The Computer Go UEC Cup is an annual worldwide computer Go tournament held at the University of Electro-Communications (UEC) in Tokyo, Japan, [1] since 2007. [2] The winners of the tournament would then play exhibition games against a professional Go player.
The tournament was typically structured as a preliminary Swiss-system invitational to determine challengers (with the previous year's UEC winners excluded), then a knockout tournament of sixteen players to determine the champion.
UEC Cup was terminated after its 10th edition in 2017 and was succeeded by AI Ryusei, a new computer Go tournament sponsored by Japanese Igo & Shogi Channel. [3] In 2019, the University of Electro-Communications hosted the renewed 11th UEC Cup with new sponsors.
UEC Cup winners and runners-up
No. | Time | Winner | Runner-up |
---|---|---|---|
1st | 1–2 December 2007 | Crazy Stone | Katsunari |
2nd | 13–14 December 2008 | Crazy Stone | 不動碁 |
3rd | 28–29 November 2009 | KCC Go | Katsunari |
4th | 27–28 November 2010 | Fuego | Zen |
5th | 3–4 December 2011 | Zen | Erica |
6th | 16–17 March 2013 | Crazy Stone | Zen |
7th | 15–16 March 2014 | Zen | Crazy Stone |
8th | 14–15 March 2015 | Crazy Stone | DolBaram |
9th | 19–20 March 2016 [4] | Zen [5] | darkforest |
10th | 18–19 March 2017 | Fine Art | DeepZenGo |
11th | 14–15 December 2019 | Golaxy | AQZ |
12th [6] | 20-21 March 2021 | VisionGo [7] | Ranka Go |
Exhibition games against professional Go players
Year | Position | Program | Handicap | Professional player | Result |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2008 | Winner | Crazy Stone | 7 stones | Kaori Aoba (4p) | Crazy Stone won by resignation |
2009 | 3rd place | Zen | 6 stones | Kaori Aoba (4p) | Kaori Aoba won by resignation |
Winner | KCC Go | 6 stones | 鄭銘瑝 (9p) | 鄭 won by resignation | |
2010 | Runner-up | Zen | 6 stones | Kaori Aoba (4p) | Zen won by resignation |
Winner | Fuego | 6 stones | 鄭銘瑝 (9p) | 鄭 won by resignation | |
2011 | Runner-up | Erica | 6 stones | Chizu Kobayashi (5p) | Chizu Kobayashi won by resignation |
Winner | Zen | 6 stones | 鄭銘瑝 (9p) | Zen won by resignation | |
2013 | Runner-up | Zen | 4 stones | Yoshio Ishida (9p) | Yoshio Ishida won by resignation |
Winner | Crazy Stone | 4 stones | Yoshio Ishida | Crazy Stone won by 2.5 points [8] [9] | |
2014 | Runner-up | Crazy Stone | 4 stones | Norimoto Yoda (9p) | Crazy Stone won by 2.5 points |
Winner | Zen | 4 stones | Norimoto Yoda | Norimoto Yoda won by resignation | |
2015 | Runner-up | DolBaram | 4 stones | Cho Chikun (9p) | DolBaram won by resignation |
Winner | Crazy Stone | 3 stones | Cho Chikun | Cho Chikun won by resignation | |
2016 | Runner-up | darkforest | 3 stones | Koichi Kobayashi (9p) | Koichi Kobayashi won by resignation |
Winner | Zen | 3 stones | Koichi Kobayashi | Zen won by resignation | |
2017 [10] | Runner-up | DeepZenGo | even | Ichiriki Ryo (7p) | DeepZenGo won by resignation |
Winner | Fine Art | even | Ichiriki Ryo | Fine Art won by resignation |
Gomoku, also called Five in a Row, is an abstract strategy board game. It is traditionally played with Go pieces on a 15×15 Go board while in the past a 19×19 board was standard. Because pieces are typically not moved or removed from the board, gomoku may also be played as a paper-and-pencil game. The game is known in several countries under different names.
Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent. The game was invented in China more than 2,500 years ago and is believed to be the oldest board game continuously played to the present day. A 2016 survey by the International Go Federation's 75 member nations found that there are over 46 million people worldwide who know how to play Go, and over 20 million current players, the majority of whom live in East Asia.
