A blog about learning go and learning computer go. A go beginner tries to improve his game and use their software engineering skills to build a computer go player. Entries about their go reading, computer go reading, go playing, go improvement, go concepts (seki, ko, miai, etc) and progress building the computer go player.

Sunday, July 31, 2005

Japanese Rules of Go

I've been giving some thought recently to what a finite state machine for the Japanese rules of go would look like. The more I think about it, the more complex encoding the full rules will be.

Which isn't to say that trying to build an FSM is necessarily a bad thing...

gobase

GoBase is a website run by Dutch go player Jan van der Steen. In comprises three main parts, a large and actively maintained database of games (including even the minor rounds of current contests), a set of life and death problems and news stories taken from a diverse range of places, including the computer-go mailing lists, recent contest results and articles.

Personally I find that the articles are the best part of the site, and recent ones such as Pieter Mioch's world amateur go championships give an insight into the go world that game results and life and death problems (both available elsewhere) don't.

Burlington Free Press Go Article

A current article in the Burlington Free Press describes aspects of the game, including some of the historical roots and some of the local aspects.

Monday, June 27, 2005

So much for the GNU Go wins

After a couple of weeks not playing go I've now dropped 3-4 stones against GNU go. On the positive side I'm now playing even with the free version of igowin on 9x9 boards, which is an improvement of about 2 stones.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

About problems in generalizing a tsumego program to open positions (1996) and Optimizing GoTools' Search Heuristic using Genetic Algorithms (2004).

The first paper is literally a statement of problems, whereas the second reports on using GAs to tune the computationally expensive answer to the problem, i.e. picking values for using in the heuristics.

The results of using the GA were actually quite reassuring. Improvements of 8-20% over the hand-tuned solution are reported.

Methods for Competitive Co-evolution: Finding Opponents Worth Beating

This is an interesting paper about the challenges of finding a good evaluation function for genetic algorithms. They use GAs to evolve a two populations, tested against each other. Interestingly there is this quote:

For Nim, a perfect solution can be found after about 150 million games with parameters tuned well. Typically, success in the competition for Nim is much more balanced between the two population during most of the tun. The first population spends much time trying strategies which employ an incorrect first move. Such strategies can never be perfect, but can be difficult to beat if most other moves had been optimised. Eventually, a strategy employing a correct first move is optimized to the point of perfection.

Evolving a player for go could avoid this problem by using randomised starting points for a significant number of games. This would encourage the evolution of strategies that are truly good in the middle and end game, irrespective of their performance in the opening, thus splitting the problem in two. Maybe random games from an archive could be used as starting positions for solving the end game, splitting it into three?

Saturday, June 25, 2005

A new protocol for computer-go ?

As mentioned previously I've been thinking about a go protocol, a protocol that is suitable to use everywhere GTP is plus:

  • Ruleset negotiation
  • Handicap and komi negotiation
  • Extendable (extensible for you Americans) for unusual boards (large sizes and so forth)
  • End-game negotiation for the liveness of groups (and thus score)

The whole concept of "negotiation" is, of course, foreign to GTP, in which there is a controller (which as the name implies is in control) and an engine (which has almost no control).

The other issue is that computers, having effectively infinite patience equalled only by their stupidity, are not very good at negotiation. The issue of end-game negotiation is only of the perennially verbose yet unresolved subjects on the computer-go mailing list (see for example this thread). This undermines my confidence that computer-go programs, left to themselves, will ever reach a consensus.

If they can't be left to themselves, then suddenly we don't have a two-party protocol, we have a multi-way protocol, which opens up new vistas, in terms of complexity and implementation effort…

... a complete can of worms.

Go Text Protocol

I've been reading the GTP (Go Text Protocol) spec (version 2, draft 1, July 2002). It's a tool that everyone seems to use to communicate with computer-go engines, whether it's GUIs communicating with engines, servers communicating with engines or scripts that play engines against each other (twogtp and friends).

