About Go Software

Unlike chess, it is nearly impossible to create a Deep-Blue-like computer program that can defeat a halfway descent go player, basically because there are so many different moves a go player can make (about 200 compared to only 35 for a chess player). Despite decades or research, the expenditure of millions and offers of prize money as a reward the best go software is only as good a first-grade players in the amateur category. A good teenage player can beat the supercomputer go program.



Ben Macintyre wrote in the Times of London,“the very qualities that mark out the master go player are precisely those a computer lacks: intuition, planning, character and pattern reading. Go is not merely a matter of probabilities leading to certainties, at its best, the game reflects the defining characteristics of human intelligence.” The quest to come up with go software continues because if a computer can “learn” the game that advance is regarded as big step in unlocking the secret of artificial intelligence.

A Taiwanese organization has offered $1 million for the first computer program to defeat a junior Go champion. Among those that have played go are Albert Einstein, Rod Stewart, Mao Zedong and Nobel-Prize-winning economist played by Russell Crowe in The Beautiful Mind.