The 1999 Ing Cup World Computer Go Championship
This year the championship was held at Fudan Univerisity
in Shanghai, China. Next year will be the last Ing
Computer Go Championship, so there is only one more
chance to beat a professional for over a million dollars.
Prize winners were:
1) Go4++, by Michael Reiss
2) Goemate, by Chen Zhi Xing
3) KCC Igo, by the KCC Igo team
Go4++ lost all three human games at 9 stones handicap against
very strong human opponents, high school students of
strong 6 dan strength.
Go4++ won all 6 games. Goemate lost only to Go4++ in
a game with little fighting, where Go4++ had a small
lead from the fuseki, and maintained it to win by 12 points.
KCC Igo, Fungo, and Many Faces were tied at 4 wins each.
KCC lost to Many Faces by passing while Many Faces made
a dead group live, and also lost to Goemate by 10 points.
Many Faces lost to Go4++, and to Wulu. Fungo lost to KCC
and Goemate.
Unfortunately, since there were not many rounds and the
inital order was random, Many Faces never played Goemate
or Fungo, and Go4++ did not play KCC or Fungo.
Fungo and Many Faces ended up tied for fourth place on both
SOS and SDS.
There were several new Chinese programs, PolarStar,
Lanco, Ocean, and GoStar. They were weak and
shared the last few places with Indigo. Tristan has
a new name for his program, but it is still based on
he same principles as Gogol. Ken chen continues to
improve Go Intellect II, the rewrite he started almost
2 years ago, but did not climb up yet to the top places.
Chen Zhi Xing has improved his noew program Goemate
to the point where it is stronger than the old Handtalk,
and took second place. Yong Goo Park is working on Fungo
full time and it has shown a big improvement in strength
over the last year. Michael Reiss continues to work
on Go4++ nearly full time, and it took a well deserved
first place with very steady play.
KCC Igo continues to generate controversy due to accusations
of plagiarism. Professor Chen presented evidence that KCC
Igo was derived from Handtalk that was very convincing to
the go programmers. There was a meeting with Mr Yang (the
Ing foundation representative), the KCC team, KCC's Japanese
publishers, and several go programmers to discuss the allegations.
In the end, Mr Yang decided to award KCC its prize, but to form
a committe to investigate. If plagiarism is found, KCC will
not be allowed to participate next year.
The tournament was a 6 round swiss with 16 participants
and random starting order. Particpants were (in starting
order):
1) Tristan Cazenave, GoLois, France.
2) Jee Wonho, GoMaster, S Korea.
3) Ken Chen, Go Intellect II, USA
4) Zhang Lian Peng, PolarStar, China
5) Yang Jin Gen, Lanco, China
6) Hiroshi Yamashita, AYA, Japan
7) Michael Reiss, Go4++, UK
8) Lu Jin Qiang, GoStar, China
9) Lei Xiu Yu, Wulu, China
10) David Fotland, The Many Faces of Go, USA
11) Sheng Yi Jun, Ocean, China
12) Bruno Bouzy, Indigo, France
13) Jong Song Hwa, KCC Igo, N Korea
14) Chen Zhi Xing, Goemate, China
15) Sei Shinichi, Katsunari, Japan
16) Yong Goo Park, FunGo, S Korea
Tournament Grid:
1 2 3 4 5 6 wins SOS Place
1) GoLois -2 +4 -6 +5 -14 +8 3 30 11
2) Go Master +1 -3 +8 -6 -13 +4 3 30 10
3) Go Intellect +4 +2 -7 -9 +15 -13 3 38 8
4) Polarstar -3 -1 -5 -11 -12 -2 0 28 16
5) Lanco -6 -8 +4 -1 -16 +11 2 26 14
6) AYA +5 -7 +1 +2 -10 -14 3 46 7
7) Go4++ +8 +6 +3 +14 +9 +10 6 40 1
8) GoStar -7 +5 -2 -15 +11 -1 2 36 12
9) Wulu +10 +12 -14 +3 -7 -16 3 48 6
10) Many Faces -9 +11 +12 +13 +6 -7 4 38 4
11) Ocean -12 -10 -15 +4 -8 -5 1 26 15
12) Indigo +11 -9 -10 -16 +4 -15 2 30 13
13) KCC Igo -14 +15 +16 -10 +2 +3 4 44 3
14) Goemate +13 +16 +9 -7 +1 +6 5 46 2
15) Katsunari -16 -13 +11 +8 -3 +12 3 32 9
16) Fungo +15 -14 -13 +12 +5 +9 4 38 4