I've been thinking about why it's done so well and is so widely implemented:

  1. It has a clear objective (communication between a master and a computer-go engine)
  2. It does what it needs and as little as possible else (unnecessary commands in the reference implementation as namespaced out)
  3. It is as simple as possible
  4. It leaves out the issue of haggling over rules (Chinese/Japanese/New Zealand/etc), komi and handicapping.
  5. It leaves out the issue of arranging who is to play
  6. There is a widely available, high quality reference implementation (GNU Go) which is useful in itself
  7. It is clearly better than the protocol it replaced (GMP)

These appear have completely outweighed the fact that the sections seven and nine of the spec are completely empty and the last six commands are completely undocumented. It also doesn't handle boards above 25x25, to be fair, few if any other programs do either, mainly because the standard notation breaks down when the letters A-H and J-Z are all taken (I is not used).

This got me to thinking whether it might not be possible to define a protocol that covered a broader range of problems.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

"Monte Carlo Go" by Bernd Brügmann

I've just read "Monte Carlo Go" by Bernd Brügmann, which uses simulated annealing to evaluate positions when playing go. The system is not particularly effective, mainly because of the very slow cooling required to play well.

I know it goes completely against all the theory behind the solution, but I can't help but think that maybe one could do better than random plays. I particular, it seems to me that the best ranked positions from not n are likely to at least be candidates for move n+1.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Bayesian Pattern Ranking for Move Prediction in the Game of Go

Bayesian Pattern Ranking for Move Prediction in the Game of Go by David Stern, Ralf Herbrich and Thore Graepel at Cambridge / Microsoft uses nested patterns with learnt priority (rank) to "obtain a probability distribution for professional play over legal moves in a given position." Trained using a corpus of 20000 professional games they also discuss building a million game corpus of variable-level games (presumably games played on internet go servers?).

It seems to me that the problem they're setting out to solve isn't the one they need to solve―at the end of the day generating reasonable moves is the goal, and pro moves are only an approximation. There is also the problem that the system assumes that the board positions and the opponents' moves are reasonable. There were some clear attacks against early computer chess players which worked by playing unreasonable moves to get out of the opening book.

Another issue is the shape of he pattern. The patterns are (effectively) circular, whereas there are many, many, go proverbs suggesting that they should be biased towards the board edge (where territory is to be made) over the center.

Thore Graepel's Home Page

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

IGS welcome message

I recently got an account on the IGS go server. It seems very good, there always seem to be some high dan games to watch, and no shortage of players lower down the ranks to test my metal on.

When signing up they sent me a rather intimidating email which I've included below. On closer inspection, it turns out that the rules down seem to be particularly onerous, but it certainly looked intimidating. Interestingly, the message doesn't appear to be on the website, so I'm posting them here. Some parts are anonymized:


From: IGS PANDANET SERVER
Date: 8 Jun 2005 15:39:48 +0900
Subject: IGS registration, _______
To: ________@__________


This is an automated message to confirm that your IGS Pandanet registration
was successful. Please read this letter carefully.

Welcome to IGS Pandanet. If you have received this letter, you will know
that you have successfully registered. Your password is contained within
this letter. You may change your password at any time. If you do not use your
account within 20 hours if its being registered, it will be automatically
deleted. If your account is still treated as a guest account after entering
IGS PandaNet, it probably means you incorrectly entered your login name,
or your account expired, and you will have to _register again_ (please DO NOT
send email, or a COPY of this registration letter back to IGS Pandanet saying
your account does not work, or is being treated as a guest account --- simply
register again).

Sometimes you may experience problems connecting to IGS Pandanet. If this is
the case, try the alternate port number, which is 7777, instead of 6969. You
may also try using the IP address, 210.155.158.200 6969. We recommend using
the IP numbers 210.155.158.200 6969 instead of the 'symbolic' (name address)
igs.joyjoy.net 6969

Example: telnet igs.joyjoy.net 7777
telnet 210.155.158.200 6969 (This is the IP address)
telnet 210.155.158.200 7777 (This is the IP address)

** Again, we recommend using the IP numbers 210.155.158.200 6969 instead of
the the 'symbolic' (name address) igs.joyjoy.net 6969

**READ this registration letter _carefully_. All users are expected to
know the usage rules, terms, and conditions. All users are also encouraged
to read the 'motd' (Message Of The Day), upon entering IGS Pandanet. The motd
often contains important announcements and information concerning coming events.
To read the motd at any time, just enter: help motd

If you are new to IGS Pandanet, enter help for a list of the basic starting
commands.

