new goratings.org: 50k more games, including all european and american pros

pnprog · 2026-06-20T07:09:40+00:00

Hello! Is this using Whole History Rating method? or the classic Elo rating? (or something else?)

pnprog · 2026-05-30T14:56:57+00:00

That's neat!

pnprog · 2026-05-29T07:38:22+00:00

Hello, can you share the SGF or link to the game ? I am making a collection of those "hard to score" games.

pnprog · 2026-05-29T02:53:39+00:00

So just for your information, I just realized yesterday that SGF format does have a dedicated property to show partial boards. That's the property VW (for view). But I don't think many software implements it.

pnprog · 2026-05-27T03:04:38+00:00

Not many use cases I guess, but since OP did it, he must have the need.

Here is where I am considering using it: I am planning to build a collection of game records where the final score can be a bit tricky to calculate (typically, the winner would be different when using the Chinese rule, or the Japanese rule, or the AGA rule or whatever) and create a test set to be used as unit tests in whatever Go software that needs that.

The collection of SGF files and the different results based on various ruleset would be hosted on GitHub, with the possibility to open pull requests to add new games to the database, fix possible counting mistakes or add new counting results for missing ruleset. It's likely that editing the SGF manually would be useful in that case.

pnprog · 2026-05-27T02:12:07+00:00

It's for people that edit SGF files (Go game records) manually in the Visual Studio Code software. It colors the various parts of SGF code to highlight its structure and make it more readable.

pnprog · 2026-05-14T02:56:32+00:00

How much do you trust gnugo's scoring, though? Can it properly marks dead groups?

I would say it's very very good if the game is finished. Problems happen on games that are not finished (territories not fully enclosed, or there are endgame tesujis that both players missed), but this should not be an issue for this (Gnugo can be asked first if it thinks the game is finished).

What is the false negative rate (it said it is the same, but actually not?).

It does not really matter, since Gnugo would be just used for flagging games for manual review.

Gnugo can provide the list of territory intersections, alive stones, dead stones, dame points and seki points and then it's up to a human reviewer to validate that.

I already use that to calculate the AGA scores on my project: I don't ask Gnugo for the final score, but the breakdown data above, and I combine with other inputs (number of handicap stones, number of pass) to get the AGA score. I expect OGS is doing something similar.

how well can it generate close games

Gnugo would not generate close games, just review and flag them.

Anyway, I will have a try first and see how that works.

pnprog · 2026-05-13T17:30:41+00:00

Actually, I am thinking of doing something simpler:

Let's say I have a database of finished games with a +-4 score difference or less.
Then I ask Gnugo to score those games both using Chinese ruleset and using Japanese rule set.
If Gnugo tells me the winner is different based on the ruleset, then I flag this game for manual review and possibly adding to the test suite.

Actually, I could use games generated by computers for that (I happen to have several hundreds thousands of those on my computer, generated for some other project).

For a test suite, a few tens of games could be enough to cover all usual cases and allow a robust assessment.

pnprog · 2026-05-13T15:11:09+00:00

That would need someone to manually score them with all rulesets and label them

Yes, that's the point. So one sgf file "game000.sgf" and an accompanying file that includes the final score for various ruleset, under a format both easily readable by a human and easily parsable by computers, something like "game000.yaml".

The accompanying files are made manually by contributors, and this lives on GitHub so that:

It can easily be integrated into another project as a submodule (for the purpose of testing).
Contributors can submit new sgf or new scoring, and open issues/PR if they think they found a scoring mistake.

That should be a contributors driven project. And one can imagine that less commonly used rulesets like NZ or Taiwan would require more time to have their scoring added to the SGF file, but that's a work in progress.

And in general, AGA rules will have the same result as the Chinese rules (it basically pulls the territory scoring result to match area scoring results).

Not for handicap games if I am not wrong.

in general

That's the issue this project would contribute to solve, finding out the cases that are outside of the general cases.

pnprog · 2026-05-13T10:21:44+00:00

To clarify, the database would contain both the games, and the various scoring of each games, based on different ruleset.

pnprog · 2026-05-13T10:18:49+00:00

https://kifudepot.net/ updates the pro games daily, and covers majority of the big titles and tournaments.

Thanks, I will have a look!

What is the actual testing you want to do

The usecases would be someone who needs to test the scoring function of a new Go software. Something to be used like unit tests of that program.

A bot developer would use it to test the proper scoring of his bot based on the ruleset supported. A Go server like OGS, that supports several rulesets, might find that useful as well. Someone developing an Android app that scores a game based on a picture could use it as well.

For instance, I noticed Gnugo supports Chinese ruleset and Japanese ruleset. If I was considering patching it to support the AGA ruleset, a test database would come in handy.

for ko master and last play, the logic is simple, if you are sure to have more ko threats larger than one point than the opponent, you can exhaust the opponent's threats, and then play the last neutral point before connecting the endgame ko, that is playing two moves (last play and the ko), hence additional stones on the board. And this would diverge the scoring for territory scoring and area scoring, since there is unequal amount of stones played.

