RESULTS OF THE 1995 ING WORLD COMPUTER GO CHAMPIONSHIP.
The 1995 World Computer Go Congress was held on November 4 and 5 in
Seoul, South Korea. This year Acer no longer co-sponsors the
competition. Instead, there are several new sponsors, with the main
one being Hangul and Computer Company (HNC), the largest Korean language
software company. In addition to the usual prozes provided by the
Ing Foundation, HNC paid 1/2 air fare to any program that won two
games.
This year's competition had a smaller than usual field of 10 programs.
Star of Poland missed its first congress in over 10 years, since
the author, Janusz Kraszek, was injured in an automobile accident.
Rumor has it that he might host next year's competition in Poland.
This year the tournament was organized a little later than usual, and
invitations to the qualifying tournament were not available until early
October, which may have prevented some programs from entering.
Since there were only 10 programs, and the results of the first 3 places
were clear after 5 rounds, the sixth round was not played.
The final result was:
1st, 5 wins, Handtalk, by Chen ZhiXing
2nd, 4 wins, Go4++, by Michael Reiss
3rd, 3 wins, Go Intellect, by Ken Chen
4th, 3 wins, Many Faces of Go, by David Fotland
5th, 3 wins, Stone, by Kao Kuo Yuan and Chih-wen Hsueh
6th, 2 wins, Explorer, by Martin Muller
7th, 2 wins, Sason, by Chang Ho Lee
8th, 2 wins, Big Stone, by Dong Chul Lee
9th, 1 win, Rex 95, by Han Jung Kim
10th, 0 wins, Right Thought, by Min Ho Kwak
The top programs are still fairly close. Handtalk won all its games,
but only beat Go Intellect and Go4++ by 9 points each. Go4++ beat
Go Intellect by 15 points, and in 3 additional friendship games after
the tournament, Go intellect won two (by 35 and 23 points), and Go4++
beat Go Intellect again by 60 points. Many Faces and Go4++ were not
paired in the tournament, but in 3 friendly games afterwards, Go4++ won
two and Many Faces won one.
Handtalk won 200,000 NT dollars for first place, then went on to
challenge 3 human experts at 15 stone handicap. The 15 stone prize has
been attempted 4 times before (by Goliath, Handtalk, and Go Intellect)
without success. This year, the human experts were 3 youth champions,
9 or 10 years old. They were given a few minutes to practice, then
the games began. Handtalk looked like it was doing very well, then
around move 100, a reporter stepped on the main power cord and all the
computers shut down.
All 3 games were started from the beginning, and Handtalk went on to
win 2 of the three games, losing to the 9 year old, and winning
another 100,000 NT dollars. Handtalk immediately challenged at the
13 stone handicap and won 2 of three again, for another 133,333
NT dollars. Next year the Human challenge will be at 11 stones
handicap.
Full tournament grid (not in order of final result):
1 2 3 4 5 Wins SDS
1) Handtalk +4 +7 +3 +2 +5 5
2) Go Intellect +6 +3 +5 -1 -4 3 8
3) Many Faces +9 -2 -1 +6 +7 3 6
4) Go4++ -1 +10 +6 +7 +2 4
5) Stone +10 +8 -2 +9 -1 3 3
6) Explorer -2 +9 -4 -3 -8 2 2
7) Sason +8 -1 +10 -4 -3 2 1
8) Right Thought -3 -6 -9 -10 -6 0
9) Big Stone -3 -6 +8 -5 +10 2 1
10) Rex 95 -5 -4 -7 +8 -9 1
-David Fotland