Evolution of a Go program

About the development of Moyo Go Studio, software to (help) play the Oriental game of Go. Go is a two-player zero-sum game of perfect information. It is considered much harder than Chess. Currently, in spite of enormous effort expended, no computer program plays it above the level of a beginner.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Go Game Assistant Baloney

"Baloney" is US slang for "nonsense".

Go Game Assistant claims to have 56,000 pro games.

Baloney.

20,000 are duplicates!

I do not suspect malice, however. I know for a fact that there is a large pro collection out there in the public domain that has all its games flipped (mirrored). They obviously read that collection and did not have safeguards in place to normalize their Dyer signature or Zobrist hash.

But this is no excuse to keep on advertizing the product with so many games.

I do not want to bitch and moan too much about the Chinese (they have nukes, after all), but I see a pattern here. This is the second time Chinese software does very questionable things. Last week I found StoneBase having ripped my stones (and sounds, and board, and the nicest glyphs), now I find Go Game Assistant well.. grossly "misrepresenting" their number of pro games so that they (what a coincidence) end up just a little above Moyo Go Studio. Sorry to break it to 'ya, guys - you aren't even close.

Update: Someone emailed me to inform me that there is no Chinese conspiracy against me. So they brainwashed him as well ;-)