This is not an official KGS page.

Sixth KGS Computer Go Tournament

Sunday September 4th, 2005

These results also appear on official KGS pages: Formal Division, Open Division which link to all the game records.

Rules

9x9 board
Chinese rules, komi 7½
28 minutes each absolute time

Format

Round Robin

Times

The first round started at 08:00 GMT for the Formal and 08:10 for the Open division, subsequent rounds started at one-hour intervals.

Results

The tournament was again held in two divisions, Formal and Open, with more restrictive entry conditions for the Formal division. Essentially, an entrant to the Formal division must not contain move-generating code used by any other such entrant, and its author's real identity must be known. A program may enter both divisions simultaneously (though it will have to use different names for each).

Formal Division

1stGNU4 wins
gonzoBot
viking5
4thbotnoid3 wins
CrazyStone
tlsBot
7thantbot0 win
8thMango0 win, quit

Open Division

1stgonzoBot26 wins
tlsBotExp1
3rdMango25 wins
4thantbot9x94 wins
5thLibertyBot3 wins
SimpleBot
7thWbot1 win
8thDrunkenGo0 win

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

I no longer intend to mention every game, however briefly. Instead this description covers only what I considered the most noteworthy of the games.

At the start of the tournament, it was good to see all sixteen bots present and ready to play. No-one had overslept or otherwise forgotten to make his bot turn up.

Formal division

In round 1, viking5 as White attained this position against gonzoBot, with white to play. White passed, while Black played 2, 4, and 6 as shown. White then realised that the obvious move was not available to it because of the positional superko rule that applies when using Chinese rules on KGS. Knowing that it would inevitably lose its five stones in the top left, it resigned. Here is the game record for this superko game.

In round 2, viking5 showed its strength by beating GNU by half a point. Here is the Viking - GNU Go game record for this game.

In round 5, GNU surprisingly lost another game, this time to botnoid. Here is the GNU Go - botnoid game record.

In round 6, Mango vanished, though its clone Mango2 was still playing in the Open division.

In round 7, Mango did not show up, and was assigned a bye.

Rounds 8, 9, and 10 consisted entirely of byes, while the tournament scheduler waited for the missing Mango.

Description, Open division

I had decided to schedule this as a round robin if there were eight or fewer entrants, otherwise to reschedule it as a Swiss, so as to reduce the demand on my and the entrants' time. When Aloril submitted five bots for it, we agreed that I was to remove these as other entrants appeared, keeping the total to eight.

Round 6 saw the game between the eventual winners, tlsBotExp1 and gonzoBot2. After making one move, tlsBotExp1 vanished, so gonzoBot2 won on time.

In round 7, tlsBotExp1 did not show up, and was assigned a bye.

Round 8 consisted entirely of byes, while the tournament scheduler waited for the missing tlsBotExp1.

TlsBotExp1 reappeared in time for round 9, and got to play its missed game against DrunkenGnu. It won this, securing a share of the first place.

Comment

The software used to configure a tournament has a field "Max requested byes". I have been misinterpreting its effect.

When I set it to 2, as I did for this tournament, I assumed that it meant "a bot can fail to show up twice during the normal course of the tournament. It will be assigned a bye (scored as a loss) whenever it does this. If it tries it a third time, it will be booted from the tournament."

What it really means is "a bot can fail to show up twice during the tournament. Whenever it does so, everyone else will be kept waiting for an extra round, in case it feels like playing the game that it missed. If it tries this a third time, it will be booted from the tournament."

I don't want bots to be booted from the tournament just because they miss the start of one round. But nor do I want them given the power to keep everyone else waiting for several hours. I wonder what the recommended way of setting up the tournament is.