A far more active computer Go competition is the [1]CGOS server. The Computer Go Ladder The Computer Go Ladder is an informal competition between computer Go programs for the principal purpose of having fun. It is hoped that the ladder will also stimulate work on programs and allow some measurement of the state of the art of current programs. The Computer Go Ladder is a "handicap" ladder; the number of handicap stones that each participant can give to the next lower program is explicitly tracked. Whenever a program author feels that his program has been improved, he can issue a challenge to the program below to increase the number of handicap stones, or to the program above to decrease the number of handicap stones. New programs can join the ladder by challenging the program at the "bottom rung" (at no handicap). If the new program wins the challenge, it can challenge successively higher programs until it loses. It would then start playing handicap challenges to determine its exact placement. Many [2]boring technical details of ladder operation have been omitted from this description. Challenges are normally played on the [3]Internet Go Server. Challenge results and scheduled challenges are announced via e-mail (as well as on this page). If you would like to receive such announcements, send mail to the [4]ladder administrator and indicate whether you would like to receive match results only, or match results and upcoming challenge announcements. Challenges and results involving the top programs on each ladder are also announced on the [5]computer go mailing list. Current Ladder Participants Program IGS name [6]Scoring Author E-mail address (replace ':' with '@') Ego ego Japanese Bruce Wilcox suewilcox:bigfoot.com [7]Explorer ex63 Chinese [8]Martin Mueller mmueller:cs.ualberta.ca [9]Gnu Go FSF Japanese FSF gnugo:gnu.org [10]Go++ mreiss Chinese [11]Michael Reiss mick:reiss.demon.co.uk [12]GoAhead GoAhead Japanese Peter Woitke woitke:physik.tu-berlin.de [13]Gobble bernd Chinese [14]Bernd Bruegmann bruegman:gravity.psu.edu [15]Godot LuckyGodot Chinese [16]Jens Lieberum jenslieberum:yahoo.de GoLife I GoLifeI Chinese [17]Henrik Rydberg rydberg:fy.chalmers.se [18]Gogo pwgoldberg Chinese [19]Paul Goldberg pwg:dcs.warwick.ac.uk [20]Golois Golois Chinese [21]Tristan Cazenave cazenave:ai.univ-paris8.fr gottaGo gottaGo Japanese [22]Eric Pettersen pett:cgl.ucsf.edu [23]GoWind gowind Chinese Ruhai Zhou rzhou:ahpcc.unm.edu [24]Indigo parigo Chinese [25]Bruno Bouzy bouzy:math-info.univ-paris5.fr [26]Jacqueline Go N/A Chinese Patrick Hippenmeyer info:informatrix.ch [27]JaGo Dude Japanese Fuming Wang fuming:venus.radsci.uci.edu [28]Many Faces of Go ManyFaces Chinese [29]David Fotland fotland:smart-games.com [30]NeuroGo II NeuroGoII Chinese [31]Markus Enzenberger me:markus-enzenberger.de [32]Orego Orego Chinese [33]Orego project drake:lclark.edu Poka Poka Chinese Howard Landman howard:polyamory.org [34]SmartGo SmartGo Chinese Anders Kierulf anders:smartgo.com Topgoer topgoer Chinese Shaomin Feng smfeng:yeah.net The Turtle TheTurtle Chinese Joan Pons Semelis semelis:terra.es Viking viking Chinese Magnus Persson magnus.persson:phmp.se Current Ladder Rankings 9x9 Ladder Program [35]Stones to next [36]Preferred time controls Go++ 0+ 0' + 7' / 25 moves Many Faces of Go 1 10' + 6' / 25 moves NeuroGo II 0+ 25' + 11' / 25 moves Ego 0+ Explorer 0? 30' + 6' / 25 moves Indigo 0+ 0' + 10' / 25 moves Golois 0+ 60' + 25' / 25 moves Gnu Go 0+ Gobble 0+ 30' + 25' / 25 moves gottaGo 0? 0' + 19' / 25 moves Poka 0? Viking 0+ 10' + 12' / 25 moves Orego 0+ 60' + 25' / 25 moves GoLife I 0? 0' + 20' / 25 moves Gogo 0+ 0' + 25' / 25 moves Godot 0? 1' + 10' / 25 moves Jacqueline Go 0? The Turtle N/A 60' + 25' / 25 moves 19x19 Ladder Program [37]Stones to next [38]Preferred time controls Go++ 0+ 0' + 7' / 25 moves GoAhead 0+ 0' + 45' / 25 moves Many Faces of Go 0? 20' + 13' / 25 moves Gnu Go 0+ Ego 0+ Explorer 0+ 60' + 12' / 25 moves NeuroGo II 0+ 25' + 25' / 25 moves Indigo 0+ 0' + 25' / 25 moves SmartGo 0+ 60' + 25' / 25 moves Golois 0? 60' + 25' / 25 moves Poka 0? Viking 0+ 10' + 12' / 25 moves GoWind 0? 