Gomocup 2021 Announcement
Published by Kai Sun at Feb 12, 2021
Hello, all Gomocup fans!
Spring 2021 is coming, and we would like to inform you about some details. Gomocup 2021 will take place from May 14th to May 16th, 2021. The submission deadline is May 8th, 2021, at 11:59 pm UTC.
In Gomocup 2021, only compatibility with Windows 10 (including the server versions of Windows based on Windows 10 such as Windows Server 2016) is mandatory, though we strongly encourage AIs to be compatible with Windows 7 and Windows 8 as well.
Following the traditional settings of Gomocup, we will have freestyle, standard, renju, and fastgame tournaments in Gomocup 2021. One author is not allowed to submit more than one AI for one rule but is allowed to submit different AIs for different rules. The memory limit is determined to 350MB. While the default AI size limitation is 8MB, some of you may have exceptional circumstances that would make this difficult. For this reason, we allow larger submissions only for special cases. This means that participants who want to submit an AI larger than 8MB must submit a written explanation to [email protected] explaining the necessity and get approval before doing so. Time per move/per match will be 5s/120s for fastgame, 300s/1000s for final leagues, and 30s/180s for the rest. For details, you can refer to detail information. Gomocup 2021 will run on CPUs that support up to at least the following instruction sets: SSE4.1, SSE4.2, and POPCNT.
In addition to the traditional tournaments above, we plan to continue organizing the experimental tournament where AIs will be running on participants' computers. This experimental tournament has no limitation on AI size and allows participants to use any hardware (e.g., GPUs) that they have access to. Following Gomoku World Championships, the rule for this tournament is Swap2. No human intervention is allowed, and to enforce that, besides submitting the AI program, every participant in this tournament is also required to submit to Gomocup a detailed document on how to set up the environment and run the AI so that we can, theoretically, check if games played in this tournament are reproducible. If you are interested in participating in this experimental tournament, please send us an email ([email protected]) at your earliest convenience. Depending on the number of potential participants, we will have more detailed rules (e.g., time) settled tentatively by April 17th. The protocol for the experimental tournament will remain the same as last year in the following.
* To deal with the opening stage of Swap2, we introduce an extra command "SWAP2BOARD" to the current Gomocup protocol, which is sent once or twice to the AI between command "START" and command "BOARD". Specifically, it has three cases, and we show examples for each of them.
Case 1. The manager asks for the first three stones.
The manager sends:
SWAP2BOARD
DONE
The AI answers:
7,7 8,7 9,9
Case 2. The manager sends the coordinates of the first three stones and asks for the choice of options.
The manager sends:
SWAP2BOARD
7,7
8,7
9,9
DONE
The AI answers:
SWAP - if the AI decides to swap (option 1)
8,8 - output the coordinate of the 4th move if the AI decides to stay with its color (option 2)
8,8 8,6 - output the coordinates of the 4th and 5th stones if the AI decides to put two stones and let the opponent choose the color (option 3)
Case 3. The manager sends the coordinates of the first five stones and asks for the choice of options.
The manager sends:
SWAP2BOARD
7,7
8,7
9,9
8,8
8,6
DONE
The AI answers:
SWAP - if the AI decides to swap (option 1)
6,8 - output the coordinate of the 6th move if the AI decides to stay with its color (option 2)
After the opening stage, the stones on the board will be treated as an opening for a traditional Gomocup Standard match, and the manager will communicate with the AI using the classical Gomocup protocol in the rest of the match. For example, following the above example in Case 3, assuming the AI chooses option 2, the manager will send the following messages to the other AI:
BOARD
7,7,1
8,7,2
9,9,1
8,8,2
8,6,1
6,8,2
DONE
As another example, following Case 2's example, assuming the AI chooses option 1, the manager will send the following messages to the other AI:
BOARD
7,7,2
8,7,1
9,9,2
DONE
We require every participant to make submissions via the Gomocup user site and sign a copyright statement. If you encounter any problems or bugs while using the system, feel free to send an email to [email protected].