You can 'ftp' client software with a graphic interface for use with
IGS Pandanet,
and other general Go software from the Go ftp archive site:

ftp-igs.joyjoy.net

If you use a WEB browser, use:

ftp://ftp-igs.joyjoy.net/Go/

If you are using a PC, we recommend the 'Panda Egg', which is a client with
a graphic interface for IGS Pandanet. The 'Panda Egg' comes in four language
versions: English, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.

ftp://ftp-igs.joyjoy.net/Go/igs_clients/PC/

If you are using UNIX or Linux, we recommend 'xgospel'.

ftp://ftp-igs.joyjoy.net/Go/igs_clients/UNIX/

If you are using a Macintosh, try 'goservant' or 'macgo'.

ftp://ftp-igs.joyjoy.net/Go/igs_clients/Macintosh/

If you need help with ftp, enter help ftp the next time you are on
IGS Pandanet.

For support and help with client software, please contact the client writer
for the client you decide to use, and not the IGS Pandanet administrators.
The IGS Pandanet administrators do not provide client software assistance.

The clients are not written by IGS Pandanet. Clients for use with IGS Pandanet
are written by Go enthusiasts for the convenience of other Go players.
Some client writers request a small fee for their work. Fees are paid to client
writers and do not go to IGS Pandanet.

IGS Pandanet administrators do not correct games or alter game results.
It is the responsibility of each person to carefully read the help files before
playing and scoring a game. Also, IGS Pandanet administrators do not become
involved in or settle disputes between players. Therefore, please do not ask
them to change game results or settle disputes.

** NOTE: Not all players on IGS Pandanet speak or understand English.
Therefore, many non-English players do not ask for a game, but will instead
simply send you a game request without asking if you are interested in playing a
game. Please be aware of this fact and do not become upset if you receive
random game requests. Some Asian software programs will send automatic
responses in English to specific questions, statements, and situations, but
this does not necessarily mean that the person using that client speaks
English.

For your information, IGS Pandanet ranks are stronger by about 2 - 3 ranks over
most other rating systems. Please take this into account when considering
setting your rank on IGS Pandanet.

Further information:

1) To set your rank on IGS Pandanet, enter:
help rank
2) To change your email address on IGS Pandanet, enter:
help addresschange

Note: Your email address may be deleted if it is found to be outdated, and
your account will be treated as a guest account until you update the
address. To update your address, see: help addresshchange

1) Unused accounts are automatically deleted after a certain number of
days. For that number, enter: uptime

2) To change your password on IGS Pandanet, enter: help password

3) You can mail yourself any help file from IGS Pandanet with:

mail me filename

Note: 'filename' is the name of the help message or announcement

We hope you enjoy using IGS Pandanet.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------


[rev. April 1, 2002]

** OWNERSHIP AND ACCEPTABLE USE OF I.G.S. **

IGS Panda Net ("IGS") is owned and operated by PandaNet, Inc.
Panda Net is located at: Shin-Kokusai Bldg. 3-4-1 Marunouchi Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo 100-0005, Japan.

The users of IGS represent a variety of countries, languages,
cultures, and personalities. It is easy for misunderstandings to occur.
All users are asked to be patient with others, and to be polite at all
times, especially when using the group communication features of IGS.
Please remember that some IGS users are children. Users should not make
any communication or message on IGS which is threatening, abusive,
disruptive, vulgar, obscene, or unlawful, or which encourages conduct that
would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or
otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law. Use of
IGS for promotion or advertising of commercial products or services, or
promotion or advertising of any other Go-server (or any other internet
site, facility, or WWW page), without the express, written consent of the
IGS adminstrators, is prohibited. Statements made by the users of IGS do
not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Panda Net, and Panda Net
disclaims any responsibility for all such statements.

