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

[Hideki Kato]

Historically, fractional komi is very recently introduced (at the 
beginning of Hon'inbo title match, 1949 in Japan; I don't know about 
other countries).  I strongly believe all proper Go programs have to 
be able to manage interger komi.

Hideki

Nick Wedd: <2g7e1Za2MXONFA7M at maproom.demon.co.uk>:
>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
-- 
Hideki Kato <mailto:hideki_katoh at ybb.ne.jp>