The First CGF Computer Go Tournament (CGF'99)

• Application Deadline: Friday, July 2, 1999.
• Preliminary System Testing: Thursday, July 22, 1999.
• Tournament: Friday-Saturday, July 23-24, 1999.
• Closing Ceremony: Saturday, July 24, 1999.

• (1) All participating programs should be operated by their participants. If the registered participants are unable to operate their program by themselves, they must designate a substitute at the time of registration.
  However, the tournament secretariat will provide some help in finding a substitute for applicants from abroad.
  (See Appendix D -- Registration Form 2 as for the constraints.)
  

• (2) Changes to a program during a game are prohibited. However, modification of a program between rounds is permitted. Unnecessary touches of the keyboard or the mouse may be regarded as giving the computer some information. Especially in games using the communication protocol, participants will not be allowed to touch the keyboard or the mouse without prior permission of the judge during play.

  (3) Participants who have not implemented SGMP in their program must input the move, given by their program, to the input program with SGMP provided by the tournament organizers. Any mistakes made during input will result in a forfeit of the game.

Games both on the first day and on the second day will be conducted in (modified) Swiss-style. However, the style may be slightly changed according to the number of teams. The total number of games and the pairing method will be announced on the tournament Web page one week before the tournament.

• (1) All games will be played on even, with Black giving White 5 1/2 points komi at the start of the game. The side taking black will be determined by the operators performing nigiri.

• (2) Each program will be allowed 50 minutes to complete its moves. If one side runs out of time before move 300, it loses the game on time. If the game has progressed past the 300th move and one of the programs runs out of time, the tournament judge adjudicates the game. If the game has progressed past the 400th move, it will be stopped regardless of the remaining time and the tournament judge will give the decision. Consumed time should be measured by each program. Times below one second may be omitted. If an unfair act is found, the tournament judge will make a decision.

• (3) Tardiness
  Participants who fail to notify the tournament organizers of their tardiness before the pairing of the first round game will forfeit all games. If participants notify organizers, all tardy time will be subtracted from the playing time. In the case of games in the second round or later, participants who are late for the games will lose the games. The pairing of the first round will be performed immediately after the reception. The exact time will be announced on the tournament Web page two weeks before the tournament. It will be about 8:40 a.m.

• (4) If participants must play a game right after another game, they will be allowed a 10 minute rest period. Any break longer than 10 minutes will be treated as a tardy time.

• (1) Tournament results will be determined by applying rules in the order listed below.
  
  • 1) Number of wins
    
  • 2) Sum of all opponent's scores (SOS)
  • 3) Sum of defeated opponent's scores (SODOS)
  • 4) Sum of the scores of defeated opponents except two, the one with the largest score and the one with the smallest score
  • 5) Result of head to head competition
  • 6) Rank on the paring table (determined at the time of pairing)
  In the event of tie, the ranking will be equal.

• (2) Prizes:
  The highest ranking programs will receive prizes, souvenirs and diplomas.

• (1) Games will end based on the following conditions:
  1. Both programs send a pass message to their opponent consecutively.
  2. One of the programs resigns.
     (No message should be sent because no message is defined for resigning. The program should only display the decision and halt.)
  3. One of the operators decides to resign.
  4. One side exceeds the time limit.
  5. The game has progressed past the 400th move.
  6. A competitor breaks the rules.
  7. The tournament judge decides it is necessary to end the game.

• (2) Dead stones
  Programs must mark dead stones clearly on the monitor screen when games end normally.

• (3) Counting the Score
  Programs must calculate territory. The result is valid if both programs display the same score. If the scores differ, the operators decide the result. Disputes are settled by the tournament judges.

• (1) Program Crashes: If a program crashes during a game, the tournament judges will decide whether or not to allow the program to restart. The clock will remain running during deliberations. No changes to the go-playing algorithm or auxiliary files such as pattern databases are allowed. However, if there is a problem with the operating system environment, fix the problem and restart the program. If there is a problem with the network protocol, play should progress without the protocol.

