Thank you for your suggestions. I was unable to get the MasterGo demo to even install on my system, so obviously I'm not going to buy something I can't run.

What about MoyoGo in particular makes you recommend it?It is significantly less expensive ($27) than MFG ($90) or SmartGo ($50) but in what ways is it equal or superior to the more expensive commercial programs?

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Assertion without proof takes up little time; misrepresentation is always beautifully brief. –John Stuart Mill

I downloaded Gnugo but I'm not enough of a geek to figure out how to install a GUI to make it usable. Do you know where I could find "Install Gnugo for Dummies" so I could figure out how to use it? I'm perfectly willing to pay for good Go program, but if I can find one that does the same job for free then I can spend that money on more Go books instead.[/quote]

I suspect if you ask for specific help with that you could get it.

Begin by specifying what operating system you use.

It's easy, I use glGo (IGS client) but other GUIs are just as easy. You can get glGo here: http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/glgo/

After you start it you get to a kind of menu screen, there you click on "Preferences" -> "GNU go" and enter the path to the gnu go exe (example: C:\gnugo-3.8\gnugo.exe). Lastly you have to enter the "GNU Go Parameters" (example: --mode gtp --quiet), now you can play gnugo when you click on "Play GNU Go" in the menu screen.

(This is for windows if you use linux I can give you info about that as well)

Just rechecked the MFG12 website. It costs $90. Version 11 is $40.

I'm going to have to rethink this purchase completely. I had $50 budgeted. $90 is just too much.

I'm taking another look at SmartGo. The graphics are weak and I have no idea what level I'm playing against, but the problems were fun.

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Assertion without proof takes up little time; misrepresentation is always beautifully brief. –John Stuart Mill

Hmm... this doesn't sound right to me. Are you running Windows? If so, what version? If Vista or 7, did you try XP compatibility mode?

It does not have its own playing engine, but uses GnuGo. However, I think GnuGo would be more than sufficient for your needs, at least for now. The main focus of the program is it's database and pattern matching features. MasterGo's capabilities are similar, and more intuitive for searching basic corner patterns. But MoyoGo has a feature that allows you to search for patterns quickly anywhere on the board, and also a feature that shows the statistically likely choices for the next move. Another factor to consider is that MoyoGo is also an SGF editor, so it can function as an all-in-one, like SmartGo. I should add though, that MoyoGo is known for more compatibility issues than MasterGo (which is quite stable) so I don't know if you would be able to get it running or not.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Is MoyoGo substantially better at pattern matching than either Kombilo or SmartGo?

Yes. It is substantially faster, and most searches can be done dynamically, whereas with Kombilo and SmartGo it is more of a snapshot at a time. Plus many of the search features it has don't even exist in other programs.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Thanks.

While Moyogo is an amazing program,

I feel I have to point out that it's the most controversial of those programs.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?MoyoGo

Those controversies may or may not be an issue for you, But I stopped following moyogo because of its creator's views.

But, as I said, it is very, very well done.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I'm considering Many Faces of Go 12. It's pretty much last on my list of things I've been considering go wise to buy in the immediate future. Now it's expensive at $90 which is somewhat a turn-off but one cannot deny that you get a lot of useful things in the package. What I'm interested in is people's experiences with using MFOG or Crazy Stone or similar with self study. Did you benefit a lot from it? I'm familar with many of the arguments against playing with AIs but I'm attracted to MFOG's review function where it gives its thoughts on your moves or better moves than the one you made.

Thoughts?

I have gotten no value at all out of the above. The reasoning is just contextless "local shape move" "try to kill enemy group" or whatever, and you really already knew that.

I have both MFOG and Crazy Stone. MFOG is useful in that it is really easy to turn the engine on and off (click the player name) when you are looking at a position to get a quick evaluation and it has a cool "lookahead" feature where it graphically shows numbered variations that it is thinking about. The other thing that is good is that it gives positional evaluations in probabilities on other squares where you could've moved, so if your move and its move both show "53" or something, you can probably decide this isn't the huge game-losing blunder if that's what you're looking for. And also, if you click on a group it will tell you if it thinks it is alive or dead or dying or seki or whatever.

