[Computer-go] Beta-testing: feedback to bot owners

[Willemien]

Go is in principle a drawing game.
Proper komi (in my humble opinion) should result that optimal
(perfect) play leads to a draw.

That some programs cannot cope with integer komi/ draws/ jigo is a
problem of those programs and  not an unfair advantage to the programs
who can cope with it.

(a  simple way to cope with it is to shift the komi 1/2 point in the
programs advantage, (W +1/2, B -1/2) altough then the program will
treat draws as win,  and possibly  forgo a real win)

Suppose soon that 2 programs arrive that play perfect on 9x9, do we
prefer that they draw against eachother and draw or win against all
other  programs or that they win or lose depending on how lucky they
are with the colour assignment?

On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Nick Wedd <nick at maproom.co.uk> wrote:
> This is boring - most of you will want to skip it.
>
> While beta-testing the improved tournament system on KGS, my task was to
> report on the behaviour of the tournament-scheduler.  But I happened to
> notice several things the bots did.  I report on these here.
>
> In the biggest tournament I ran, the komi was set to 7, allowing jigo. It
> seemed that gnugo3pt7 (a pre-MC build of GNU Go, which I ran) understood
> this, but StoneGrid and Orego12 did not.  As a result, gnugo3pt7 got several
> undeserved wins against these stronger programs.
>    I now think that using integer komi is a mistake.  I do not plan to use
> it in future events.  And it will not be used in the computer events in the
> European Go Congress this summer.
>
> The final test I did used 11x11 boards.  When StoneGrid joined its game, it
> immediately and repeatedly disconnected and reconnected.  Indeed, it did
> this so rapidly that I could deduce that Professor Drake lives rather close
> to Portland, Oregon.  StoneGrid had played normally in the previous tests,
> so I guess it dislikes non-standard board sizes.
>
> The clean-up phase was mishandled in at least two games between StoneGrid
> and gnugo3pt7 (rounds 3 and 7).  I am fairly sure that GNU Go does clean-up
> correctly, so I suspect that StoneGrid doesn't.
>
> TimeWaster (one of Aloril's delinquent bots) is somehow able to abuse the
> clean-up system.  At the end of every game, it claims that all its
> opponent's stones are dead, and that its own stone (it never has more than
> one on the board) is alive.  Then the game enters the clean-up phase, there
> is one pass, and the players make their claims again.  This repeats
> indefinitely.
>    My understanding is that this shouldn't be possible.  Once the game has
> entered the clean-up phase, there should be no more claims, all stones still
> on the board when play stops for the second time should be treated as alive.
>
> Nick
> --
> Nick Wedd    nick at maproom.co.uk
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