FOST Cup 1996 - Tokyo
The 1996 Fost cup was held on the second floor of the Nihon Ki-in,
in Tokyo, Japan, on September 13 and 14. This was the largest computer
go contest yet. 27 programs registered, and 19 showed up and
participated. There were 9 rounds, followed by exhibition games
between the top 4 programs and strong amateurs. The computer go
modem protocol was used for most of the games, although there
were a few compatibility problems, and the longest RS-232 cables
were not reliable. I didn't notice any program crashing, but
several games were lost on time.
The result was:
Name Program Country Wins SDS
1) Chen Zhixing Handtalk China 8
2) Michael Reiss Go4++ England 7 33
3) David Fotland Many Faces of Go USA 7 31
4) Ken Chen Go Intellect USA 7 29
5) Yasuo Oishi Goro Japan 6
6) Yan Shi-Jim Jimmy Taiwan 5 24
7) Takahisa Yoshida Mutsuki Japan 5 23
8) Martin Mueller Explorer Austria 5 19
9) Takuo Tabuchi Takuchan Japan 5 13
10) Masahiro Tanaka Biwako Japan 5 11
11) Tetsuya Wakamatsu Tai Go Japan 5 10
12) Tristan Cazenave Gogol France 4 17
13) Shinichi Sei Katsunari Japan 4 16
14) Toshikazu Sato Tokyo 96 Japan 4 6
15) Yoshitaka Kohiyama Gooter Japan 3 8
16) Hiroshi Yamashita Aya Japan 3 7
17) Lee Chong-Cheol Big Stone Korea 2
18) Tsuneo Hori Utoro Japan 1
19) Koichi Saito Igo Meijin Japan 0
The top 4 programs were close in strength, and were clearly superior
to the others. Goro had 6 wins, but only played one of the top
four programs. Explorer had only 5 wins, but beat Goro, and
played 3 of the top 4 programs. Jimmy also had 5 wins, played 3
of the top ptograms, and beat Explorer. So the next 4 programs
are also similar in strength.
Michael Reiss spent 7 months full time improving his program last
year, including about 700 test games against Handtalk. His program
gave Handtalk its only loss in the 6th round, but then went on
to lose to Many Faces of Go, and Go Intellect. So it ended 2nd,
the same as last year.
Ken Chen worked full time on his program for over 3 months, including
porting it from Modula on a Mac to C/C++ for Windows-95. Having
a faster machine available helped his program's strength, and it
defested both Many Faces of Go and Go4++. But he did not have time
to implement the communications protocol correctly so in the first
round, he had to use a second machine to enter moves to be
communicated. This machine was very slow, and he used up his 60
minute time limit when his progrm had only used about 35 minutes of
its own clock. This first round loss to a weak program cost him
his chance at the top 3 places.
Many Faces of Go also had a new, windows-95 interface, but David
didn't make any major changes last year, so it was only able to
beat one of the other top programs.
Dr ZhiXing made many changes to Handtalk in the last year but said
that he didn't think it was much stronger. But it was able to hold
on to first place, although not undefeated, and not as convincingly
as last year.
The games between the top programs were close, and each program
beat the one that placed above it. Go4++ beat Handtalk by 6.5
points. Many Faces beat Go4++ by 14.5 points. Go Intellect beat
Many Faces by 4.5 points, and Go4++ by 7.5 points. Handtalk beat
ManyFaces by 11.5 points.
The top 4 programs generally beat the other programs by very
lopsided scores. For example, Many Faces beat Goro by 86.5,
Jimmy by 28.5, Explorer by 113, Biwaki by 101.5, and Gooter by
149.5.
Handtalk was awarded a 4 kyu certificate, Go4++ a 5 kyu certificate,
and Many Faces of Go, a 6 kyu certificate from the Nihon-Kiin.
Handtalk won 2,000,000 yen (about $19,000), Go4++ won 500,000 yen,
and Many Faces of Go won 200,000 yen.
-David Fotland