Fost, Young Leaf

[Darren Cook <darren@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David Fotland wrote:
 The most interesting program is Young Leaf.  It's written by a small
 team that includes a professional 9 dan.  It was by far the fastest
 program I played.  It made all of its moves in only 90 seconds, but it
 plays a very good game.  I haven't seen a program that can play so well
 with so little reading since the early versions of Handtalk.  When
 they add better tactics to it, it could be very strong.  Young Leaf
 only lost to Many Faces and Hamlet (in a 7th round playoff).


I also got the impression it wasn't doing much search but the information in
the booklet says:

Feature of my program:
It uses 5 boards to investigate the status of the stones on the board. It
decides its next move mainly by reading contact fights and from patterns. In
addition it can search to 8 ply.

Strong point of my program:
A professional player [Tei 9-dan?] has helped. 
Contact fights (ladders, oiotoshi, etc.) are searched to their conclusion,
with no maximum depth.


Kojima 9-dan did a commentary of the Many Faces/Young Leaf game and said he
was very impressed with the way it ('it' being young leaf I think) made a
group live. Something about he didn't think computers could make such good
moves.

Darren