computer-go: komi

[Don Dailey <drd@xxxxxxx>]

A few questions for the group or anyone that knows:

   1. What do you believe is fair komi for 9x9 Go?   

   2. Would 2 very strong players need a different komi than 2 very weak players in
      order to equalize?

   3. Does this relate to computers in any special way?

   4. How strong is gnugo 3.0.0  compared to the latest versions?

   5. Are some programs particularly weak/strong in 9x9 Go (in comparison to other
      programs that is?)

   6. Does komi vary significantly with board size?


These questions are  very interesting to me because  I'm working on my
program again and focused primarly on 9x9 board sizes.  I have come up
with a very interesting playing  algorithm that seems to scale up very
well with compute power (and is not based on brute force searching.)

In a 900 game match, a komi  of 3 stones was just about exactly enough
to give white  equality on level 4 (a move  is made almost "instantly"
in human perception on levels below 7 for my program.)

I will  do the komi  test against much  stronger levels and  report my
results here.  I am curious if others have done these tests with their
programs and what the results show.


Don