Evolution of a Go program

About the development of Moyo Go Studio, software to (help) play the Oriental game of Go. Go is a two-player zero-sum game of perfect information. It is considered much harder than Chess. Currently, in spite of enormous effort expended, no computer program plays it above the level of a beginner.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Almost Famous

The idea-thieving scum at Microsoft managed to get some major press coverage on my work:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/04/silicon_chess/

*Silicon beats carbon in chess battle*

By Lucy Sherriff
Published Monday 4th July 2005 14:16 GMT

.."Computers have yet to master the game of Go, a much trickier proposition with its branching factor of 250. Brute force is no good here, because the number of moves gets really big, really fast. Researchers at Microsoft's labs in Cambridge have made some improvements to computer Go, using Bayesian ranking to calculate probable good moves. But the researchers concede that even the best programs are pretty easily dispatched by good human players."..