| format | 16-round Swiss |
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| board size | 19×19 |
| rules | Chinese |
| komi | 7½ |
| time | 14 minutes plus 25/60s |
The first round started at 08:00 UTC.
Sixteen players registered. Apart from CzechBot, PueGo and PNUGo, which missed part or all of their games in the first two rounds, all 16 players played all their 16 games.
We welcomed a new player, Oakfoam. It is the creation of Francois van Niekerk, a student of engineering in South Africa. It uses RAVE, with Mogo-style 3×3 patterns, and is open source.
In round 1, StoneGrid chased ManyFaces1's stones in a ladder for nine moves, then noticed that ManyFaces1 had a ladder-breaker, and tenukied. ManyFaces1 won the game.
The bots operated by Petr Baudiš were not behaving well. PueGo joined its game several minutes late; PNUGo joined its game towards the end of its first overtime period, and found that it had one second left to make 25 moves; and CzechBot, which was connected to KGS but was not in the Computer Go room, did not join its game at all. Petr's own bot, pachi2, was unaffected; it was being operated by Jean-loup Gailly.
In round 2, oakfoam (which had had a walkover against CzechBot in round 1) played very slowly, and lost on time. I suggested to its operator that he should adjust its time setting.
PNUGo played normally, but PueGo and CzechBot did not play at all, they were both involved in games with other KGS users.
At the end of round 2 I telephoned Petr Baudiš, and told him what was happening. He realised that his bots were not set to tournament mode, so they were joining non-tournament games whenever a tournament game was not available. He changed their configuration files to correct this.
I ought not to have done this. As tournament director, I ought to be impartial, and not give help to any of the participants; even if I try to give help impartially I cannot, as I do not know all the participants' telephone numbers, and I do not share a common language with some. But Petr is running these three bots, which he did not create, in the common interest, and I judged that alerting him was better than removing them from the tournament.
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| oakfoam vs PueGo |
| Moves 33-80. |
In the round 3 game between oakfoam and PueGo SGF, PueGo tried to catch one of oakfoam's stones in a ladder, as shown to the right. It steered the ladder away from a white ladder-breaker, but this left a black stone in atari, and the white stones eventually escaped. However oakfoam's time management was still poor, and it eventually lost on time.
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| ManyFaces1 vs pachi2 |
| At point where White resigned. |
The round 4 game betwen ManyFaces1 and pachi2 was interesting. SGF They divided the board into quarters, each having two opposite quarters of the board. But pachi2 had put a large dent into ManyFaces1's quarter on the right edge, and won the game by resignation in the position shown to the left.
After round 4, pachi2 was the only undefeated player.
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| Stonegrid vs PueGo |
| After final passes. |
In round 5, Zen19 suffered its second loss, to EricaBot SGF.
Also in round 5, the game between StoneGrid and PueGo SGF ended in the position shown to the right. The game was now scored with all the stones counted as alive. This is clearly wrong. I think the large white group in the left side is dead, and I am sure the small white group in the bottom left corner is dead. If I am correct about the left side, then Black, PueGo, should have won.
In round 6, oakfoam showed that it had learned to play fast enough, at least once into overtime. It got into overtime in its game with SimpleBot SGF, played badly by filling its own eyes, and failed to handle the clean-up, treating all SimpleBot's dead groups as alive; but it still won.
Also in round 6, pachi2 suffered its first loss, to valkyria19 SGF.
In round 7 CzechBot was slow to make its first move in its game with pachi2. Petr found that this was because it has a memory leak, and so should be restarted between games if it is to play well.
After round 7, pachi2 and EricaBot were tied for first place, with six wins each.
In round 8 gomorra3 failed to clean up WeakBot50k's dead stones, and won anyway.
In round 9 AyaMC beat EricaBot, leaving pachi2 in the lead with eight wins.
In round 10 CzechBot played slowly in its game with WeakBot50k. When it had only three seconds of main time left, it started passing, and made no further moves. WeakBot50k continued to put stones on the board, saving three dead groups and winning the game. It seems that CzechBot was, or became, unaware that there would be overtime.
In round 12 Zen19 beat pachi2 SGF. This put them both on ten wins, along with EricaBot.
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| valkyria19 vs WeakBot50k |
| Moves 55-84. |
In round 13 valkyria19 played out a losing ladder against WeakBot50k SGF, as shown to the left. However valkria19 was still able to win the game: WeakBot50k is reliable at spotting atari, but can do little else.
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| EricaBot vs pachi2, top right corner |
| Move 175. |
Also in round 13, EricaBot beat pachi2 SGF. One of pachi2's moves is shown to the right. This move is definitely sente, it threatens to win the semeai in the corner; but if answered, it achieves nothing, in fact it is a small loss as Black now has one fewer forcing move on the outside. I have observed that when an MC-based bot makes such a move, it is desperate and is going to lose the game, even if the statistics it reports don't reflect this.
EricaBot and Zen19 were now leading with 11 wins from 13 games, with pachi2 one point behind.
In round 14 Zen19 beat EricaBot, while pachi2 had an easier win against PNUGo. This left Zen19 in the lead with 12 wins, and EricaBot and pachi2 a point behind it with 11 wins.
In round 15 as in round 10, CzechBot played slowly in its game with WeakBot50k, started passing when it had only three seconds of main time left, and lost when it allowed WeakBot50k to make many undeserved gains.
Zen19, EricaBot and pachi2 all won their games in this round, leaving them on 13, 12 and 12 wins respectively.
In the final round 16, EricaBot played and beat pachi2, while Zen19 played and beat ManyFaces1 to win the tournament.
The players receive points for the 2011 Annual KGS Bot Championship as follows:
| Zen | 8 |
| Erica | 5 |
| pachi | 3 |
| Aya | 2 |
| valkyria | 1 |