• (2) Power Failure: When a game is interrupted due to a power failure or other hardware-related problems, games will be adjudicated by the tournament judges. In the case of unexpected accidents or disasters, the tournament chair will adjudicate the game.

• (3) Unfair Practices: Any participant found to be cheating will be disqualified from the tournament and the game will be terminated immediately. All remaining games will also be scored as losses.

• (4) Disputes: Any disputes arising from circumstances not mentioned above will be settled by the judges. If the judges are not able to adjudicate, the tournament chair will adjudicate. The decision of the tournament chair is final.

Participants must submit the following two items. Participants who fail to submit them will be disqualified.

• (1) Procedure
  
  
  • Step 1: If a program is considered to be fraudulent, any person involved in the tournament can present his/her allegation to the organizing committee anytime during the tournament, or within one year after the tournament. The person should give the organizing committee the reason for his/her allegation in an e-mail.
    
    
  • Step 2: The organizing committee evaluates the allegation and, if the allegation is found credible, the alleged party is notified of the allegation and the alleger's name. If the allegation turns out to be groundless, the allegation is rejected.
    
    
  • Step 3: The organizing committee will appoint the Allegation Committee. The committee will mediate between the alleger and the alleged, and in some cases his/her associates, in their discussion of the matter. A new mailing list is set up specifically for the Allegation Committee, which also includes the alleger, the alleged, and his/her associates. The discussion will be conducted mainly on the mailing list. The committee will attempt, as far as possible, to evaluate and ascertain all the evidence presented by both parties.
    
    
  • Step 4: When the committee decides the discussion is leading to no conclusion, it will distribute the submitted copy (see above) of the alleged program to all the pertinent parties.
    
    
  • Step 5: If the dispute still reaches no conclusion after step 4, the Investigation Committee will be set up. The members of this committee are summoned by the Allegation Committee and will consist of the collaborating participants of the tournament. The members should be volunteers. The alleger, the alleged, and the associates are informed of the names of the members.
    
    
  • Step 6: If the above procedure still produces no conclusive result, the information is disclosed to all the participants of the tournament (see (2)), and after the period of one year the case is closed.

• (2) Disclosure of Information
  If the discussion among the alleger, the alleged, and his/her associates reaches a conclusion, or otherwise when the first two months have passed, the relevant committee will disclose the contents of discussion up to that time over the mailing list consisting of all the participants of the tournament. The information disclosed on the mailing list is freely redistributable, and after this the discussion of the allegation will be conducted on the participant's mailing list.

• (3) Fraud
  When a fraud becomes evident, the records of the fraudulent program are deleted from the tournament records. The programmer, and his/her associates, will be disqualified from the next three tournaments. A program which has been proved to be fraudulent in any other Computer Go tournament is treated similarly. A program is proven to be fraudulent when the developer(s) confesses to the fact or when it is proven guilty in a court of law.

• Tournament Chair : SANECHIKA Noriaki
• Board Members : OHKUMA Osamu, OKASAKI Masahiro, KAMADA Masahito, KOJIMA Takuya, SUNAGA Shuji, TAJIMA Morihiko, FUWA Masahiro, MATSUBARA Hitoshi, Martin MUELLER, YAMASHITA Hiroshi, YOSHIKAWA Atsushi
• Secretariat : YOSHIKAWA Atsushi and KOJIMA Takuya
• Tournament Judge : OKASAKI Masahiro

Commands of SGMP have been simplified to reduce communication errors
during the tournament as follows:

-NEWGAME must be sent by Black.  White just waits for it.

-For Black's NEWGAME, White asks QUERY(11) and QUERY(8), and
 waits for Black's answers.  If  the answers are ANSWER(2) and ANSWER(1)
 respectively, White returns  OK and waits for Black's move.

-When Black receives OK, Black sends a move by MOVE.  Then White
 responds promptly by OK for Black's MOVE.

-White sends a move by MOVE, and Black quickly returns OK for it.
 The same exchange is repeated alternately between Black and White.

