Here is a statement from David Fotland, the developer of Many Faces of Go, about that program and its performance at the 2000 US Computer Go Championship.

"I was disappointed that so many of the usual programs couldn't make it this year. Explorer, Teamgo, and Gnugo are regular participants, but none of them were able to come. Before the congress, there were only two confirmed programs, SmartGo, and The Many Faces of Go. Howard Landman attended the congress, after missing several, so we were able to add Poka to the competition. Bill Newman tried to resurrect his old program, but after a few hours of work decided that it was not possible.

Since the FOST tounament is no longer held, and this year is the last Ing tournamant, I hope that we can have a lot more programs next year.

SmartGo has improved a lot in the last year, and held a lead over Many Faces until well into the middle game. Poka is unchanged, and with no concept of eyes or tactics, was easy to beat.

In the game with SmartGo, a bug in the tactical move generator led MFG to think that it had a living group in the upper right, when it was really dead. This caused a lot of bad moves. Many Faces had a chance to kill the upper right corner, but the life and death reading didn't have enough time to figure it out. In the end, Many Faces killed the whole lower left to win the game. This game shows the importance of accurate life and death analysis."

The 2000 North American Computer Go Tournament
Other computer Go Tournament results
computer-go.info