Computer Go is the field of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to creating a computer program that plays the traditional board game Go. The field is sharply divided into two eras. Before 2015, the programs of the era were weak. The best efforts of the 1980s and 1990s produced only AIs that could be defeated by beginners, and AIs of the early 2000s were intermediate level at best. Professionals could defeat these programs even given handicaps of 10+ stones in favor of the AI. Many of the algorithms such as alpha-beta minimax that performed well as AIs for checkers and chess fell apart on Go's 19x19 board, as there were too many branching possibilities to consider. Creation of a human professional quality program with the techniques and hardware of the time was out of reach. Some AI researchers speculated that the problem was unsolvable without creation of human-like AI.
Minishogi is a modern variant of shogi. The game was invented around 1970 by Shigenobu Kusumoto of Osaka, Japan. The rules are nearly identical to those of standard shogi, with the exception that it is played on a 5x5 board with a reduced number of pieces, and each player's promotion zone consists only of the rank farthest from the player.
Tokyo Game Show, commonly known as TGS, is a video game trade fair and convention held annually in September in the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba, Japan. It is presented by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) and Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. The main focus of the show is on Japanese games, but some international video game developers use it to showcase upcoming releases/related hardware. The duration of the event is four days. The first two days of Tokyo Game Show are open only to industry attendees (business) and the general public can attend during the final two days.
The University of Electro-Communications is a national university in the city of Chōfu, Tokyo, Japan.
There are a number of competitions and prizes to promote research in artificial intelligence.
Computer shogi is a field of artificial intelligence concerned with the creation of computer programs which can play shogi. The research and development of shogi software has been carried out mainly by freelance programmers, university research groups and private companies. By 2017, the strongest programs were outperforming the strongest human players.
Crazy Stone is a Go playing engine, developed by Rémi Coulom, a French computer scientist. It is one of the first computer Go programs to utilize a modern variant of the Monte Carlo tree search. It is part of the Computer Go effort. In January 2012 Crazy Stone was rated as 5 dan on KGS, in March 2014 as 6 dan.
The Longxing is a Go competition in China. It is the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese Ryusei.
AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go. It was developed by the London-based DeepMind Technologies, an acquired subsidiary of Google. Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that competed under the name Master. After retiring from competitive play, AlphaGo Master was succeeded by an even more powerful version known as AlphaGo Zero, which was completely self-taught without learning from human games. AlphaGo Zero was then generalized into a program known as AlphaZero, which played additional games, including chess and shogi. AlphaZero has in turn been succeeded by a program known as MuZero which learns without being taught the rules.
Darkforest is a computer go program developed by Meta Platforms, based on deep learning techniques using a convolutional neural network. Its updated version Darkfores2 combines the techniques of its predecessor with Monte Carlo tree search. The MCTS effectively takes tree search methods commonly seen in computer chess programs and randomizes them. With the update, the system is known as Darkfmcts3.
Ke Jie is a Chinese professional Go player of 9 dan rank. He was born on August 2, 1997, in Liandu District, Lishui City, Zhejiang Province.
Zen, sold as Tencho no Igo in Japan, is a closed source Go playing engine developed by Yoji Ojima (尾島陽児), a Japanese Go programmer.
Fine Art is a Go-playing computer program created by Chinese media company Tencent.
A professional shogi player is a shogi player who is usually a member of a professional guild of shogi players.
The Eiō (叡王) is one of the eight major titles of professional shogi cosponsored by Fujiya Co. and the Japan Shogi Association (JSA). The tournament initially started out as a non-title tournament in 2015, but was upgraded to major title status in May 2017. The current Eiō title holder is Sōta Fujii.
The MLily Cup, officially the MLily Meng Baihe Cup World Go Open Tournament is an international Go tournament. It is organized by the International Go Federation and the Chinese Weiqi Association. The tournament was created in 2013 and is held every two years.
Xie Ke is a Chinese professional Go player.
Gu Zihao is a Chinese professional go player. He is the winner of two major international championships: the Samsung Cup in 2017 and the Quzhou Lanke Cup in 2023.