This report is from David Fotland:

This year the championship was held at Fudan Univerisity in Shanghai, China. Next year will be the last Ing Computer Go Championship, so there is only one more chance to beat a professional for over a million dollars.

Prize winners were:

1. Go4++, by Michael Reiss
2. Goemate, by Chen Zhi Xing
3. KCC Igo, by the KCC Igo team

Go4++ won all 6 games. Goemate lost only to Go4++ in a game with little fighting, where Go4++ had a small lead from the fuseki, and maintained it to win by 12 points.

KCC Igo, Fungo, and Many Faces were tied at 4 wins each. KCC lost to Many Faces by passing while Many Faces made a dead group live, and also lost to Goemate by 10 points. Many Faces lost to Go4++, and to Wulu. Fungo lost to KCC and Goemate.

Unfortunately, since there were not many rounds and the inital order was random, Many Faces never played Goemate or Fungo, and Go4++ did not play KCC or Fungo.

Fungo and Many Faces ended up tied for fourth place on both SOS and SDS.

There were several new Chinese programs, PolarStar, Lanco, Ocean, and GoStar. They were weak and shared the last few places with Indigo. Tristan has a new name for his program, but it is still based on the same principles as Gogol. Ken Chen continues to improve Go Intellect II, the rewrite he started almost 2 years ago, but did not climb up yet to the top places. Chen Zhi Xing has improved his new program Goemate to the point where it is stronger than the old Handtalk, and took second place. Yong Goo Park is working on Fungo full time and it has shown a big improvement in strength over the last year. Michael Reiss continues to work on Go4++ nearly full time, and it took a well deserved first place with very steady play.

KCC Igo continues to generate controversy due to accusations of plagiarism. Professor Chen presented evidence that KCC Igo was derived from Handtalk that was very convincing to the go programmers. There was a meeting with Mr Yang (the Ing foundation representative), the KCC team, KCC's Japanese publishers, and several go programmers to discuss the allegations. In the end, Mr Yang decided to award KCC its prize, but to form a committee to investigate. If plagiarism is found, KCC will not be allowed to participate next year.

The tournament was a 6 round swiss with 16 participants and random starting order. Particpants were (in starting order):

Tournament Grid:

                     1    2    3    4    5    6  wins SOS  Place
1)  GoLois         - 2  + 4  - 6  + 5  -14  + 8   3   30    11
2)  Go Master      + 1  - 3  + 8  - 6  -13  + 4   3   30    10
3)  Go Intellect   + 4  + 2  - 7  - 9  +15  -13   3   38     8
4)  Polarstar      - 3  - 1  - 5  -11  -12  - 2   0   28    16
5)  Lanco          - 6  - 8  + 4  - 1  -16  +11   2   26    14
6)  AYA            + 5  - 7  + 1  + 2  -10  -14   3   46     7
7)  Go4++          + 8  + 6  + 3  +14  + 9  +10   6   40     1
8)  GoStar         - 7  + 5  - 2  -15  +11  - 1   2   36    12
9)  Wulu           +10  +12  -14  + 3  - 7  -16   3   48     6
10) Many Faces     - 9  +11  +12  +13  + 6  - 7   4   38     4
11) Ocean          -12  -10  -15  + 4  - 8  - 5   1   26    15
12) Indigo         +11  - 9  -10  -16  + 4  -15   2   30    13
13) KCC Igo        -14  +15  +16  -10  + 2  + 3   4   44     3
14) Goemate        +13  +16  + 9  - 7  + 1  + 6   5   46     2
15) Katsunari      -16  -13  +11  +8   - 3  +12   3   32     9
16) Fungo          +15  -14  -13  +12  + 5  + 9   4   38     4

David Fotland

Here, again thanks to David Fotland, are some games which you can download:

Last updated: 1999-11-25.

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