Hundred and twelfth KGS Computer Go Tournament

Sunday May 3rd, 2015

These results also appear on an official KGS page.

Rules

format	12-round Swiss
board size	19×19
rules	Chinese
komi	7½
time	9 minutes plus 10/30s

Times

The first round started at 16:00 UTC.

Result table

Place	Name	cross-table	Wins	SOS	SoDOS	Notes
Zen19	DolBa	AyaMC	NiceG	ManyF	gnugo
1	Zen19X	X	^W1³_T ^B1⁶_T ^W1¹⁰_R	^B1²_R ^W1⁷_R ^B1¹¹_R	^W1⁴_R ^B1⁸_R	^B1⁵_R ^W1⁹_R	^B1¹_R ^W1¹²_20½	12	64	64	Winner
2	DolBaram	^B0³_T ^W0⁶_T ^B0¹⁰_R	X	^W1⁴_R ^B1¹²_R	^W1⁵_R ^B1⁷_R ^W1¹¹_R	^B1¹_R ^W1⁸_R	^B1²_R ^W1⁹_R	9	70	34
3	AyaMC	^W0²_R ^B0⁷_R ^W0¹¹_R	^B0⁴_R ^W0¹²_R	X	^B1¹_R ^W1⁹_R	^W1³_4½ ^B1⁶_R ^W1¹⁰_8½	^W1⁵_R ^B1⁸_R	7	74	20
4	NiceGo19N	^B0⁴_R ^W0⁸_R	^B0⁵_R ^W0⁷_R ^B0¹¹_R	^W0¹_R ^B0⁹_R	X	^B0²_R ^W1¹²_T	^W1³_8½ ^B1⁶_9½ ^W1¹⁰_6½	4	73	4
5	ManyFaces1	^W0⁵_R ^B0⁹_R	^W0¹_R ^B0⁸_R	^B0³_4½ ^W0⁶_R ^B0¹⁰_8½	^W1²_R ^B0¹²_T	X	^W1⁴_20½ ^B1⁷_31½ ^W1¹¹_24½	4	71	4
6	gnugo3pt8	^W0¹_R ^B0¹²_20½	^W0²_R ^B0⁹_R	^B0⁵_R ^W0⁸_R	^B0³_8½ ^W0⁶_9½ ^B0¹⁰_6½	^B0⁴_20½ ^W0⁷_31½ ^B0¹¹_24½	X	0	80	0

Place

Name

cross-table

Wins

SOS

SoDOS

Notes

Zen19

DolBa

AyaMC

NiceG

ManyF

gnugo

Zen19X

^W1³_T ^B1⁶_T ^W1¹⁰_R

^B1²_R ^W1⁷_R ^B1¹¹_R

^W1⁴_R ^B1⁸_R

^B1⁵_R ^W1⁹_R

^B1¹_R ^W1¹²_20½

Winner

DolBaram

^B0³_T ^W0⁶_T ^B0¹⁰_R

^W1⁴_R ^B1¹²_R

^W1⁵_R ^B1⁷_R ^W1¹¹_R

^B1¹_R ^W1⁸_R

^B1²_R ^W1⁹_R

AyaMC

^W0²_R ^B0⁷_R ^W0¹¹_R

^B0⁴_R ^W0¹²_R

^B1¹_R ^W1⁹_R

^W1³_4½ ^B1⁶_R ^W1¹⁰_8½

^W1⁵_R ^B1⁸_R

NiceGo19N

^B0⁴_R ^W0⁸_R

^B0⁵_R ^W0⁷_R ^B0¹¹_R

^W0¹_R ^B0⁹_R

^B0²_R ^W1¹²_T

^W1³_8½ ^B1⁶_9½ ^W1¹⁰_6½

ManyFaces1

^W0⁵_R ^B0⁹_R

^W0¹_R ^B0⁸_R

^B0³_4½ ^W0⁶_R ^B0¹⁰_8½

^W1²_R ^B0¹²_T

^W1⁴_20½ ^B1⁷_31½ ^W1¹¹_24½

gnugo3pt8

^W0¹_R ^B0¹²_20½

^W0²_R ^B0⁹_R

^B0⁵_R ^W0⁸_R

^B0³_8½ ^W0⁶_9½ ^B0¹⁰_6½

^B0⁴_20½ ^W0⁷_31½ ^B0¹¹_24½

Black won 15 games and White won 21.

Players

Five players entered. I therefore added GNU Go, to make the numbers even.

Results

In round 3, DolBaram suffered from lag and disconnects in its game with Zen19X, and lost on time. Its operator then moved it from its hardware to run on the Amazon cloud.

After round 5, Zen19X had won 5 games, DolBaram 4, AyaMC 3, ManyFaces1 2, NiceGo19N 1, and gnugo3pt8 0.

In round 6, DolBaram reached a very close endgame in its game with Zen19X, and lost on time while playing the final stone of its first "10 stones in 30 seconds" overtime period.

After round 11, Zen19X had won 11 games, DolBaram 8, AyaMC 7, ManyFaces1 4, NiceGo19N 3, and gnugo3pt8 0, each player having won all its games against lower-scoring players. This list of scores puts the second player's score close to that of the third, and the second-to-last's close to that of the third-to-last. This closeness does not reflect their relative strengths, but the way in which the KGS pairing algorithm makes the second player play more games against the first player than against the third (and the second-to-last more against the last than against the thrid-to-last). I believe the pairing algorithm is correct to do this in a Swiss tournament; but I caution tournament organisers about the use of the Swiss format, if the allocation of second prize is to be important.

In round 12, ManyFaces1 stopped playing when it had more than 10 of its original 15 minutes left on its clock, and lost on time to NiceGo19N, changing the final order.

Comment

MC-based Go-playing programs are perceived by humans as playing "high", as if trying to make central territory. This is particularly true of Zen, which is perceived as playing high even in its games with other MC-based programs.

However, look at these three diagrams below, all of games between Zen19X and DolBaram.


Zen19X vs DolBaram, after move 32	DolBaram vs Zen19X, after move 38	Zen19X vs DolBaram, after move 29

In the first and third figures, Black appears to be making a central moyo, and in the second White does. In each case, that player is DolBaram, and it is Zen who has more corners. So it is now DolBaram that deserves the reputation of using Cosmic Style.

Annual points

Players receive points for the 2015 Annual KGS Bot Championship as follows:

Zen	8
DolBaram	5
Aya	3
oakfoam	2
Many Faces of Go	1

Details of processor numbers, power, etc.

AyaMC: Aya, MC version, running on an 980X 3.3GHz, 6 cores.
DolBaram: DolBaram, running on a dual Xeon-X5660, 12 cores at 2.8GHz for rounds 1 to 3, and Amazon C3.8xLarge (2.8GHz * 16core) for rounds 4 to 12.
gnugo3pt8: GNU Go, version 3.8, running one thread on one i5-5200 CPU.
ManyFaces1: Many faces of Go, running on "an old local machine", as its operator did not have time to set it up on the Amazon cloud.
NiceGo19N: oakfoam, running on an i7-4790K / GTX-970.
Zen19X: Zen, running on a dual 10-core Xeon E5-2690 v2@3 GHz 32 GB RAM.