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1. Name: Michael Reiss
2. Country: England
3. Name of My Program: Go4++
4. Feature of My Program
(Sponsors acutely want you to include an algorithm of your program in outline or a block diagram of your program, since we plan to show all of the prof1le of the program for the IJCAI audience. Please explain each unit of your program.)
The following text was written by Jay Burmeister (with help from myself)
Go4++
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Micheal Reiss started writing Go programs in l983 and his current program, Go4++, has evolved from various predecessors over that time. Reiss has met with some success in computer Go competitions and Go4++ came 2nd in both the 1st and 2nd FOST cups.
Reiss’programming philosophy is to use simple algorithms on a large amount of data rather than complex algorithms on a small amount of data. Go4++ calculates everything fromfirst principles; complex concepts are calculated from simpler concepts which are in turn functions of even simpler concepts. Thus, Go4++ does not have an elaborate rule-based expert system at its core. A positive consequence of this approach is that Reiss’relatively weak ranking (2 kyu) compared to other top Go programmers is not a deficit, It also means that Go4++ usually responds well to the strange moves (by human standards) that are quite often played by computer Go programs and which are difficult to foresee when designing a rule-based system. The major drawback of this approach is that it is computation intensive and requires a powerful computer.
At the foundation of Go4++ is a massive amount of connectivity data from which almost everything else is eventually derived. Go4++ selects a move by first generating about 50 candidate moves that arc analyzed by an evaluation function which estimates territory. Themove scoring the highest evaluation is played as the next move. Thus, Go4++ uses 1 ply global lookahead although tactical lookahead and search is used in evaluating cach move.
1 Candidate Move Generation
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Candidate moves are generated by a process of pattern matching to determine the best 50 moves to examine in depth. Go4++ has around 15 high level patterns which include terms forthe probability of an eye, safety, and yerritorial value. Whenever a match is made, the board point(s) suggested as good places to play have an appropriate value added to them.
