A: Zen19D is a version of Zen19, runs on a mini-cluster of 6 pcs (a 6-core Xeon W5680/4 GHz, two 4-core i7 920/3.2 GHz, and three 4-core Core2Quad/3 GHz) connected via a GbE LAN.  Although Zen19 is a prototype of a commercial product, Zen19D is being developed for academic research by team DeepZen, a joint project of ZenAuthor and me [Hideki Kato].

Q: What does D stand for?

A: Distributed version, or DeepZen.

Q: How strong is it?

A: Estimated 5d for blitz and 4d for longer games.

('Zen19' was the winner of this year's "May Slow bot tournament" and "June bot tournament" on KGS.)

 

I decided to post the game played by 'ajahuang' against this bot, because 'ajahuang' (Shih-Chieh Huang) is also an author of a Go program (Erica). He has a Taiwanese Amateur 6-dan Go Certificate. 

In his Personal Page on KGS, he writes this:

Besides Go, I like music in my childhood. This song was composed and played by myself for Erica when we fell in love:

http://www.csie.ntnu.edu.tw/~aja/Aja22_20071112.mp3

(It is a nice music!)

 

Anyway, about the game:

White played well throughout the game, but made a fatal mistake in the endgame: he missed Black 209! It is hard to see it, but we know that bots have a very sharp reading! I think that instead of playing at B7 with W206, White should have played A9 (connection). Actually, in the game White also missed how Black could capture his group at the top left corner... The lesson is: always be careful when playing against strong bots, especially in well-defined positions - remember that they have a very deep reading ability!

 

It is not the first time that 'Zen19D' beats a 6-dan on KGS in an even game. I would like to try and play this bot, but there are so many players who also want to play against it that it is nearly impossible to challenge it in time... The bot is always very busy! :-)

Its results are quite impressive - 'Zen19D' is solid 5d, and it usually crushes 3-dan players even if they take handicap. Can this be a turning point in the history of Go?