Computer Go Milestones

Computer Go Milestones and Records

The information on this page is not definitive, it is simply "to the best of my knowledge". If you know of any errors please tell me.

First ever program

David Lefkovitz (USA) did some experiments with computer go as an AI project in 1960. The programs purpose was to "recognize patterns that were strategic to the play of the game, such as surroundedness, eyes, and such". The program never actually played a game.

David Lefkovitz

The first ever program to play whole games was that of Al Zobrist (USA). It played a game against Mr George Cowan (and won by 7pts) on the 17th of November 1968.

Albert L. Zobrist

First scientific paper on Computer Go

H. Remus. "Simulation of a learning machine for playng Go". Proceedings of IFIP Congress, Amsterdam, 1963.

First game between two programs

Jack Lang (left) and John Diamond.

The earliest I have found so far was between Jon Diamond's program (University of London) which played Jack Lang's (University of Cambridge) in around Aug/Sept 1972.

First ever commercial program

There seem to be three contenders for this title, I will have to get more precise dates to decide the winner.

Acornsoft Go written by Bronislaw Przybyla (UK) and Microgo 1 by Alan Scarff (UK) were published some time around 1984-85.

Nemesis by Bruce Wilcox (USA) was published in september 1984.

First program to compete in human go tournament

Nemesis.

First dedicated go computer

Igo Dojo (Nemesis).

Most powerful computer to run a go program

In this section I did have "100 transputer system at Edinbourgh University running Go4++ by Michael Reiss." but I think that a single Pentium II - 450 is probably just as fast!

Least powerful computer to run a go program

John Diamond ran his program on a machine with a clock rate of 0.1MHz in the early 1970's

First ever computer go championships

The Acornsoft Computer Go Championship were held in London on Jan 7th-8th 1984. The competition was for 13x13 only. There were 8 competitors and the tournament was a simple 3 round knockout. The picture shows the winner, Broislaw Przybyla (right), collecting his prize of 1000 pounds. You can see in the background a demonstration board showing the final position in the winning game. I guess Computer Go has come a long way since then!

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