10' + 10' / 25 moves Topgoer 0+ 2' + 7' / 25 moves gottaGo 0+ 0' + 19' / 25 moves The Turtle N/A 60' + 25' / 25 moves * = new ladder participant Recent Ladder Results * August 1st, 2006: Viking finally [39]stopped Orego's ascent up the 9x9 ladder with a fairly convincing victory as white, limiting black to very little territory. * July 31st, 2006: An [40]impressive victory for Orego over GoLife I on the 9x9 ladder, with Orego claiming the entire board as black. * July 25th, 2006: Another rung on the 9x9 ladder for Orego, [41]defeating Gogo. * July 24th, 2006: Orego [42]defeats Godot to continue its inexorable advance up the 9x9 ladder. * July 24th, 2006: Orego [43]defeats Jacqueline Go on the 9x9 ladder to advance a rung. * [44]Older ladder results are available Viewing Game Records You may be able to set up your Web browser to display the game records (which are in Smart Game Format) in an SGF viewer on your system, instead of as text. [45]Here are instructions about how you would do that. Pending Ladder Challenges Scheduled None. Not Yet Scheduled Orego vs. GoLife I on 9x9. "Exhibition" Games The caliber of current program play can perhaps best be judged by "exhibition" games against human opponents. I currently have five such games available from this page (two involving Peter Woitke's GoAhead program, one involving David Fotland's Many Faces of Go, and two multi-program games), and [46]Jean-loup Gailly's page has some games against the commercial program Handtalk . Also, Many Faces of Go plays frequently on NNGS and KGS against human opponents, so you could observe games there or retrieve recently played games and review them. The [47]GoAhead games have GoAhead as black against Herve Fournier (~ 8k) and Bill Newman (~1d). The games have many comments and are quite interesting. The [48]Many Faces of Go game has Many Faces as black with 29 handicap stones(!) against Martin Mueller (author of Explorer). The game was played at the '98 US Go Congress and $30 in bets rode on the outcome. This game unfortunately is uncommented. However, there is some commentary on the game in a Computer Go survey paper available on one of Martin Mueller's [49]web pages. The game commentary is on pages 6 and 7 of that paper. Peter Woitke provides three [50]"multi-brain" games where a human plays against a "player" that is a human choosing candidate moves suggested by two or more computer programs. If the programs agree on a move then the human has no choice; otherwise he picks the move he thinks best from among the candidates. Other Computer Go Related Pages Pages Principally Concerned with Computer Go * Another competition between computer Go programs can be found on [51]Stefan Martin's computer Go page. * [52]Michael Reiss' computer go page. * [53]Dave Dyer's Go Program * [54]David Mechner's computer Go page. * [55]PuBGo+: A public-domain computer Go playing architecture in C++. * [56]AGA computer Go web site . * [57]Markus Enzenberger's compendium of computer Go links . * [58]Lambda-search in game trees -- with application to Go . Pages With Some Computer Go Information * [59]Methodology used to evolve cellular automata to play Go. * [60]Machine learning in games. Pages of Likely Interest to Computer Go Programmers * [61]B* probability-based search * [62]Architecture of a Go Programming Environment * [63]JiGo: an open-source, Java-based framework for writing Go applets and * [64]Global Evaluation Strategies in Go * [65]Computer Go Test Collection * Mark Boon's [66]Tesuji Go Library * Robin Upton's [67]statistical searching of game trees Computer Go Opponents on the Web * [68]Play against the Jogo computer program. * [69]Play against Tristan Cazenave's Gogol (Gogol participates in the ladder also). * [70]Play against Patrick Hippenmeyer's Jacqueline Go (yet another ladder participant). * [71]Play against Ruhai Zhou's GoWind if you have a Java-enabled browser. * [72]Gnu Go (a ladder participant) is available for download for a variety of platforms. * [73]Allmixedup.com has a pretty good 9x9 go-playing program, along with other classic games. * [74]CrazyStone uses Monte Carlo evaluation to play 9x9 Go. _________________________________________________________________ Go ladder administrator: pett(at)cgl.ucsf.edu References 1. http://cgos.boardspace.net/ 2. