Computer Go

    Keywords: Software

FIXME: Two pages exist for Computer Go (Programming):
See also Computer Go Programming

Table of contents


Introduction

There is much yet to be done in the field of computer Go. While many different approaches have been tried, the level of the best Go playing programs is still low, even compared to amateur dan players (at least 10 stones!), not to mention professionals.

Thus computer Go is a very exciting part of Artificial Intelligence (AI), many new ideas and techniques are yet to be discovered. It's interesting to note that compared to the approach which proved so successful with Chess, brute force is useless for solving Go problems given the huge branching factor of the game tree.

In fact, Go endgames been proven to be PSpace-hard, let alone other parts of the game. Also, many other aspects of Go, including life and death, are also known to be NP-hard. This means that it is very unlikely to be able to find a reasonably fast algorithm for playing perfect Go. So it looks like it's all about heuristics (surprise surprise).


Philosophy

Before delving into computer Go, it would behoove the novice to consider some philosophical questions about computers and Go.


List of Existing Programs

Please see Go Playing Programs for a discussion about the best programs currently available.


Robots

Some online Go servers, such as KGS, provide software opponents or robots to clients. Robot is derived from the Czech word robata meaning drudgery or slave labour which certainly describes the work needed to pummel double digit kyu players like me. PatG


Anti-Computer Strategy

It might be entertaining and educational to consider strategies for beating computers at Go.


Competitions

Below are competitions where Go playing programs can be tested.

International Competitions:

Regional Competitions:

  • US Championship
  • European Championship

Small Board Competitions:


History of Go Programs

  • [1989]: GNU Go 1.1 was posted to comp.sources.games March 13 1989
  • [1968]: Albert L. Zobrist wrote the first ever program which played complete Go games.
  • Ishi - old file format

Articles in Magazines


Links

(Smaller Go Bibliography, with comments)

  • [ext] http://gobase.org/go-7.html : Jan van der Steen's computer Go page has numerous links to famous programs and programmers as well as programming resources and articles.

Maillist(-Archives)

  • gnugo-list
  • computer-go-list

Discussion about this page

What do you think this page should become?

Issues:

  • Should we move all outside links to the Link Collection, or keep them here?
  • Should this page be split up into smaller chunks?

Authors: Gounter, Chestnut


This is a copy of the living page "Computer Go" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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