[computer-go] Congratulations to LeelaBot2 and to CzechBot

[Nick Wedd]

In message 
<6054b7b40805070659u543a69afvf8b9dffbe75a743e at mail.gmail.com>, Jason 
House <jason.james.house at gmail.com> writes
>Correction: HBotSVN was not reconfigured for speed in round 3.  It was
>set to use two search threads in round 4, and was compiled in debug
>mode for the whole tournament.  I apologize for the confusing PM's
>during the tournament about this.

Thank you for explaining this, I have changed the report accordingly.

>  What is "HBotSVN's technique"? 

Its technique is to refuse to admit that its dead groups are dead, and 
then to waste time in the resolution phase playing meaningless stones. 
This sometimes gives it a win on time, and is the only way that it wins 
games.  This is annoying for the other competitors.  I know it is not 
your intention that it behaves like this, but it is in your power to 
prevent it.  It is not in my power to do anything about it, except by 
reassigning the results of games which it wins like this:  this is the 
purpose of the probation.  It is in Bill Shubert's power to change the 
way the server works so that if only one player sends a 
final_status_list, it will accept what that player says.  I shall 
suggest it to him.

> The game end protocol says "To play
>in a tournament, programs must either implement both
>"kgs-genmove_cleanup" and "final_status_list dead", or they must play
>until all of their opponent's dead stones are removed from the board.
>It's OK if "play until dead stones removed" is an option, but they have
>to make sure that this option is turned on whenever they are going to
>be in a tournament, or they will do poorly in the tournament!". 
>HouseBot (HBotSVN) handles this by playing until all of its opponent's
>dead stones are removed.
>  "final_status_list dead" is not supported.  It's kgsGtp (not
>HouseBot!) that insisists that all stones are alive.  It annoys me
>every time I see the description that it's the bot that's behaving
>badly when it's really a problem with how the combination of kgsGtp and
>the KGS server represent this stuff. 

I have changed the wording of my report from "claimed they were alive" 
to "failed to admit that they were dead".  I have done so because you 
have persuaded me that it is correct and what I said before was wrong. I 
do not expect you to be appeased by this.

>I consider it a bug in kgs that
>this perpetually gets misinterpreted by spectators.
>  Please stop saying that my bot insists all of its stones are alive. 
>This could be simplified by either fixing the game end protocol rules,
>or getting kgs fixed (kgsGtp and/or the server).
>
>  In the round two game, it was HBotSVN that had 3 seconds left on the
>clock.  Its opponent, MonteGNU, had almost a minute left (51 seconds). 

Thank you for pointing this out.  I have corrected my mistake.

>The only games where HBotSVN's opponent got down to very little time
>left was the game against Leela.
>  The whole probation thing has really pissed me off.  Maybe one
>component of that is first finding out about it by reading it in the
>report.  I have not been implementing "difficult things" for quite a
>while.  Because stuff wasn't working, I suspended all forward progress
>on my bot two months ago.  Since then, I've been building test
>harnesses, writing unit tests, and eliminating bugs.
>  Did you know that weakbot50k and idiotbot don't actually handle the
>game end at all?  Once both players pass, they switch to using gnu go.

I didn't know that, but it seems a sensible, robust, solution.

Nick

>  I will no longer participate in these tournaments for the foreseeable
>future.
>
>
>On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 6:13 AM, Nick Wedd <nick at maproom.co.uk> wrote:
>  the winners of last Sunday's KGS bot tournament.
>
>  My report is at http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/38/index.html
>
>  Nick
>  --
>  Nick Wedd    nick at maproom.co.uk
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-- 
Nick Wedd    nick at maproom.co.uk