[gnugo-devel] GNU Go in the Computer Olympiad 2004

[Gunnar Farnebäck]

GNU Go will participate in the Computer Olympiad 2004, July 4-8. Many
thanks to Jan Willemson who has volunteered to operate GNU Go at the
Olympiad and to David Doshay who generously paid the entrance fee.
Information about the tournament, including playing schedule, can be
found at http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/olympiad2004/. With some luck Jan
will be able to give progress reports from the tournament 

As most of you probably remember, GNU Go is reigning champion in the
19x19 tournament. This might be difficult, but not impossible, to
repeat this year with Many Faces of Go among the opponents. In total
there are five programs participating:

Indigo
Go Intellect
The Many Faces of Go
Jimmy
GNU Go

In recent tournaments we have had good results against Indigo, Go
Intellect, and Jimmy. Many Faces, on the other hand, still leads by
2-0 (*) in tournament games. Then again it was some time since they
last met. I would say that Many Faces has to be favorite, followed by
GNU Go and Go Intellect. But I'll be an optimist here and predict the
following results:

1. GNU Go
2. Many Faces
3. Go Intellect
4. Indigo
5. Jimmy

The 9x9 tournament is bigger and looks very open. The contestants are:

Indigo
Go Intellect
NeuroGo
The Many Faces of Go
DumbGo
Atarist
Magog
GoKing
GNU Go

The winner from last year, Aya, is missing and the remaining four
programs from last tournament, Neurogo, Go Intellect, Magog, and
Indigo placed 2-5 with very close results. GNU Go played evenly with
Neurogo on 9x9 in the Olympiad two years ago and Many Faces is almost
certainly in the contention as well. The remaining three programs,
DumbGo, Atarist, and GoKing are unknown entities to me. However, based
on a Computer Go List message, and the name, DumbGo can be supposed to
be weak. I'm not sure that the name Atarist inspires much confidence
either, but I have no real information about that program, nor about
GoKing.

I'll make a wild stab and predict the following results:

1. NeuroGo
2. Magog
3. GNU Go
4. Many Faces of Go
5. Go Intellect
6. Indigo
7. GoKing
8. Atarist
9. DumbGo

/Gunnar

(*) The only tournament games between Many Faces and GNU Go I can find
are from US Go Congress 1999 and 21st Century Cup 2002. They also both
played in 21st Century Cup 2001 and Gifu Challenge 2003, without
meeting each other.