In general, internet users are welcome to share the use of IGS,
unless the user's authority to access IGS has been suspended or revoked.
Panda Net reserves the right, for any reason whatsoever and at the absolute
discretion of the IGS administrators, to restrict certain capabilities
(such as "shout" and "kibitz") for any IGS account, and to temporarily or
indefinitely suspend or revoke the authorization of any person or persons
to access IGS. Unauthorized access to IGS may subject the offender to such
criminal and civil liabilities as may be provided by applicable law.

From time to time, Panda Net or IGS may sponsor or co-sponsor certain
activities on IGS designated as "special events" (such as tournaments,
professional competitions, or lessons). The use of IGS for these special
events is intended for the personal benefit of IGS users only.
Reproduction or retransmission of any "special event" on any other internet
or bbs server, without the prior written consent of the IGS administrators,
is prohibited. Panda Net reserves all legal rights and remedies in respect
to any such unauthorized reproduction or retransmission. We hope that all
IGS users will enjoy these special events!


** LIMITATION ON LIABILITY/ DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES **

IGS IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS, AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. PANDA NET INC.
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THOSE OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO
THE USE OF IGS, IGS-RELATED SOFTWARE OR RELATED DOCUMENTATION, OR WITH RESPECT
TO THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, COMPLETENESS, OR CONTENT OF ANY INFORMATION
PRESENTED ON IGS. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE, WILL PANDA
NET BE LIABLE FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES THAT MAY
RESULT FROM THE USE OF, OR INABILITY TO USE, IGS. BECAUSE SOME JURISDICTIONS
LIMIT OR PROHIBIT THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR INCIDENTAL
OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, THE ABOVE LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO IGS USERS
IN SUCH JURISDICTIONS. IN SUCH JURISDICTIONS, PANDA NET'S LIABILITY WILL BE
LIMITED TO THE GREATEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.

Use by any person of IGS constitutes acceptance by said person of the
terms and conditions of this policy statement. This statement is stored in
a "help" file at IGS. IGS users may review the current version of this
statement by using the "help usage" or "mail me usage" commands.

PANDANET Inc.



** You can change your password to one easier to remember with the
'password' command. On IGS Pandanet, type help password
Do not lose or forget your password. It is your responsibility to know
your password and to make backups. Administrators do not provide
passwords upon request.

SAVE this registration letter. It contains information you
may need later.



The password for the account _______ is ________

PANDANET Inc,
http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/
Head office (JAPAN), Noguchi Manabu
PANDANET USA, Mark Okada
PANDANET Europe, Jan van der Steen

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

GoGui ?

A recent comment suggested that I use GoGui as the starting point for my implementation.

GoGui is a GTP <==> GUI toolkit implemented in Java and licenced under the GPL. Reusing someone elses code has great appeal, of course, but it's not entirely clear whether it'll do what I want it to do. In particular it's not clear at first glance whether the model of a game and a move is sufficiently flexible.

I'll have to check it out...

Friday, May 27, 2005

My Friday Night Files

A great site by Jan van Rongen. It's not new, just new to me... It's amazing the different takes people have on the same game...

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Go in the mainstream english press

I came across this article googling around for go stuff. It's unusual to see go coverage in english except at specialist sites (which are understandably biased in their coverage). Despite some trying, I've had no luck crafting a google query that catches anything significant --- mainly because go is such a common word on the internet and in press writing.

Monday, May 23, 2005

An implementation plan

If I'm going to write a computer go player, I need a plan. Plans drawn at this stage are inevitably only approximations, but here's my current plan:

  • Infrastructure – the framework to hang the rest on
    • SGF parser
    • SGF writer (simpler that the parser since it only needs to handle the properties I'm actually using)
    • a graphic goban (so i can play the program)
    • GTP client (so I can play my program against other people and other programs)
    • GTP engine (so i can organise play-offs)
    • test suite (so ease debugging)
  • Opening: a classical opening book, assembled from pro and senior-amateur games. Also code to handle symmetry.
  • Mid-game: a genetic algorithm prioritising a list of relatively complex template patterns.
  • End-game: a theorem prover, perhaps along the lines of gotools, but with incremental additions of knowledge to the database as positions are proven safe/unsafe.
One advantage of have separate beginning, middle and end games is that I can develop, test and debug them separately.

