If I set up a 19x19 server, we will need an Anchor player. Here is
what I need from an Anchor player:
1. Non-deterministic - should not play same game every time.
2. Consistent - plays at the same strength at a level that is not
based on
the power of the hardware. For instance AnchorMan is set to a
fixed level
that does not depend on time. Lazarus, however, players weaker
when other
jobs are running on the computer - something we don't want in an
anchor.
3. Linux binary - because it runs on the server itself.
4. Low resource usage - I run AnchorMan on the server at a high nice
level
and it takes less than 1 second per move even if it isn't niced.
If the Anchor runs on the server, it must be a good citizen.
5. Should play as strong as possible given the above constraints.
If
possible it should be in the upper 50-60 percentile - but it
should not
be significantly below median strength.
It does not absolutely have to run on the server but it must be heavily
available - pretty much 24 hours a day. It should be a non-changing
entity - not something being constantly upgraded - although we could
from time to time explicitly upgrade the Anchor player.
It's better if the Anchor player is a known quantity on 9x9, then we
could actually assign it the same rating and attempt to extrapolate, but
we can do that anyway - not a big deal.
The very best candidate may actually be "AnchorMan", a program that may
fit all the above criteria. It's an old fashioned Monte/Carlo program
that plays about as well is at can and uses little memory given about 1
second per move - at least on 9x9. So it doesn't use much
resources.
At 19x19 AnchorMan would be weaker. At this boardsize, AnchorMan would
benefit greatly from increased time control but then I'm starting to get
away from constraint 4 - low resource usage - unless it was run
remotely.
GnuGo is another possibility and has the advantage of being a well known
quantity, but Gnugo fails to meet some of the criteria above such as
being too deterministic and using heavy resources.
If someone wants to host an Anchor player remotely or has a resource
friendly candidate that meets the above criteria, let me know.
- Don
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