We begin where others give up.

The Game of Go

I'm investigating the use of ensembles in Japanese Go. If anyone is inclined to offer a five-year research project in Computer Go, I may be able to help computers learn how to beat a professional go player. Sadly, the one million US$ prize has already expired...

The best way to learn about Japanese Go is to visit The Interactive Way to Go, where you will learn about the basics in an easy, interactive, step-by-step introduction.

After working through that, to initially spare me defeat against human players ;-), I first trained with a slightly modified version of GNU Go for PocketPC (runs only on PocketPCs but I own a WinCE 2.11 device, so I ported it) , but it is rather weak.

So, using the same user interface, I ported GNU Go 2.6.0 to WinCE. The same source code now compiles for CE 2.11 and 3.0 (PocketPC) - the main difference is top vs bottom command bar - but so far only ARM is a PocketPC version. Please contact me if you want additional versions.

Features are: playing on smaller boards (9x9, 13x13) as well as 19x19, endless Undo up to the very first move, automatic determination of dead strings and scoring with komi, supports changing GNU Go's depth search parameters (Edit>Options) for stronger/slower or weaker/faster playing, plus much stronger play than the earlier version.

It takes at least 3 MB memory (executable/stack/hash one MB each), but the stack is extensively used and could grow up to 4 MB, so it may crash on smaller devices.

Download for MIPS (tested on Casio Cassiopeia E-105G), ARM (Compaq iPaq; tested by David Rabahy & Mats Hjalmarsson) or SH3 (untested) and copy it to Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Games (Windows\Startmenü\Programme\Spiele for German language devices) so you can start it from Start>Programs>Games. The sourcecode is also freely available via GNU GPL.

These bugs are now fixed:

Fuseki (Opening) now works correctly. Previously, the fuseki performance degraded considerably for the second and all following games...
Captured stones are now correctly counted
Bottom command bar for PocketPC=ARM
Human can play White
Komi adjustment: Now it is 5.5 for 19x19, 7.5 for 13x13 and 9.5 for 9x9. In case of Handicap, it is generally 0.5.

Sidney Liu of VIEKA intends to continue where I left off. Please direct questions about further development to them or use their forum. I am kind of amazed that there is still some interest in this... :-))