Subject: Results: Don Geddis vs. Scott's Go program From: Don Geddis To: don@geddis.org (Don Geddis), hsr@cs.stanford.edu (Scott Roy), singh@coastside.net (Narinder Singh), wharvey@thereinc.com (Will Harvey) Organization: http://don.geddis.org/ Date: 09 Jun 2003 12:06:56 -0700 In-Reply-To: "Scott Roy"'s message of "Tue, 3 Jun 2003 16:01:35 -0700" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii The long awaited, six-months in the making, man vs. machine Go match finally took place yesterday: "Scott Roy" writes: > ------------------------------------- > Don Geddis vs. Scott's Go Program > Sunday June 8th, 11:30am > Stanford Coffee House > ------------------------------------- It was probably my first and only game on a full 19x19 board. I didn't realize how long those games can take! Hours later, we were finally done. How did it go? Scott's amazing program achieved the following remarkable feats: 1. His laptop didn't lose power during the game. 2. The program didn't crash. 3. All the moves it made were legal. 4. By the end of the game, one of the program's groups had managed to make two eyes, and so remained alive. Each eye was a single point, so Scott's program ended with two points of territory and a handful (10?) of stones still on the board. Scott was a little rushed at the end of the game, so we didn't finish the whole thing and come up with an exact score. However, we can estimate the approximate score. 19x19 is a little under 400 points. Near the end of the game, there were roughly the same number of white and black stones. At the end, on behalf of his program, Scott conceded all the stones except the lone group with two eyes. So, at the end, Don had perhaps 250-350 points of territory, plus ~200 prisoners from the program. Scott's program had two points of territory, perhaps 10 stones still on the board, and maybe 5 or so prisoners of his own. Making the score, roughly, positive a couple hundred for Don, to negative a couple hundred for Scott's program. Humans win again! A quick postscript: Scott, ever the confident one, proposed re-upping the same bet for another six months. I was a bit reluctant, having actually been (needlessly!) worried the first time, I thought I had done my fair share to hold up the human side of things. Conveniently, Will Harvey (a _much_ better player than I) offered to take my place. As Scott debated whether to accept this more challenging bet, Will offered him 100-1 odds. Attempting to push Scott over the edge, I joined Will in the stakes. Scott accepted. The Great Scott Roy Go Computer Challege, #2, is now set for six months away. On Sunday, December 7, 2003 (or within a week of that date), Scott's latest "new and improved" Go program will play a single challenge match against Will Harvey. If Will wins, Scott owes me and Will each $10. If Scott's program wins, we each owe Scott $1,000. For those considering some side bets: it may interest you to know that in the first Great Go Challenge, Scott's program spent the first five months and three weeks "sucking". Then, in the last few days, it improved by "an order of magnitude". The final version was completed at 2am on Sunday morning, for the Sunday 11:30am contest. Those of you with experience in delivering robust software may wish to take this into account when estimating the likelihood that Scott's program six months from now might defeat Will Harvey. -- Don _______________________________________________________________________________ Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org don@geddis.org Those who do not know Lisp are doomed to reimplement it.