One thing that I don't like about MFOG is that I can't figure out how to change the time settings in an sgf file that I am reviewing, and if I played a 45 + 5/30 game and was in byo-yomi on a particular move then the computer is only willing to think for 30 seconds in order to not time out. I get round this by editing the sgf file to add more time, but it is annoying. The overall feel of MFOG is the same sort of form-over-substance retro that KGS does.

Crazy stone has recently introduced functionality into the English version to get an automatic review of the game with a little chart (like here: http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/~coulo ... index.html ) and you can get a list of the moves where your moves differed from its moves and how big a mistake it thought it was. Also, when you are on a move you can ask it and it will give you a list of what it thinks are good/bad moves and how good/bad it thinks they are. MFOG kind of does this but Crazy Stone's stuff is a little slicker, I think. However, the interface for the analysis is a little clumsy (you can't sort the list or anything like that) and overall Crazy Stone feels a bit more like a game and navigation of the game feels clumsy (you have to use ctrl-arrow to go forward a move, for example), but I bought it on the basis of the evaluation feature and am really happy with it.

Oh, and somehow the Crazy Stone engine finds moves much more quickly than MFOG. On my machine Crazy Stone with 15 minutes of time beats MFOG with an hour of time. Whether that is a difference in the engines or whether Crazy Stone is hogging processor space on my machine etc I would not know.

Sorry; tldr: MFOG is a little more user-friendly with navigating and clicking on a group so it tells you if it thinks it is alive or dead is cool. Crazy Stone is slicker and can auto-analyse game records. When I play them against each other on the same machine, Crazy Stone wins but this is not actually a big concern for me.

Hello,
Just another point of view, the ranking of the top computer go programs on KGS :
http://www.gokgs.com/graphPage.jsp?user=zen19
http://www.gokgs.com/graphPage.jsp?user=ManyFaces
http://www.gokgs.com/graphPage.jsp?user=crazystone
CrazyStone seems to have a little edge on the others.
I'm a long time customer of smartgo (on windows and ipad) and I like the UI a lot.
As for studying, my best results was obtained from practicing life and death problems and getting game comments from better player, online and IRL.

Because there were so many complaints about the copy protection of Crazy Stone, Unbalance changed their system: internet connection is now required only the first time the program is started.

Rémi

Thanks for that info, Remi. It's always nice to know game developers pay attention to the end users' concerns. This puts Crazystone back in the running for me. The price is still high but not out of line with MFG12.

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Assertion without proof takes up little time; misrepresentation is always beautifully brief. –John Stuart Mill

Something I keep noticing with all these Windows go apps: It doesn't seem they are improving much. I see "Top Computer Program 2008" or 2010 or whatever. Where are the upgrades?

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Assertion without proof takes up little time; misrepresentation is always beautifully brief. –John Stuart Mill

Actually, they're improving very rapidly, probably the fastest since they were far into the kyu ranks. See this table: http://senseis.xmp.net/?KGSBotRatings. Perhaps what you're seeing is that the fact that there's a lot of competition, and the program that had a claim to be the best a few years ago has lost the title to someone who has already lost the title.

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Occupy Babel!

That makes sense.

Sadly Computer Go tournaments don't help the average Go player decide which one to buy when the winning programs are running on supercomputers and 100 CPU arrays.

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Assertion without proof takes up little time; misrepresentation is always beautifully brief. –John Stuart Mill

I think most people just get the free ones.

No doubt. I really like all the bells and whistles that come with MFG12 and SmartGo, but Drago with GnuGo or Fuego as engines work very well and the graphics are actually better.

I think I'm going to put my planned purchase of a commercial Go app on hiatus until I get a bit more experience both with the ones I have and with playing Go. Perhaps by the end of summer I can make a more informed decision. And who knows? I might end up sticking with GnuGo.

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Assertion without proof takes up little time; misrepresentation is always beautifully brief. –John Stuart Mill

Not that extreme. By and large the amount of hardware each of the contestants is running on is published. Perhaps not useful for the "average Go player" if by that you mean somebody unable to interpret that data, look up "benchmarks" and compute just how many times more powerful the tournament machines and/or bot machines are than his or her home machine.

Note that machine power and time trade off. So if (for example) the MFOG bot on KGS is running on a machine 3-4 times more powerful than your home machine that's the same as giving your home machine 3-4 times the time allotment (note: that's if the particular program begins by analyzing the machine on which it finds itself running and then sets parameters according to that and the selected time control)