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/technical.html 3. telnet://igs.nuri.net:6969/ 4. mailto:pett@cgl.ucsf.edu 5. http://computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go 6. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/technical.html#scoring 7. http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~mmueller/cgo/explorer.html 8. http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~mmueller/ 9. http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/devel.html 10. http://www.goplusplus.com/ 11. http://www.reiss.demon.co.uk/misc/mick.htm 12. http://astro.physik.tu-berlin.de/~woitke/GoAhead.html 13. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Programs/Gobble.html 14. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Authors/Bruegmann.html 15. http://jenslieberum.de/godot/godot.html 16. http://jenslieberum.de/ 17. http://fy.chalmers.se/~rydberg/ 18. http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~pwg/go/go.html 19. http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~pwg/ 20. http://www.ai.univ-paris8.fr/~cazenave/Gogol.html 21. http://www.ai.univ-paris8.fr/~cazenave/ 22. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett 23. http://www.amath.unc.edu/Faculty/ruhai/GoWind/html/ 24. http://www.math-info.univ-paris5.fr/~bouzy/INDIGO.html 25. http://www.math-info.univ-paris5.fr/~bouzy/ 26. http://www.informatrix.ch/go/ 27. http://members.xoom.com/fmwang 28. http://www.smart-games.com/manyfaces.html 29. http://www.netcom.com/~fotland/ 30. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Programs/NeuroGo.html 31. http://www.markus-enzenberger.de/ 32. http://www.lclark.edu/~drake/go/ 33. http://www.lclark.edu/~drake/ 34. http://www.smartgo.com/ 35. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/technical.html#rankings 36. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/technical.html#time 37. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/technical.html#rankings 38. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/technical.html#time 39. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Results/Viking9.html#g1 40. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Results/Orego9.html#g4 41. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Results/Orego9.html#g3 42. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Results/Orego9.html#g2 43. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Results/Orego9.html#g1 44. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Results/results.html 45. http://gobase.org/games/SGF/SGFandWWW.html 46. http://www.teaser.fr/~jlgailly/index.html#hobbies 47. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Results/exhibition/exhibition.html 48. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Results/exhibition/exhibition.html 49. http://web.cs.ualberta.ca/~mmueller/publications.html 50. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/pett/go/Results/exhibition/exhibition.html 51. http://www.geocities.com/comp_go/index.html 52. http://www.reiss.demon.co.uk/webgo/compgo.htm 53. http://www.andromeda.com/people/ddyer/go-program.html 54. http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~mechner/compgo/ 55. http://www.bath.ac.uk/~eespjl/go.html 56. http://www.usgo.org/resources/computer.asp 57. http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~emarkus/compgo_biblio/ 58. http://www.t-t.dk/publications/ 59. http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/users/crosin 60. http://satirist.org/learn-game/ 61. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/ccm/www/home.html 62. http://www.inventivity.com/OpenGo/ 63. http://www.joot.com/jigo/ 64. http://www.andromeda.com/people/ddyer/go/global-eval.html 65. http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/go/cgtc/ 66. http://www.sente.ch/pub/software/tesuji/ 67. http://www.RobinUpton.com/research/phd 68. http://www.joerch.org/go/jogo.html 69. http://www.ai.univ-paris8.fr/~cazenave/PlayGo.html 70. http://www.informatrix.ch/go/ 71. http://www.geocities.com/shanleqi/index.html 72. http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/ 73. http://www.allmixedup.com/ 74. http://remi.coulom.free.fr/CrazyStone/