Gomocup

Gomocup has been played in the freestyle Gomoku rule with the board size of 20 since it was started in 2000.[3] In 2009, the standard Gomoku rule was added into Gomocup as a tournament, in which the board size is 15 and more than five in a row is not considered to be a win.[4] In 2016, the Renju rule was also added into Gomocup, with a board size of 15 and forbidden moves for black.[5] In particular, since there are a large number of participants in the freestyle Gomoku tournament, the freestyle Gomoku tournament is divided into several leagues, and the fast game tournament is introduced.[6]

To get rid of the fact that there is a winning strategy for the player who plays first in Gomoku,[7] balanced openings have been prepared by Gomoku experts since 2006.[8] Games would be started from these balanced openings, and neither side would have a big advantage from the very beginning.

There were two AI vs. Human tournaments held in the Czech Republic in 2006 and 2011.

In 2006, the top 3 programs in Gomocup had a tournament with 3 of the top 10 players in Piškvorky online. There were 2 games between each pair of AI and human players. The result was one win, one draw and one loss for AIs, and the total score was 3:3.[9]

In 2011, the tournament was between the top 4 programs in Gomocup and 4 players at the top of the Czech Gomoku rating list. Similar to the 1st tournament, there were 2 games between each pair of AI. This time there were 3 draws and 1 win for AIs, and the total score was 5:3.[10]

The Elo rating system for Gomocup was built in 2016 and calculated with all the historical tournament results ever since.[11] The rating is calculated with the open-source tool BayesElo,[12] with a few parameters modified to get adapted to the Gomoku game. There is a rating list for each game rule. The Elo ratings are updated every year after the Gomocup tournament finishes.

The results for the Gomocup tournaments since 2000 is in the following.[13]