Quoting Nick Wedd <[email protected]>:
I see that many people now find 13x13 Go more interesting than 9x9. The next two KGS bot tournaments, on August 15th and on September 5th, are both scheduled to be 9x9. How would people feel about my changing one or both to be 13x13 instead?
Well there was some 13x13 activity on this list recently. For a while some program showed up on CGOS 13x13 so interest increased from zero to more than zero. But I would be careful how to interpret that.
Meanwhile people are testing new versions of their programs on CGOS 9x9. So activity wise it seems 9x9 is most popular, then 19x19 and less so 13x13. But looking at CGOS can be biased because people may only test on 9x9 just because they get a lot of games quickly and a greater variance of opponents.
Still right now only two programs are active on CGOS13x13 in addition to the GnuGo anchor.
I would like to run at least one tournament on 9x9 because that is what I have been personally working on lately.
Also I tend to think that developing go programs for 13x13 is similar to 19x19. What is interesting with 13x13 is that one should perhaps be able to make stronger programs on 13x13 before 19x19. So it is a natural stepping part in test against humans. Still I think working on 19x19 will naturally generalize to 13x13 as well.
The difference between 9x9 and (13x13/19x19) is that the former has whole board patterns/opening whereas the latter one needs to focus on local fighting and evaluating sequences of moves strategically. This then have consequences for how large scale patterns should be used in the programs.
It is also premature to stop working on 9x9. The best programs are strong indeed but most are very buggy in the sense they play very weak in certain situations. Best opening play is just mere guessing and mimicry. I would define 9x9 as sort of mature when top programs wins with one color and loses only with the other. I do not see that happening yet.
Anyway I know there are very strong programs for 9x9 that has not played for a while on CGOS since the all time rating list was reset some months ago. So it now looks like Valkyria is the strongest. Who dares to disprove that?! ;-)
Best Magnus _______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