GNU Go wins

For the first time ever I won a couple of games against GNU Go with only 2 stones handicap. Of course, now I've boasted about it I'll have a run of bad luck.

I'm certainly getting better, but I'm not entirely sure which of my go-related activities is having the big effect, whether it's playing in person (which I'm doing once every week or two at a local go club), playing against bots (mainly GNU Go and igowin), studing go gome (which I haven't done much of for a couple of weeks), playing against real people (maybe two games twice a week) or even reading computer go related papers and planning my own system. Probably a combination of all of them.

GNU Go: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/gnugo.html

igowin / Many faces of go http://www.netcom.com/~fotland/manyfaces.html

Computer Go: an AI Oriented Survey

I've just finished "Computer Go an AI Oriented Survey" by Bruno Bouzy and Tristan Cazenave. A very long survey, packed with so many details that I suspect I'll need to reread it in a week or two. As well as surveying a wide range of techniques used to tackle go, it also discusses some of the representations used by specific implementations.

There were quite a few interesting pieces about the end game, and I shall have to read some of the primary papers (which all seem to be listed in the very extensive bibliography).

I was surprised both at the lack of genetic algorithm approaches used with patterns (as opposed to neural networks) mentioned and also at the fact that all researchers seem to be opting for light weight patterns rather than complex patterns, both of which seem promising to me.

The final paragraph contains a very interesting explanation for the wide gap in perceived strength of go programs: that human player can learn the faults of a computer go player over a series of games, and systematically exploit them. Whereas a human player quickly learns in at least a shallow sense to fix faults as they are repeated exploited (or at least alters play to fight their exploitation), computer go players are static and cannot adapt themselves.

Computer Go an AI Oriented Survey: http://www.ai.univ-paris8.fr/~cazenave/CG-AISurvey.pdf

Home page for Bruno Bouzy: http://www.math-info.univ-paris5.fr/~bouzy/Go.html

Home page for Tristan Cazenave: http://www.ai.univ-paris8.fr/~cazenave/

An Improved Safety Solver for Computer Go

I've just read "an improved safety solver for computer go" by Xiaozhen Niu and Martin Müller, describing their work on the program 'explorer.' Focusing entirely on the end game, it seeks to prove that safe groups are indeed safe. Building on the work of Benson (I _really_ must track down a copy of that paper), and develop new algorithms for complex regions using merging to join them together. Very interesting stuff. I think part of the reason I find it appealing is that it is proof based rather the heuristic.

Their methodology seems a little unusual, in that they are building what is essentially a theorem proving tool, but only trialling it on positive examples, which seems little unsafe. Maybe I missed something or they discuss it in a different paper.

They introduce their algorithms in pseudo-code, which is convenient.

This kind of approach seems very appealing to me, perhaps because such non-heuristic work seems more solid than other work I've read, a better base to build upon.

The Computer Go Group at Univresity of Alberta: http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/go/

Sunday, May 22, 2005

There is death in the hane

This is a proverb I seem to regularly loose sight of, before being re-taught by various opponents, both human and robotic (igowin seems particularly good at teaching me this lesson). Hopefully by naming my account after the proverb, I'll stand some chance of remembering it.

I suspect that my problem is a symptom of my difficulty drawing a line between strategy and tactics, too often I play an attachment without really considering whether I mean to start a fight and my opponent immediately answers with a hane and I suffer a loss. The loss isn't necessarily the stone I attached with, of course, but it's there somewhere.

igowin / Many faces of go: http://www.netcom.com/~fotland/manyfaces.html

Some thoughts on rules

I've been thinking about rules and rulesets in go.

