Joaz: the cat's out of the bag here, and I think you need to say a bit more than "there are better ways of dealing with this." Either "shut up and ignore it" (bad solution), "hash it out amongst yourselves" (better, IMHO) or "be quiet while the admins decide what to do" (could be good or bad).

Maybe this is the only time in the history of L19 that someone is accused of being a sock puppet. But sock puppets are bad for the community, and if there's reason to believe there's one, people should be able to say it.

And, sorry Mike, but it's not like it's a crazy idea. If someone shows up on the forums and their only interest seems to be promoting a particular piece of commercial software, the idea has to cross through your head. Surely there are more than me, Deja and one or two others who are wondering.

I don't want to say more than I ought to, but your response to Oren didn't really explain why you're so keen on promoting MFoG, and your emphatic denial that you're Dave doesn't demonstrate that you're not. If you can put this matter to rest, I encourage you to do so.

Added: I'm really unsure of what to think. I'm not sure that this should make the post any less irritating to Mike, but I don't want to make it out that I know, or am super confident or whatever.

P.S. Deja, that pseudonym thing was silly. Cut your losses.

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Occupy Babel!

Hi Stefany93,

Here are my recommendations in order of preference:

#1 Many Face of Go - $89.95
#2 Moyo Go Studio - free
#3 Dariush - free

I use all three programs in my study and compare the recommended moves from each. Sometimes all three programs agree on which move is the best, most of the time they don't. It's when they disagree that I try to understand why and that's when learning takes place. It's just one of several tools in the toolbox.

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"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

Yeah, I think you're right, but it isn't the first time I've done something silly on L19 and probably not the last. I welcome the admonitions to keep each other honest. Thanks, hyperpape!

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"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

Thanks, emeraldemon. I will try these options. 4k would be good enough for me now (and I guess for the OP as well).

Edit: unfortunately the settings don't work. The engine doesn't respond back to the gui (I am using gogui and drago)



edit2: I reset the number of threads back to 1, now it works.

edit3: I was too fast. It stopped making moves after a few moves:



edit4: set ponder to 0, now it works. But most of the good settings are gone and it is as easy to beat it as before

edit5: two threads now working, yessssss. The ponder parameter seems to have been the problem.

a) Perhaps you ought to check back on your own postings in this thread? I was not the one who initially raised MFOG but you did (in effect) by making a statement about what these programs could or could not do (and most of the MCTS programs ARE "free software" even if not being made easily available).

Why did you interpret that "no longer true" as a promotion of MFOG? I have indicated my interest in "what is the state of the art" and I did say "as of 12.021" which is less than two months old. If one of the free MCTS programs also offered the feature I would have told about that too. See note below*.

b) You have apparently failed to note that I did not suggest to Stefany that she buy this program precisely because might be too pricey for a Bulgarian youngster to afford. My failure to suggest any of the "free" alternatives has to do with her current strength and where she apparently wants to go, not any opposition to free software. If she had told us that she was 12-15k instead of already 9k I would have suggested she get gnugo. OK, this is just my opinion, but to effectively use computer go playing programs they should be at least a half dozen stones stronger than you are and then you'll need a stronger program when down to three stones. Precisely to prevent learning "bad habits" from the machine.

c) The focus of many of the free go projects hasn't been create a competitive "production ready" release. WHY? (besides many of them being academic projects). For some of us the use of free software is a fetish, we feel that there is something wrong about people creating software for pay (as opposed to in addition using monopoly powers to charge excessive amounts and only offer oppressive/unfair licenses).

Sorry, I lost my set of the "correspondence" in a house fire so I can't quote from some of the original "free software" papers. But might I humbly suggest that few if any of us involved imagined that we were suggesting something that would make it impossible for us to make our livings from creating software. Thought we were promoting something that would oppose the abusive conditions under which commercial software was being sold (not opposing the existence of all commercial software). Keep a couple things in mind. This was before the internet exisited as we know it. There were no "free downloads" of anything so it was planned that "free" software (source code) would be provided on standard medium for the "reasonable and customary charge" for that. Computers were using different architecures and operating systems so we assumed that users of "free software" would be paying to have it compiled for them, etc.

The point is that I am not "political" on the subject of free software. I am not promoting commercial alternatives when I say (if true) "at the present time this or that commercial progam is better than what is available with free programs". And in reverse, I am not promoting free software if I say "the terms under which this or that commercial alternative is available are unacceptable" (if true -- obscenely high price and/or unfair/oppressive license).

A couple of years ago there was more than one commercial product superior to what was available free so writing then I would not be talking about just one of them. But I am writing as of the current reality. Don't confuse "not opposing" with "promoting". When I say MFOG is offered with a fair license and not too high a price that is just an opinion about the price -- not saying it would be worth it to you or anybody else and of course based upon my idea of what compensation we programmer/analysts should get for our time.

d) I am not David Fotland (I'm about a decade older). Except for when still in high school when I and a friend built a tiny entirely solid state "computer" (in '61 that was a big deal) and briefly while in college I haven't done "hardware" and my degree was in Physics, not computing (University of Pennsylvania '66 -- so you can look up if I'm a real person). I did other things for a while, but about the same time Fotland graduated from college I began working for MassMutual Life Insurance and did software for them until retiring early after Y2K was over (and then a few stints back there consulting). Didn't do any "scientific" programming until after retiring.

But my "Monte Carlo" programming has nothing to do with playing go. Instead it's about genetics. Trying to breed American Chestnut resistant to the blight fungus, modeling what to expect in our populations of partially resistant trees over time (simulations for best numbers per line and how many lines to have in orchards with respect to things like inbreeding).

