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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