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Go Playing Programs
   

Hi all out there.

Which is the best Go playing program for PC out there?


Well, I'm biased :) But I think The Many Faces of Go is the best one. Handtalk is one or two stones stronger, but Many Faces has many extra features missing from other go programs. It has a joseki dictionary that you can use for reference or to test your knowledge, with about 60,000 moves. It has a very good game editor that understands both .sgf and .go formats. You can easily add/remove variations, or insert missing moves, or even move stones that are on the wrong point. It has a great tutorial for beginners and includes all of the go problems from Graded Go Problems Vol 1.

And it has the best, most realistic graphics.

--David Fotland


I would have to agree somewhat. If one is trying to learn the game of Go, I think Many Faces is good for people from beginners through upper kyu players. It has a lot of instructional tools as well as multiple levels of play. If the purpose of your program is for editing games and creating demonstration games or lessons, there are limitations with Many Faces. For instance you cannot add multiple stones on the same move for demonstration purposes. For editing, I think a free program called WinMGT is very useful, but a little less user friendly.

-- Steve Rothman? 7K


GNU Go is a freely available Go playing program that works under Unix, Windows and Macs. It also plays on NNGS (~15-16k in Jan 2001).

Here are the URLs:

Main Page: [ext] http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/

Devel Page: [ext] http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/devel.html

GNU Go on NNGS: [ext] http://nngs.cosmic.org/cgi-bin/ngraph.cgi?n=gnugo

dnerra: As of today (2002-04-25), GNU Go 3.2 is available at the Main Page -- it's much stronger than 3.0 (wins 50% of 3 stone handicap games against it), uses less RAM, and is about as fast -- well worth the upgrade!


Well, surely I am biased as well :-) Definitely, GNU Go is the best available Go program!!!

Oops it is not? Well, so why don't YOU help to improve it? Be assured, there is a lot to do. Some current hot topics in the GNU Go development:

  • Tactical reading ("Can white caputre this string?") is working well, but needs speed-ups.
  • Life-and-Death reading always needs improvements.
  • GNU Go's concept of influence and territory is not too bad. But: How to value the strategic effect ("Move A strengthens group B and weakens opponent's group C") of a move precisely and robustly?
  • GNU Go will probably soon have a good tactical reader that can analyze connections and cut. But how should it use this information? E.g. A is connected to B, and B is connected to C, but A is not connected to C - are these three separate groups?

Other less hot topics that will be hot the moment someone gets interested in them may include an intelligent fuseki module (or is that not necessary), an intelligent way to automatically generate a big joseki database (intelligent means that this does not make GNU Go play josekis it does not understand) e. g. from professional games, and the perfect way to handle kos has yet to be found as well (GNU Go currently does not distinguish ordinary kos from multistep kos, approach move kos or kos with lots of local threats.)

Any ideas? Just e-mail gnugo@gnu.org.

Having said that: ManyFaces? IS a nice program :) I liked it quite a lot when I was beginner, although it was less strong at that time.

dnerra

As a side note: In a way, David Fotland himself initiated GNU Go! In a post to rec.games.go a couple of years ago, he suggested (after explaining why he -- understandably -- would not like to do the tedious work to port ManyFaces? to Linux), he suggested that the Linux people should get together and try to write a Go program themselves. Daniel Bump replied "That seems like a good idea", started working on such a project, and he is still the (co-)maintainer of GNU Go today.


JanDeWit writes: These are my experiences as a beginner, so this is my opinion on the question "which is the best Go program for beginners?".

Igowin

The demo version of Many Faces of Go, called igowin, looks quite nice. It has the standard Way to Go tutorial, it plays only on 9x9 and you can only crank up the difficulty by getting better yourself (after studying a little bit I rocketed up from around 23kyu with 4/5 handicap to 12 kyu with no handicap, so I guess I'm getting better).

I actually like the fact that you can't undo moves, as this forces you to think and not just click somewhere in the hope that your move works out OK. Too bad I don't have the cash to buy the full version (yet?). I think this program is nice for beginners to practice their tactical skills.

Get the demo at DavidFotland's page, which is at [ext] http://www.smart-games.com.

Turbo Go

Another program I play against quite a lot is Turbo Go, which is shareware, but only with the lowest 3 strength levels (out of five). This program has the advantage of being able to play on all 3 board sizes, it's available in many languages, it can explain its moves, it has a 45000 move joseki database (I only use the ThreeThreePointInvasion section for handicap games :-)

I think I'll stick with this program while I'm learning. The registration fee is quite modest, but I'm not sure what increase in playing strength it'll get you... (the program was European Computer Champion in 1999)

The homepage is [ext] http://www.turbogo.com.

Other programs (to be expanded later perhaps)

Other programs I've downloaded include:

But I haven't got round to forming an opinion on these.

-- Sbaguz: I totally agree with JanDeWit. A beginner must start with Igowin and after he can go on with TurboGo, further programs are useless...

Further comments

I really wish there was an option to turn off undoing moves, I'm afraid this is going to spoil my Real Life playing habits! Maybe a 'mark for analysis' button would be better for me!

Matt Noonan: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "Then don't do that." :)

There are a lot of bad habits that Go players get stuck in, but undoing moves is probably the worst. It is impolite to ask for an undo once the stone is on the board (or even worse, after your opponent has responded!), so it isn't at all a healthy habit. Besides, learning to visualize your moves _before_ they are played is an important step towards strong reading abilities.

JanDeWit: Writing about it made me fully aware of the badness of my habit. Most of my games so far were against computer programs or people of my own or lower level, so luckily everybody gained something from me saying 'Oops, you probably didn't see this, but this is bad because of...' This way I get to test my (after the fact) reading abilities, and I show them what I'm thinking about.

For the record, I've really stopped using undo. I just turn off the all-too accessible speedbar, and jot down the move-numbers where I went wrong, for later analysis or replaying.

JanDeWit writes: I want to split this discussion into two parts, BadHabits and GoPlayingProgramsForBeginners? but I'm not entirely sure how to do this without a major page overhaul & loss of data. Maybe ArnoHollosi or MortenPahle can advise me?

By the way (more on topic), writing stuff for SL is good for my skills! Between my editing sessions I jumped from level 12k to 9k at Igowin and I have beaten TurboGo repeatedly at the 13x13 level without handicap... I don't think this is saying much, to me it felt like a marked increase (I get the opening stage now, though I'm still not very good at tactical stuff). I'll write an article about it someday!


DieterVerhofstadt (1kyu) writes:

I have played against Igowin, Turbogo, a Korean game that I don't know the name of, and Wulu. For editing I always use WinMGT.

All of them are shareware, and only TurboGo has a 19x19 included in its shareware. On a 13x13 Wulu is the better player by far. I'm playing it at its highest level, and if it weren't for me TakingBackAMove, I would have lost a couple of games already.

Since my employer expects me to gain expertise in the extraordinary programming language of Smalltalk, I've been working on a program myself lately. Phase one is just accomplished: it understands moves, makes the correct order of capture and suicide check, doesn't allow ko, and knows how to calculate a score. It's text-based however, and making a nice user interface is phase 2. Phase 3 will be making it to play itself, and phases 4 until infinity to play well.

I found a remarkable similarity between the way my program understands the Goban and the [ext] Tromp Taylor rules. The only difference is that it does not allow suicide and the TT-rules do. Anyway, I invite everybody to have a look at this magnificent ruleset, and the day the international community decides to acknowledge them as the rules, a big barrier for people to learn the game, will be broken.


Scartol: Is there anyone else out there who enjoys MacintoshGo?




This is a copy of the living page "Go Playing Programs" at Sensei's Library.
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