| Formal division | Open division | |
|---|---|---|
| board size | 19x19 | 19x19 |
| rules | Chinese | Chinese |
| komi | 7½ | 7½ |
| time | 28 minutes absolute | 28 minutes absolute |
Formal division: five-round Swiss.
Open division: five-round Swiss.
The first round started at 09:00 UCT for the Formal and 09:10 for the Open division.
As usual, the tournament was held in two divisions, Formal and Open, with more restrictive entry conditions for the Formal division.
Formal Division 19x19
|
Open Division 19x19
|
The "real" names of the bots listed above, and of their programmers, are listed here: programs which have registered for KGS Computer Go Tournaments.
In round 1, valkyria was drawn as white against the absent Mango. When it did
nothing for ten minutes or so (while waiting for Mango to connect and move), the
server kicked it out of the game for idleness.
This must be wrong. A player which has done
nothing wrong should not be penalised for a lapse by its opponent. And it is a
serious consequence of the way the server works: it could lead to the win being
awarded to a player that turns up late, if its opponent's operator does not spot
the problem, kill it, and relaunch it. I hope that wms will change this behaviour.
In round 2, GNU had connection problems in its game against AyaBot, and eventually lost on time.
In round 3, GNU's connection problems continued, allowing MoGoBot a win on time.
In round 4, AyaBot played more slowly than usual in the endgame, and lost to firstgo.
In round 2, MoGoBot19 had an easy win in a finished game against WeakBot50k, with 35 seconds left on its clock. But instead of moving or passing, it allowed its time to run out.
In round 4, MoGoBot19 had another easy win in a finished game IdiotBot. This time it continued to play, needlessly filling its own liberties while IdiotBot passed, until it had again lost on time.
As far as I know, MoGoBot and MoGoBot19 are the same program. Yet MoGoBot
won 3/5 in the Formal division, while MoGoBot19 won only 1/5 in the Open
division, against weaker opposition. My guess is that, being a Monte Carlo
program, it finds time a problem when playing on a full board, and has been
tuned so as to use almost all of its time allocation. So against programs
that play "sensibly", and particularly against the well-mannered valkyria
that resigns when it has a lost position, MoGo can win; but against
programs that end with many dead stones on the board, MoGo can lose on time
while trying to tidy up a won position.
Sylvain Gelly has explained: 'Yes it is
the same program as MoGoBot, running in a different machine. It turns out
that someone else was using the machine were MoGoBot19 was running, and as
we use the "CPU time" and not "real time", MoGo was taking a lot more real
time for its moves than it should. It is why it lost games on time, and some
playing very badly at the end (when time is < 20 s, then MoGo plays randomly,
it is a "security"). So for MC programs time is a "problem", but it is not
the case here, the problem was "external" ;). As I was in a plane I could
not operate it (a friend was there if there was a crash, but he could not
know about the machine).
I am very sorry for the observers about
the bad games this problem gave.'