Michael D Novack, FLMI (that's an insurance industry designation)


* I suggested that MFOG could add this feature because of the way it built its tree starting with what its AI go knowledge engine suggested (I believe this is true of MFOG but I haven't looked at the code). After more thought I have realized that this isn't necessary and all that is required is the presence of such an engine (pure MCTS could select the move and AFTER ask the AI "look at this move and compare to your set of possible moves and if it matches one of them show the reasons"). Since the gnugo project does have an AI engine the branch trying to use MCTS would be able to add "reasons for move" even if not using the engine to build a plausible move set. Similarly Mick Reiss would be able to do that for go++8 if he ever gets that working competively to MFOG (which I doubt -- think he's too far behind to catch up)

PS --- Going to now acuse me of being Mick? Or because I mention gnugo, Trevor Morris who did some work on that (and who is top player at my local go club). Why should you find it strange that somebody who has created a few hundred thousand lines of code in my day would be interested in keeping current about "computer go"?

No, you can't. Be careful you're not blacklisted.

As to the Mike Novack = Dave Fotland allegation, how was this ever (allegedly) established? I know Dr Straw = Sakata was alleged and (apparently) eventually admitted, and I'm curious how that was first detected, too.

I don't know what was causing your errors, I've never had problems with those settings. You might ask at the fuego mailing list, if there is a bug I'm sure they'd want to know: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fuego-devel. I didn't actually see anything in your second code block that looked like an error, maybe it was just still thinking? Also when you do multi-thread, I think you need to make sure you have "lock_free 1" also, although I'm not positive about that. Anyway, the ponder setting causes the program to think during the opponent's turn, it's not really necessary, but it's nice to have.

More background:

I was at the London Open talking with T Mark about giving my old CDs of Gogod away (the whole original CD in the original box, in no sense an illegal copy) and he had no problems with that. (He saw it more as promotion)
I would not give Stephany93 a my newest version but a fairly old (Winter 2008) one. (That is the oldest i have)

If she wanted a newer version i would tell her to buy the newest versions. (and buy the 2 for a pittance more than 1 offer)

Please discuss it with T Mark what the formal GoGod line on this is and I will then conform to it.


To be honnest i was a bit surprised that TMark did not added any limitations to giving away old cd's. I would think that old ones (say older than 2 year is ok to give away)
In the mean time i will retract my offer and will wait on your responce.
On where you do agree with and what ywe can do with old versions.

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

I think you can safely infer that he expected a bit of discretion from you. Private is one thing, public is another.

You can do with old GoGoDs whatever you legally do with old books and so on, but please apply a bit of common-sense. CDs are a lot easier to copy than whole books.

Mike, I'm sorry that I let my doubts lead me in to saying something obnoxious in public, and I'm glad that you've set the score straight. I probably should have kept my mouth shut.

Given that I'm inclined to accept your statement about who you are, I hope you'll agree that a line by line response to the details of what you wrote would be misguided.

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Occupy Babel!

Back to the topic, price aside, what are the strongest programs available for home use? I understand this depends on what kind of hardware you're running, so let's just say an average high end desktop.

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"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

It was pretty much a tie at the last computer olympiad.

http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=216

I would say

Complete programs:
- Many faces of Go
- Zen (but still as fas as i know only available in Japanese)

- My Go Friend (only 9x9)

Go bots (freeware but you need an interface like Drago or Gogui to work with them)
- Fuego
- MoGo

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

@Stephany93 After experimenting some more with MoyoGo, I have decided, that MasterGo is the better choice. MoyoGo's statistical move frequency search is fantastic, there's nothing else like it. It is also excellent at searching whole-board positions. But where I find it lacking is in its local search function. It essentially like Kombilo, you just drag to create a box, and then get a static search of the position. You have to repeat this every time you do a local search, which makes it very tedious to use if you're trying to study joseki. MasterGo is just as good as MoyoGo with the fuseki search, and is vastly superior on corner and regional pattern searches. The difference is that searches are in real time, which means that the pattern is researched automatically every time you place a move instead of having to do it manually.

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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

In reading this, it looks exactly like what SmartGo does ("real time" pattern, joseki/fuseki searching, etc.), and I don't find it cumbersome at all--I most often switch between "near last move" and a defined area for pattern searching (where it is possible to exclude consideration of specific stones, etc). Have you tried the program in awhile? Is there something about it that bothers you that I'm missing? Please note that I'm not attempting to challenge your assessment so much as understand what you mean.

I noticed that both have demos so, of course, people are welcome to try them out.

SmartGo isn't so bad, I just think that the search interface isn't very nice. It takes much longer to move around and change stones. Mastergo excels at making the interface as simple and fast to use as possible. When I use other programs I feel like the interface is getting in the way instead of helping me.

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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

Two points on Mastergo

1) (Funny) on the links page of the Mastergo website (http://www.mastergo.com/mastergo/links.cgi )
It calls smartgo the future of computergo.

2) Where can you buy it? all the retailers mentioned on http://www.mastergo.com/mastergo/buy.cgi don't sell it anymore.

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

No one sells CDs anymore, but you can download the demo from the website, and if you decide you want to pay for the full version, you can get an activation key from Slate & Shell.

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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

i cannot find a link for ithe activation key at Slate & Shell

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

You can purchase the serial number for 38 Euros from Hebsacker:

http://www.hebsacker-verlag.de/product_ ... ucts_id=75

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Patience, grasshopper.