John Tromp

John Tromp is a researcher formerly employed by the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica. He has published papers on the Complexity of Go. His homepage contains a list of his research and recreational interests. John Tromp's Go page includes The Logical Rules of Go also known as the Tromp-Taylor Rules.

He made the Shodan Go Bet that before 2011, no computer program running on "ordinary" hardware could beat him in a 10 game match. In late 2010, Tromp won a best of seven match by 4-0 against Many Faces of Go in games played at the London Open and broadcast on KGS. In January 2012, he lost 1-3 to Zen in a five game match on KGS with similar conditions.

In February 2016, he published the number of possible legal positions on a 19x19 board to the last digit. This had been estimated in the past, but the exact number was unknown. See the below Publications section.

Publications:

Among his publications on the Complexity of Go are:

• Number of legal Go positions, February 2016
• Combinatorics of Go, co-authored with Gunnar Farneback, 26 January 2007 (preliminary version)
• Ladders are PSPACE complete, co-authored with M. Crasmaru, 2000, (preliminary version)
• A Googleplex of Go Games, co-authored with Matthieu Walraet, July 2016