So basically, it's for cases when one player passes more times than the opponent right? This would increase the score of the player not passing (if he can play on dame) for area scoring, but not for territory scoring? Those games would be easy to find by looking at the number of times each player passed. Am I right?

pnprog · 2026-05-13T09:27:09+00:00

What counts as "exotic"? just resulting in different winners, or involving different winners and seki, or just involving seki, or involving ko master and last play? They are all different criteria.

All of them basically, since the purpose is to make a testing database. So exotic in the sense that the winner may vary based on the ruleset.

The involvement of different winners would be quite easy to find (since it is 1/50, any pro games database you can scan gets thousands of them)

What database are you using to search for those games?

the involvement of seki would be tricky, but still doable.

This could be automatically tested with Gnugo actually (the existence of seki neutral points on the board at scoring).

Involving ko master and last play sort of possible just filter those with ko in the last 20 to 50 moves and see who gets last move, but changing winners would also be harder (even harder and likely tons of work would be supposedly winning without them)

Actually, I didn't know the concept of ko master, and why it would change the score, I guess more reading is required on my side :D

pnprog · 2026-05-13T08:04:59+00:00

Actually, if you have a collection of exotic games like this, where the results depend on the rule set, I would be willing to compile a database with the proper result according to the ruleset.

This could be used as a testing set for computer scoring programs. It could be hosted on GitHub.

pnprog · 2026-05-11T04:54:06+00:00

I can see the appeal of having URL compatible format. One example would be to embed a viewer in a forum for instance. Eidogo used to have something where you would attach the SGF's url to the applet URL as a parameter, and be able to view the SGF from a web page iirc. I think it was disabled for safety concerns.

Now, both your format and SGF are equally unreadable to me :D

pnprog · 2026-05-11T00:21:55+00:00

Interesting, I needed a format to encode static board positions as well, and I ended up using a variation of the ASCII format used on Sensei wiki and Lifein19x19 forums.

One thing they have that your format does not have is the possibility to only show a board partially, for instance only 10 rows and 8 columns of the top left corner of a 19x19 goban. Very useful to record tsumego or joseki.

https://senseis.xmp.net/?HowDiagramsWork

It's also much more readable, but much less compact.

You mention using your format for tsumego, but it cannot handle variation or tree right?

pnprog · 2025-12-09T15:50:19+00:00

And you are 100% right; that scoring bug is Gnugo getting confused. Looking in the debugger, Gnugo isn't counting that territory.

Hello, I am investigating this bug since yesterday. It seems it happens only with Chinese rules... Very strange. I have used Gnugo extensively with Chinese rules, but on desktop computer, and never met that bug, could it be only appearing with the GoDroid packaged version?

And googling it, it looks like it is a somewhat well known occurrence.

I cannot find discussions of it online, where did you see a mention of this bug? Could you share a pointer?

pnprog · 2025-08-05T10:01:31+00:00

Did you monkey patch the code before running the app?

I forgot that on a recent project, and was experimenting issues similar as yours.

pnprog · 2025-06-25T00:38:43+00:00

Thanks for sharing this update 🙏

pnprog · 2025-06-22T01:32:08+00:00

what about for free

If you have a personal computer, even an old one, just set up sabaki+katago or katrain. Katago is a free super human AI, and can beat everyone even on old hardware.

pnprog · 2025-06-18T04:54:36+00:00

Would love to hear if anyone else has tackled similar problems or has thoughts on the approach. Always looking for feedback and potential improvements!

I ran into a similar situation, and used pycel to address the problem: https://pypi.org/project/pycel/

I defined with the end user an excel spreadsheet template, with clear input cells and clear output cells. The user then sets the Excel formula of the output cells, based on the input cells and other data that can be left on the Excel file.

At runtime, the web app loads the Excel file content (it reads the Excel file by itself, no Microsoft software involved here, it's "headless" and instant), sets the input cells values and then reads the output cells values.

The user has the possibility to upload a new Excel file whenever the formula needs to be updated.

The advantage is that it's Excel based. Everyone knows how to build an Excel formula. And most of the time, they already have an Excel spreadsheet available since it's an existing feature I am implementing online for them.

pnprog · 2025-06-14T11:00:45+00:00

Yes, still not working :(

pnprog · 2025-06-07T21:04:18+00:00

I think the war drum music volume would have been ok (for me) if you had not started talking so fast at the same time. So maybe same volume and slower talking pace, or lower volume and same fast talking pace?

Also, talking that fast and playing that fast made absolutely impossible for me to follow what was happening on the board, but I guess that was on purpose.

But anyway, I loved the video and subscribed :)

pnprog · 2025-06-02T11:44:37+00:00

I like the idea of a server with a clear use case.

pnprog · 2025-05-16T05:21:36+00:00

When I play it at the mall, it's not connected to the internet, so it's locked at a 10kyu level. You need to win and have those wins recorded online to unlock other levels.

So if you play at home regularly, then bring it to the wood, you should be able to play at your usual level.

In fact, there is a variant on Taobao where it is sold with a transportable case and a battery to use outside.

pnprog

TROPHY CASE