A plurality of rulesets is unfortunate, in that it significant complicates the problem, giving several targets to aim for when building a computer go player. Fortunately few, if any, computer go players are sufficiently advanced for differences between rulesets to become a significant factor. Also, the fact that there are several rulesets potential gives computer go researchers and others choices about which rulesets to use.

Many computer go players choose to ignore certain rules, including avoid capture by seki and even ko. Noting but not modelling certain aspects of the problem is of course a classic feature of decomposition-based problem solving styles used in computer science and mathematics (and one which I'm sure my system will eventually have, once I have a system to have such features).

Personally I'm a fan of the New Zealand rules, because: (a) they're clearly stated; (b) they are stated in a way that suits my current purposes (i.e. in a mathematical way); (c) they don't have exceptions; (d) they don't have a history of change and (e) they are widely and correctly understood (perhaps largely because of the previous reasons). On the other hand, they exist in a cultural wasteland, there is a dearth of pro-level games on record using the New Zealand ruleset and none of the "famous" games have been played using them. This is not a serious issue, of course, if one is learning oneself, but if one is building a computer go player there are a number of uses for a larger corpus of pro-level games---pattern extraction, statistical comparisons and finding example end-games. It is also less of an issue if one is evolving (or proving) a system from first principals.

The New Zealand ruleset: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~barryp/rules.htm

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Pattern matching in the game of go

I’ve been reading "pattern matching in the game of go" by Peter Drake, Jim Levenick, Loring Veenstra and Amanda Venghaus. The paper describes Orego, which uses variable-sized pattern matching with patterns extracted from expert games to play 9x9 games.

The details of the position normalisation are given and very interesting, using a lexical ordering. Unfortunately they seem to be closely tied not just to the board size but to the maximum size of the pattern. It also lacks wildcards and ignores ko.

It would be very interesting to see how much better the system would have worked with thousands (or tens of thousands) of training games rather than 100.

The caption to Figure 3 seems mangled.

"Our interpretation is that patterns extracted from recorded games are useful _assuming a reasonable opponent_. The single pattern players produced such bizarre moves that the games devolved into complicated fights, where patterns are not terribly useful. Rutquist (2000) reported a similar effect in experiments using a genetic algorithm to evolve players capable of defeating the relatively strong GNU Go program."

Peter Drake’s home page: http://www.lclark.edu/~drake/

Orego home page: http://www.lclark.edu/~drake/go/

GNU Go: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/gnugo.html

SGF parser

I now have a javacc grammar for SGF files. It seems to work on the basics, but there are several things it doesn’t do yet, including (a) interpret character set information, (b) interpret handicaps (c) interpret end games and (d) do anything meaningful for comments, annotations or similar.

It has some very basic junit tests, but I need to do something more rigorous. I suspect that I need something to validate it against SGFC. Since SGFC is a c program, I suspect I’ll have to do this using ant or something.

Junit: http://www.junit.org/

Javacc: https://javacc.dev.java.net/

SGF: http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/

SGFC: http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/sgfc/

The go-playing program called Go81

I’m reading "the go-playing program called Go81" by Tapani Raiko, which uses a very interesting "ant" approach. This relies on a very local (3x3) pattern matching and simple stochastic search. Potentially the approach is very nicely parallelisable, but it doesn't seem intuitive to me (although I admit that I may be biased by the fact that this is the first serious go program I’ve read up on that I can beat easily, which may be prejudicing me against the approach).

The author discusses miai points (as something that may be leveraged by a future version of the game), which got me thinking about miai in terms of symmetry. The more I think about it, the more different forms of symmetry seems like an under-exploited feature of go and possibly an effective technique for reducing search space.

I've played the game online (presumably the Go81console variant), and noticed that the way to bet it is to not connect, just play very lightly and prevent it from forming eyes.

Tapani Raiko’s home page: http://www.cis.hut.fi/praiko/

Go81: http://www.cis.hut.fi/praiko/go81/

The paper: http://www.cis.hut.fi/praiko/papers/go_step.pdf