denbeste@bbn.COM (Steven Den Beste) (01/28/88)
From wolf@ssyx.ucsc.edu Sun Jan 24 21:03:09 1988 In article <6250@cc5.bbn.COM> denbeste@bbn.COM (Steven Den Beste) writes: > >There does not exist a good computer GO player that I have heard of, on any > >machine up to and including a Cray. The reason is that all the approaches which > >have been developed over the years for Chess (mostly at CDC to try to win the > >Levy bet - which they failed) don't work well for GO. > > Actually, there are quite a few GO programs which play competitivly > at the amature level. I don't remember the terminology very well, > but I seem to recall that the recent winner of the world computer > go tourny was at the 18 kyu level. I think a high number is better, > but I could be wrong. The GO rating system begins at 14 kyu (at least the way I always learned it) and moves down to 1 kyu, then to 1 dan (pronounced "dawn") on up. "dan" is the same word as is used to refer to martial arts black belts, and it means "master". (I played against a 4 dan one time, and with me getting 9 stones he wiped me.) 14 kyu is a ground-floor beginner - you who have never played the game are 14 kyu. At my best I worked up to 7 kyu, but it has been several years since I've played extensively, and I'm probably about 9 kyu now. In the handicapping system, generally the better player should give the worse player a number of stones equal to number of levels difference they are (and of course, the better player always plays white) and indeed this is how the levels are calibrated. (Which means you can, in fact, calibrate levels worse than 14 kyu ("in the basement" as it were).) If indeed this program (one of the developers wrote me private mail about the specifics, but I'm not going to quote it here; he did confirm that it was "18 kyu") is 18 kyu, then loosely it means that a rank beginner who has read the rules, played three or four games and is just beginning to get a grasp on the game - that same beginner can give the program four stones and still beat it. I don't call that a "good player". I compare it to the computer chess players available on the Amiga, and the one I have wipes me at all but the very lowest setting. The fact that one GO player won at a tournament of other programs means nothing - the important thing is how it rates compared to most human GO players. The best computer chess players now are better than all but a handfull of human players. The best computer go players can be soundly defeated by almost all human GO players. I won't consider a GO player to be "decent" until it is at least 9 kyu, which by the standards of the game is a barely tolerable player (that is, me). I still don't think that will happen soon, if at all, for reasons I gave in my original article. I haven't heard anything here to change my mind. -- Steven C. Den Beste, Bolt Beranek & Newman, Cambridge MA denbeste@bbn.com(ARPA/CSNET/UUCP) harvard!bbn.com!denbeste(UUCP)