Thank you again Nick for running the tournament, and writing the report. I am disappointed though about your reaction towards housebot. I don't think it is fair to critisize the behaiviour of a bot that is not breaking any rules or guidlines. If you don't like the bots behaiviour, it seems to me that you should change the rules to outlaw that behaivior.
You say that HBotSVN is unable to win by honest methods, which I don't think is true, and even if it were true, I don't think is something that should cause sanctions. I believe HBotSVN seemed weaker than it was in the last tournament because of (fixable) problems with the MC approach. Raw MC does not, I believe, work well at the beginning of a large board game, and it does not work well when the bot is a long way behind. If you are unfortunate, then these two conditions between then can cover the whole game. HBotSVN has a much better record in previous tournaments. This is damning it with faint praise, but I think it would easily beat my bot. I would prefer it if a bot's lack of strength did not lead to criticism from the tournament official. I find that I am not, at present, interested in making my bot as strong as it can be. I respect those that have this goal, but to do that, I'd have to introduce what I think of as hacks (they would not be hacks if my short term goal were bot strength). Things that I know as a human, but that my bot can't deduce itself. These hacks would hide faults in the program. My goal at the moment is more to understand the solution space of certain sub-problems. I program my bot as a hobby, for my own interest. I enjoy these tournaments, even when I don't participate. However, I don't enjoy them enough to induce me to introduce (to my eyes) hacks into my program, so if my bot being too weak, or too stubborn is likely to earn me a rebuke, I won't be entering again. I think that, even if KGS does not handle lag fairly, it is not HBotSVN's fault that LeelaBot lost on time. My preference is for a clean set of tournament rules, and for judgments to be made according to their rules, and with no moral overtones. I can understand Jason's annoyance. The tone of your report implied that his bot used dishonest methods, and you applied a sanction arbitrarily when no rule was broken, or even a warning given. My ideal outcome would be for you to remove the probation, and, if you feel it is necessary, to introduce rules to forbid the behaviour you don't like. I suspect that, as programmers, we would tend to respond better to explicit rules than to implicitly understood (or not understood) 'moral' considerations. I am sorry for the critical tone of this message. I can see that your goal is to improve the tournaments. I really am grateful for your running of these tournaments, and I hope they go from strength to strength. Best wishes Tom. On Wed, 2008-05-07 at 11:13 +0100, Nick Wedd wrote: > the winners of last Sunday's KGS bot tournament. > > My report is at http://www.weddslist.com/kgs/past/38/index.html > > Nick _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
