Computer Go Events

Perhaps the best known is the "Ing Cup", or formally the "Ing Computer Goe Congress", sponsored by the Ing Foundation. This not only offered significant prizes to each year's winner, it offered very large prizes to the winning program if it could beat inseis (newly-qualified teenage professional players) on successively smaller handicaps, culminating in a prize of NT$40,000,000, worth US$1,600,000.00, for beating them in even games. Unfortunately the Ing Foundation's sponsorship for this ceased after the fifteenth such event in 2000. It is possible that it may be resumed.

This site lists all such past events, and proposed future events.

You may wonder what is the point of a Computer Go event. Can't someone arrange for the programs to play each other, without the expense of flying the programmers half-way around the globe? Indeed it might be possible to organise such an event, but no-one has yet done so. In fact the programmers welcome the opportunity to meet each other, discuss their methods face-to-face, and socialise.

Computer Go programs also play each other remotely and informally in the Computer Go Ladder. As this is continuously ongoing, it provides a good indication of which among its participating programs is currently the strongest.