psl@harpo.UUCP (Peter Langston) (09/06/83)
ANNOUNCING
The First Ever
USENIX
COMPUTER
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A B C D E F G H j K L M N O P Q R S T
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A B C D E F G H j K L M N O P Q R S T
To be held during the Summer 1984 Usenix conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Probable Rules
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1) The board will be 19 x 19.
This size was chosen rather than one of the smaller boards because there
is a great deal of accumulated Go "wisdom" that would be worthless on
smaller boards.
2) The board positions will be numbered as in the diagram above.
The columns will be labeled 'A' through 'T' (excluding 'I') left to right.
The rows will be labeled '19' through '1', top to bottom.
3) Play will continue until both programs pass in sequence.
This may be a trouble spot, but looks like the best approach available.
Several alternatives were considered: (1) have the referee decide when
the game is over by identifying "uncontested" versus "contested" area;
(2) limit the game to a certain number of moves; all of them had one or
another unreasonable effect.
4) There will be a time limit for each program.
This will be in the form of a limit on accumulated "user" time (60 minutes?).
If a program goes over the time limit it will be allowed some
minimum amount of time for each move (15 seconds?).
If no move is generated within the minimum time the game is forfeit.
5) The tournament will use a "referee" program to execute each competing
pair of programs; thus the programs must understand a standard set of
commands and generate output of a standard form.
a) Input to the program. All input commands to the program will be
in the form of lines of text appearing on the standard input and
terminated by a newline.
1) The placement of a stone will be expressed as letter-number
(e.g. "G7"). Note that the letter "I" is not included.
2) A pass will be expressed as "pass".
3) The command "time" means the time limit has been exceeded and
all further moves must be generated within the shorter minimum
time limit.
b) Output from the program. All output from the program will be in the
form of lines of characters sent to the "standard output" (terminated
by a newline) and had better be unbuffered.
1) The placement of a stone will be expressed as letter-number,
as in "G12". Note that the letter "I" is not included.
2) A pass will be expressed as "pass".
3) Any other output lines will be considered garbage and ignored.
4) Any syntactically correct but semantically illegal move (e.g. spot
already occupied, ko violation, etc.) will be considered a forfeit.
The referee program will maintain a display of the board, the move history,
etc.
6) The general form of the tournament will depend on the number of
participants, the availability of computing power, etc. If only a few
programs are entered each program will play every other program twice.
If many are entered some form of Swiss system will be used.
7) These rules are not set in concrete ... yet; this one in particular.
Comments, suggestions, contributions, etc. should be sent via uucp
to harpo!psl or via U.S. Mail to Peter Langston / Lucasfilm Ltd. /
P.O. Box 2009 / San Rafael, CA 94912.sdl@rayssd.UUCP (Litvintchouk) (09/10/83)
ARE there any available Go programs which run on VAX/UNIX which I could obtain? (Either commercially sold, or available from universities, or whatever.) I find Go fascinating and would love to have a Go program to play against. Please reply via USENET, or to: Steve Litvintchouk Raytheon Company Submarine Signal Division Portsmouth, RI 02871 (401)847-8000 x4018
thomas@utah-gr.UUCP (Spencer W. Thomas) (09/18/83)
I'm sure we could find some time on one of our Vaxen for a Go tournament. If you're writing it on some other machine, make sure it is portable. =Spencer