Re: [gnugo-devel] Torino. more comments.

[alain Baeckeroot]

Le Samedi 27 Mai 2006 19:02, Gunnar Farneb�ck a écrit :
> Alain wrote:
> > I m afraid GNU Go won't win the 9x9 olympiad, there are now
> > lots of strong opponents on small boards.
> 
> That has been the case for a while now.
> 
> > It's time for me to leave Torino and let John Tromp manage the
> > 19x19 tournament next week.
> 
> Thanks for your contribution Alain.
I enjoyed it a lot :) It was really nice to meet all those go programmers
and players, and if there is an other go event not too far, i'll volunteer
again.

> Could you say something about the 
> practical details of the games? How many were automated and by what
> protocols/tools?
Finally none of GNU Go games were automated, and i think it was the same
for others. I played the first one in text mode while finishing the 
installation, then all other with gogui.
Each time we managed to watch each other screen, and played the moves of our
respective program, and discuss about the game meantime (that's why i had
not time to make more comment on the games i posted ;) Lots of program
are "research tools" and are very verbose (Go Intellect shows the moves
it is trying with 4 ply global search, this was easier to understand than
nice ideograms ;-)
This was very interesting, even with Ajago the symetrical player because Aja
(the man) is 6dan and begins his PhD...

At the beginning everything was clean, one computer on one table for each,
then slowly tables moves, computers and cables too, and it became 
more, hem, alive :)
Some played from their (powerful) laptop, Remi Coulom played on one
remote machine (dual double core opteron if i remember, and he has 6 more
machines to put in a cluster....), maybe Mango was too on a remote computer.

So timing was not very strict but their was no problem, even when one mistake
happened in one GNU Go game and we undo 19 moves, guess the time and finish
again the game. Olympic spirit was there :)

I was asked several times: 
- which GNU Go version is it, can i download it ?
- yes of course, this is part of the GNU.

- Are there strong go players in the GNU Go team ?
-  yes some dan players: Arend Bayer several dans, Gunnar maybe near one dan,
 and probably others i don't know.
 (comment from Aja 6d : some dan should be enough for a while :)

The main remark i have currently is about read-ahead:
NeuroGo is a mystery for me, CrazyStone is MonteCarlo, and it seems that
all other (strong) programs are doing full board read-ahead.
On the loan computer, at level 10 GNU Go self-play one game in 6 seconds,
so in 30 minutes it has time for 300 games... that can allow even very
poorly implemented read-ahead...

/Alain