil, 8-13 July 2018
Chairs: Daniel Ashlock, Jialin Liu, Santiago Ontañón
Webpages: http://www.ecomp.poli.br/~wcci2018/cross-disciplinary-sessions/#cdss8 
 and 
http://gameai.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/sscig-wcci2018/ 



Important Dates
Paper submission: 1 February 2018 (extended deadline)
Notification: 15 March 2018

Please select “CDSS-08: Computational Intelligence for Games” as topic when 
making a submission via http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/cec2018/upload.php 
.

Corresponding contact: Daniel Ashlock >

Aim
Games are an ideal domain to study computational intelligence (CI) methods 
because they provide affordable, competitive, dynamic, reproducible 
environments suitable for testing new search algorithms, pattern-based 
evaluation methods, or learning concepts.  Games scale from simple problems for 
developing algorithms to incredibly hard problems for testing algorithms to the 
limit.  They are also interesting to observe, fun to play, and very attractive 
to students. Additionally, there is great potential for CI methods to improve 
the design and development of both computer games as well as tabletop games, 
board games, and puzzles.  This special session aims at gathering leaders and 
neophytes in games research as well as practitioners in this field who research 
applications of computational intelligence methods to computer games.

Topics
In general, papers are welcome that consider all kinds of applications of 
methods (evolutionary computation, supervised learning, neural learning, 
unsupervised learning, fuzzy systems, game-tree search, rolling horizon 
algorithms, MCTS, etc.) to games (card games, board games, mathematical games, 
action games, strategy games, role-playing games, arcade games, serious games, 
etc.). 

Examples include but are not limited to
Adaptation in games
Automatic game testing
Novel games that use CI techniques
Coevolution in games
Comparative studies (e.g. CI versus human-designed players)
Dynamic difficulty in games
Games as test-beds for algorithms
Imitating human players
Learning to play games
Multi-agent and multi-strategy learning
Player/opponent modelling
Procedural content generation
CI for Serious Games (e.g., games for health care, education or training)
Results of game-based CI and open competitions

About the organisers
Daniel Ashlock is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Guelph.  He 
is a member of the IEEE Computational
Intelligence Societies’ Games Technical Committee, serves as an associate 
editor of both the IEEE Transactions on Games and the
new journal Game and Puzzle Design.  Dr. Ashlock is a life-long referee of 
roleplaying games and loves the problems that arise in game and puzzle design.  
Dr. Ashlock is the author of 270 peer reviewed scientific publications, about a 
third of which are on the topic of games, including mathematical games, 
procedural content generation, and puzzle design.  Across his work the issue of 
representation, the study of how to phrase problems for the computer, appears 
in a starring role.  Dr. Ashlock is the Chief of Innovation at Ashlock and 
McGuinness Consulting, Inc.  He teaches and does research in Guelph, Ontario, 
Canada.

Jialin Liu is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Queen Mary University of 
London (QMUL, UK) since the creation of the Game AI research group in August 
2017. Before joining QMUL, she was a Senior Research Officer at the Games and 
AI research group of University of Essex (UK) between March 2016 and July 2017. 
 Jialin received her PhD in Computer Science from the University Paris-Saclay & 
Inria Saclay (France) in December 2015. Her research interests include general 
game playing, robust game playing, automatic game design, black-box noisy 
optimisation and portfolio algorithms. Jialin is chairing the IEEE CIS Student 
Games-Based Competitions Sub-Committee and also serves in the Games Technical 
Committee, Webinars Sub-Committee, Women in Computational Intelligence 
Sub-Committee and Young Professionals Sub-Committee. She serves as Program 
Co-Chair at IEEE CIG18.

Santiago Ontañón is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department 
at Drexel University. His main research interests are game AI, case-based 
reasoning and machine learning, fields in which he has published more than 150 
peer reviewed papers. He obtained his PhD from the Autonomous University of 
Barcelona (UAB), Spain in 2005. Before joining Drexel University, he held 
postdoctoral research positions at the Artificial Intelligence Research 
Institute (IIIA) in Barcelona, Spain, at the Georgia 

Re: [Computer-go] WIRED is reading our list

[Ingo Althöfer]

Hello,

Ke Jie did play a second handicap game against Fine Art
and won convincingly (in 72 moves).

There is a translation of an interview given by him
at reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/7suord/on_ke_jies_2_handicap_games/?st=jcuhzf2y=f5737baa

Most of all I like Ke Jie's words in the final paragraph:
> In the face of AI, what is pride?
> Can you eat it?
>
> All I know is that I love Go.
> I am passionate about Go.

Ingo.
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