Mysterious Tartrate Conquers All At Go

Rubyflame writes "As noted on the Sensei's Library resource for the ancient Chinese boardgame Go, Tartrate, a very strong and mysterious Go player, has recently returned to the Kiseido Go Server (KGS) after a long absence. The game records can be found here. Tartrate first appeared in March, and has yet to be defeated - his identity is unknown." This intriguing story is a little reminiscent of Bobby Fischer's online chess appearances - the Go players on KGS even log their Tartrate number: "tartrate has a tartrate number of 0. If you have played a game with tartrate, your tartrate number is 1. If you have played a game with someone whose number is 1, your number is 2, and so on."

Comments

Re:sgf

[Deternal]

you can download his games as SGF files and view them from the KGS archives if you want :)

Re:AI?

[fstrauss]

Go has a rating system which briefly is explained as follows:

Begginers start at about 30kuy, as you get better your kuy rating decreases. 1kuy is better than 2kuy. Better that 1kuy is 1dan, dans count upwards to about 7dan. Better than that you start with pro ratings which are not easy to come by.

AI is far from beating pros at Go
The best go playing software is rated about 12kuy.

In otherwords, there are people in my local go club who would beat the best go playing ai :)

Re:Japanese, not Chinese

[cthulhubob]

Go was brought to the west via contact with Japan - that's why it's called "Go" here. The game is known as "Igo" in Japan, "Wei qi" in China, and "Paduk" in Korea. The technical terms used in the west are also all Japanese terms (most amateur go players in the US will know what "miai", "hane", "tengen", "joseki", and "aji" mean, for example), even though China and Korea have their own equivalents.

Evidence shows that go was originally brought to Japan via Buddhist monks from China though. Evidence of go in China predates written records, so it's not certain whether it originated there or was brought from elsewhere.