Computer / Human Go Challenge

Liao	Liao, Xingwen is six years old. He was described as 2-dan when he arrived in England for the Mind Sports Olympiad. His subsequent performance showed that, in European terms, he is 4-dan.	Go4++ is one of the world's strongest computer Go programs, and the winner of the 1999 Ing Cup. It was a strong candidate to win the Mind Sports Olympiad computer Go event - in fact, three days later, it came second to Chen, Zhixing's program GoeMate. It is difficult to assign a rating to computer programs, because the performance of humans against them improves rapidly as the humans learn how to take advantage of their mistakes. It might be reasonable to say that Go4++ is 8-kyu.
On Saturday 19th, there were two challenge games between Dr. Reiss's program Go4++ and the Chinese boy Liao, Xingwen.
The first game between Liao and Go4++ was played even, with Liao taking the white stones. He was surprised at first by some of its moves, and thought they might be trick plays. As he realised thet they were not tricks, just bad moves, his confidence against it increased, and he won by 54½ points. The game record is available here in Ishi and SGF formats. In their second game, Liao gave Go4++ a nine-stone handicap, and won by seven points. The game record is available here in Ishi and SGF formats.		left: Dr. Michael Reiss, programmer of Go4++ centre: Liao, Xingwen right: Tony Buzan, referee

Last updated Sun Nov 18 2012.
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