Quoting Michael Williams <[email protected]>:
Of course the participants' opinions matter most, but I do not understand the attraction to integer komi. Draws are ugly and inconvenient.
I used to think like this as well but for 9x9 Go I now think 7.0 Komi is necessary. This is because with 7.5 komi white is strongly favored and with 5.5 (or 6.5) black is also strongly favored.
I was thinking that integer komi would then make 9x9 very drawish but in my experience it does not appear to be so. I now even believe that making a strong book for 7.0 would the work well for the other komis as well. Right now I have a book for 5.5, 7.0 and 7.5 for Valkyria (but 90% of the work is on the 7.5 book).
So I think for 9x9 at some point we will all agree that 7.0 komi is the right thing to do. And my experience from working on book development is that a perfect book is a very difficult thing to achieve for 7.0 so tournament games will be more exciting for a long time before we eventually end up with just draws.
For 19x19 I see no reason for integral komi, because as long computer programs are not much stronger than professionals the problem of one sided games depending on the komi will not be a problem.
Best Magnus _______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
