RESULTS OF THE 1996 ING WORLD COMPUTER GO CHAMPIONSHIP.
The 1996 World Computer Go Congress was held on Nov 16 and 17 at Zhongshan
University, in Guangzhou, China. The Ing foundation provided prize funds and
money to run the competition, and Chen Zhi Xing, author of handtalk, organized
it. We had a 6 round swiss tournament, with the top 4 programs from last
year seeded in a 12 program field. The tournament was well organized,
with 133 Mhz Pentium computers provided. There were no computer problems,
and the rounds started on time. Many programs implemented the computer
go modem protocol, which helped make the rounds go faster.
The final result was:
1st, 6 wins, Handtalk, by Chen Zhi Xing
2nd, 5 wins, Go Intellect, by Ken Chen
3rd, 4 wins, Stone, by Kao Kuo Yuan
4th, 3 wins, Go4++, by Michael Reiss
5th, 3 wins, Many Faces of Go, by David Fotland
6th, 3 wins, Go Master, by Jee Wonho
7th, 3 wins, Jimmy, by Yan Shi-jim
8th, 3 wins, Wulu, by Chen Guo Bao, Lei Xue Ru, and Fan Jin Chao
9th, 2 wins, Sason, by Ha Youngkyun
10th, 2 wins, DFGO, by Chen Tie Jun
11th, 1 win, WQ, by Wang Sheng Jun
12th, 1 win, Wu, by Wu Tong Kuan
This year Handtalk was clearly superior, easily winning all its games. The
closest was a 21 point win over Go4++. Kao has completetly rewritten Stone,
working 10 hours a day since June. This is his first finish in the top
3 places. His new program focuses on fighting well, and reading life and
death accurately. WuLu is another good new program. It had bad luck in losing
one game on time, but had a very close game against go4++, so it is stronger
than it appears from this result. It is written by Prof Chen's assistants
and is only 2 years old.
Go Intellect has been ported to windows-95 on a PC, and is stronger than
last year.
The closest game was between Many Faces of Go and Go4++, which Many Faces
won by only 1 point, playing black.
Go4++ has a territory oriented style, while the other top programs all depend
on fighting strength. Last year Go4++ did very well, but the other programs
have had a year to get used to playing against this style, so it was not as
effective this year. Go4++ has a stylized opening, always taking 2 adjacent
3-3 points and splitting the other side on its first 3 moves. Handtalk
prepared a counter fuseki that prevented Go4++ from starting a moyo anywhere.
This year the human players were quite strong, and won all 3 games against
Handtalk with an 11 play handicap.
The full tournament grid (not in order of final result):
Wins SDS SOS-SDS Place
1) Handtalk +2 +4 +7 +10 +11 +6 6 1
2) Sason -1 +3 -4 -6 -7 +5 2 3 9
3) DFGO -4 -2 +5 +12 -6 -9 2 2 10
4) Many Faces +3 -1 +2 +7 -10 -11 3 7 5
5) Wu -6 -8 -3 -9 +12 -2 1 1 12
6) Jimmy +5 -7 -8 +2 +3 -1 3 5 12 7
7) Go4++ +8 +6 -1 -4 +2 -10 3 8 4
8) WuLu -7 +5 +6 -11 -9 +12 3 5 10 8
9) Go Master -10 -12 -11 +5 +8 +3 3 6 6
10) Go Intellect +9 +11 +12 -1 +4 +7 5 2
11) Stone +12 -10 +9 +8 -1 +4 4 3
12) WQ -11 +9 -10 -3 -5 -8 1 3 11
-David Fotland