-When  a player (Black/White) does not receive OK from the partner
(White/Black) in 20 seconds after he sends some data, the player
 can send the same data again.


Initialization procedure:

  Black              White
NEWGAME   --->
               <--- QUERY(11)    What is your color?
ANSWER(2) --->                   Black.
               <--- QUERY(8)     What is the handicap ?
ANSWER(1) --->                   Even (No handicap.)
               <--- OK
This procedure is strictly fixed.  No other QUERYs are permitted
and it is also forbidden to omit the following steps.
It is not permitted to swap the order of QUERY(11) and QUERY(8).


 An exchange of moves is done as follows:

MOVE  --->                       Send a move
               <--- OK

The exchange is repeated alternately between Black and White
until the end.


An instance :

Try COM1 ...
Send     --> 01:a1:a0:80 :Send NewGame
Read  <--    03:be:b0:8b :Receive Query(11)
Send     --> 02:c4:c0:82 :Send Answer(2)
Read  <--    00:b8:b0:88 :Receive Query(8)
Send     --> 01:c2:c0:81 :Send Answer(1)
Read  <--    02:88:87:ff :Receive OK
  Game is ready!
Send     --> 00:85:d2:b3 :My Move. Pos(1-361)=307
Read  <--    00:86:87:ff :Receive OK
Read  <--    01:92:d4:bd :Your Move. Pos(1-361)=61
Send     --> 02:88:87:ff :Send OK
 ..
 ..
 ..
And so on.


The following three programs are included in the tournament web pages:

CGFGO.EXE    ---  Communication proxy program: Programs with no
                  communication function use this proxy program. In that
                  case, operation time is counted as allotted game time.

CGFCOM.DLL   ---  A library of communication funcions

CGFGNUGO.EXE ---  A demo program (GnuGo) with communication
                  functions (All participants are recommended to make
                  sure  that their programs can play with the demo program.)

If you are not accustomed to communications programming, you can reduce
your labor of implementing  communication functions by using CGFCOM.DLL.
For further detail, please refer to the documents appended to CGFCOM.DLL.

Because any program with CGFCOM.DLL satisfies the above mentioned
specifications, it is not necessary to change them.
Just make sure to be able  to play  both colors (Black and White) . 
If your machine has 2 COM ports, then you can make sure of both
cases on your machine.

SGF is specified as a sequence of  nodes which starts with ; in a ( ).
The first node is called the root node, which  contains properties about
the whole game. The next node after the root corresponds to the first
move.

(;
GM[1]FF[1]        /DM  denotes the kind of game.  Go corresponds to 1 and

                  /FFmeans the version number (1 - 4)
SZ[19]            /Board Size 19
PB[player black]  /Black' name
PW[player white]  /White' name
DT[date]          /Date when game is played, year-month-day: YYYY-MM-DD
PC[place]         /Place where game is played
KM[komi]          /Komi
TM[time for each player] / Alotted Time for each player (minutes)
RU[rule]           /Kinds of rule:  Japanese
RE[result]         /Game result.  B+10.5  stands for Black's Win by 10.5
                   /points. B+R means Black' Win by White's resignation
EV[event]          /Name of Event.   1st  CGF Computer Go Tournament
GN[game name]      /Game name.   round 1
;B[aa];W[bb];B[cc]......
                   /Record of  move sequence.  B[X,Y] stands for Black's
                   /move at Point (X,Y).   aa and sa  are top most left  
                   /and top most right corner points respectively on Board
                   /viewed from Black's side.
                   /10 moves per line.
;B[tt]W[tt])       /tt means Pass.


An example:
(;
GM[1]FF[1]
SZ[19]
PB[Black Program]
PW[White Program]
DT[1999-09-28]
PC[Tsukuba]
KM[5.5]
TM[50]
RU[Japanese]
RE[B+0.5]
EV[1st ICGC]
GN[round 1]
;B[dd];W[pd].....
;B[tt];W[tt])