Re: [gnugo-devel] Latest news from the Olympiad

[jan . villemson]

On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Gunnar Farnebäck wrote:

> > Yesterday's unfinished game was decided by the Jury to the favour of
> > Indigo,
>
> Annoying, but mostly because GNU Go misread. It would still be
> interesting to know how the jury reasoned.

The game was sent for decision to Martin Müller (without any information
about the players, of course) and his decision was -- whoever moves, wins.
Since it was white's (i.e. Indigo's) move, Jonathan Schaeffer as the Jury
chairman decided to give the point to Indigo. Additional supporting
reasoning was that if all the stones in the unfinished corner are
considered alive, white wins as well.

> > but unfortunately lost both of the games in
> > playoff (even though I used level 15), so its final standing is the 2nd.
>
> In fact GNU Go lost all 6 games it played against Go Intellect. I
> wonder if Go Intellect has received significant tuning against GNU Go.

I do not really think so, since Go Intellect won e.g. against Many Faces
as well. But even if so, there is nothing wrong with that, since GPL
states clearly that anyone is welcome to use the program as (s)he pleases,
including for fine-tuning his own product. It may be a little unfair, but
I definitely find it good for overall Go programs' progress. BTW, GNU Go
was used in several conference papers as a benchmarking player and as
such, it has made a considerable contribution to the whole community.

Jan