Speakers: Petr Baudiš and Francois van Niekerk
Over the past few years, researchers have made great strides in Computer Go. A notable breakthrough was the development of Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), which all state-of-the-art programs now employ. Petr and Francois will introduce the basics of Computer Go programming in the context of MCTS, discuss various heuristics that dramatically improve its performance in practice, and discuss techniques for parallelizing computer Go programs to take advantage of modern hardware.
Petr Baudiš, from Charles University in Prague, is the lead developer of Pachi, the world’s strongest open source Computer Go program.
Francois van Niekerk is a student at Stellenbosch University, and the developer of Oakfoam, another open source Computer Go program.
Directions to the Engineering building (including a map, GPS co-ordinates, and an aerial photo showing our location) are available at our contact page. Since this talk will be after hours, access to the building is somewhat more complicated. Our division is on the fifth floor of the General Engineering building (the one closest to the corner of Banhoek and Joubert Streets), above the student cafeteria “Plakkies”. To get into the building, you will need to go to the back of the building, directly opposite the “Plakkies” entrance. Once you pass through the double wooden doors there, you can take the lift up to the fifth floor. If you encounter any problems getting into the building, feel free to contact Steve Kroon on (084)4588062.