HouseBot

Housebot is my newborn bot on KGS. It's birth date is sometime in March 2005. For the moment, I'll just make this page sort of a change log with any relevant links.

Home Page

Overall status:

• A rewrite of the core program is under way (version 0.6).
• As of June 2006, the bot is nearly able to resume online play.

HouseBot 0.6:

• Started in March 2007?
• A completely new bot. Designed from the ground up using an Agile programming approach, and written using d
• Multi-threaded. Supports pondering (thinking on opponents' time), multiple control interfaces, searches that use multiple cores, and multiple simultaneous search types
• Includes monte carlo searching option

HouseBot 0.5.x:

• Based on a rewrite of the move value and move selection code to use object based values instead of a per-brain numerical value.
• Large emphasis on using a score estimator fed with stone stability information. Both pieces of that (score estimator and stone stability) will continue to be enhanced throughout this development cycle
• Still under development as of Nov 2006, but starting to make debuts on KGS

Housebot 0.4.x:

• Added benson style unconditional life detection and support for accurately marking alive/dead stones at the end of the game.
• Added handicap support (up to 9 stones)
• Brain: Decrease Liberties - Value moves the reduce enemy chains to some number of liberties. (0.4.0 only valued atari plays higher...)
• Brain: Protect Connection - Similar to protect_base but blocks enemy from passing between closely positioned friendly stones.

Housebot 0.3.x:

• Switched to many simple brains (and stopped using Bouzy)
• Brain: Gold Silver Grass - play in corners preferentially
• Brain: Play Light - Don't play near other friendly stones
• Brain: Increase Liberties - Extend/Connect to reach 4 liberties
• Brain: Protect Base (Skirt) - Descend to block invasions
• Beat its first human (so what if it was their first game after learning the rules several months prior!)

Housebot 0.2.x:

• Added chain & liberty tracking
• Understands stone captures and avoid suicide/ko

Housebot 0.1.x:

• Brain based computation
• One brain for legality (don't play on top of other stones)
• Another brain for score estimates - Bouzy 5/21 Score Estimator

Housebot 0.0.x:

• GTP operation
• played along diagonal then resigned.