Intelligent Go Foundation

21st Century Championship Cup 2001 Results

21st Century Champion	Go4++, Michael Reiss, UK
1st Runner-up	Haruka, Ryuichi Kawa, Japan
2nd Runner-up	Wulu, Xiuyu Lei et al, China
3rd Runner-up, and North American Computer Go Champion	The Many Faces of Go, David Fotland, USA
Basis Technology New Star Prize	SmartGo, Anders Kierulf, USA

The first annual 21st Century Championship Cup tournament, with total prize money exceeding US$15,000.-, was held on July 21 and 22, 2001, in historic York, Pennsylvania.

Michael Reiss's Go4++ eked out a tie-break win over Ryuichi Kawa's second-place Haruka to claim the 21st Century Championship Cup and its US$5,000 prize. Wulu, by Xiuyu Lei and her team, and David Fotland's The Many Faces of Go finished third and fourth, the latter also winning the North American Computer Go Championship as the top-finishing North American entrant. Rounding out the top eight finishers were Anders Kierulf's SmartGo, which was also awarded the Basis Technology New Star Prize; Ken Chen's Go Intellect; Jimmy Lu's Go Star; and the Free Software Foundation's GNU Go represented by Daniel Bump, in that order. Other entrants in the strong multinational 12-program field were Hiroshi Yamashita's Aya; Martin Mueller's Explorer; Tristan Cazenave's GoLois; and William Harold Newman's plodder.

In the Swiss-style tournament, directed by David Allen, Go4++ and Haruka finished with identical 5-1 records and sum-of-opponents-scores, with Go4++ taking the championship on the strength of a better sum-of-defeated-opponents-scores, based on its victory over Haruka in their head-to-head match.

The competition was held in conjunction with the 17th US Go Congress, which kindly arranged for facilities.

In addition to the competition itself, five authors gave lectures on their programs and computer go topics during an informative Thursday afternoon session.

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