This is not an official KGS page.

Fourteenth KGS Computer Go Tournament

Sunday May 7th, 2006

Rules

Format

Formal, eight-round Swiss; Open, ten-round Swiss.

Times

The first round started at 16:00 GMT for the Formal and 16:10 for the Open division, subsequent rounds started at thirty-minute and at twenty-minute intervals for the two divisions.

Results

As usual, the tournament was held in two divisions, Formal and Open, with more restrictive entry conditions for the Formal division.

The "real" names of the bots listed above, and of their programmers, are listed here: programs which have registered for KGS Computer Go Tournaments.

Description

SlugGo played in both divisions, as SlugGo13 and SlugGo9. Two versions of HouseBot played in the Open division: a stable blitz version played as HouseBot, and a new untested version played as HBotSVN - more of this below.

Formal division

The Formal division was uneventful. SlugGo won all eight of its games, the other three programs won two or three each. All of the games ended properly, with good behaviour by the players.

Open division

tlsBot suffered connection problems against StoneCrazy, and took six of its eight minutes to make its first move. StoneCrazy also suffered from problems, and finally lost on time, after making only three moves.

The game HBotSVN-StoneCrazy ended with an argument about the status of a group. I resolved this, but failed to save the game before it was killed by an admin, so no game record is available. This problem should not arise in future tournaments, as I will have game-killing powers myself and will not need to look for an admin to help.

In round 3, tlsBot killed all of IdiotBot's stones, but lost on time while removing them from the board; IdiotBot used only three seconds for its whole game.

Round 4 was uneventful.

In round 5, the game HBotSVN-IdiotBot ended in this position. IdiotBot asserted that the white stone on A1 was dead. HBotSVN responded by asserting that this stone was alive, and all the black stones on the board, including the group at the top right, were dead. I counted the game, and found that White had won anyway. I can do without this kind of thing.
       I allowed HBotSVN to enter the tournament because I was persuaded that it is significantly different from the other version of HouseBot that had entered. Indeed it is - unlike HouseBot, it starts its games by putting most of its stones on the one-line. I don't mind this. I might even be willing to tolerate its being mistaken about the status of the A1 stone. But I think its assertion that the J9 group is dead takes incompetence too far.
       HBotSVN did similar things in most of its games. This is annoying for me as organiser. It is not so bad with 9x9 Go, I can rule on the status of the groups and then count the game and assign the result. But with larger boards, counting accurately is something I prefer to avoid. I therefore rule that HBotSVN is banned from these tournaments until further notice. HouseBot is of course still welcome.

SlugGo suffered its first defeat of the tournament, by StoneCrazy.

Rounds 6 and 7 were uneventful, apart from HBotSVN's continuing bad behaviour.

In round 8, SlugGo again lost, again to StoneCrazy, after some blunders.

Round 9 was uneventful.

In round 10, SlugGo again lost, this time to HouseBot, by only 1½ points. This left it with seven wins, and in fourth place.

The winner, on eight wins, was StoneCrazy. Its only losses were to tlsBot. In second place, also on eight wins, was tlsBot. Its only losses were on time, to weak players, after killing all their stones.

Forfeited games

The following "forfeited game" records are available by clicking on them:
Round 1 firstgo-HBotSVN
Round 2 Fomalhaut-WeakBot50k
Round 5 HBotSVN-IdiotBot
Round 6 SlugGo9-HBotSVN
Round 7 HouseBot-HBotSVN
Round 8 HBotSVN-tlsBot

Other game records are available from the KGS pages: Formal Division. Open Division.