AI techniques for the game of Go

In the last decade Go has been an important part of my life. As a student in Delft I became fascinated by the question why, unlike Chess, computers played this game so poorly. This fascination stimulated me to pursue computer Go as a hobby and I was fortunate to share my interests with some fellow students with
whom I also founded a small Go club. In the final years of my study applied physics I joined the pattern recognition group where I performed research on non-linear feature extraction with artificial neural networks. After finishing my M.Sc. thesis I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in the fields of pattern recognition,machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

When the Universiteit Maastricht offered me the opportunity to combine my research interests with my interest in Go, I did not hesitate. The research led to several conference papers, journal articles, and eventually this thesis. The research presented in this thesis has benefited from the help of many persons, whom I want to acknowledge here.First, I would like to thank my supervisor Jaap van den Herik. His tireless
efforts to provide valuable feedback, even during his holidays, greatly improved the quality of the thesis. Next, many thanks to my daily advisor Jos Uiterwijk.Without the help of both of them this thesis would have never appeared.I would like to thank the members of the search and games group. Levente
Kocsis gave me the opportunity to exchange ideas even at the most insane hours.Mark Winands provided invaluable knowledge on searching techniques, and kept me up to date with the latest ccc-gossips. I enjoyed their company on various trips to conferences, workshops, and SIKS courses, as well as in our cooperation on the program Magog. With Reindert-Jan Ekker I explored reinforcement learning in Go. It was a pleasure to act as his advisor. Further, I enjoyed the discussions, exchanges of ideas, and game evenings with Jeroen Donkers, Pieter Spronck, Tony Werten, and the various M.Sc. students.I would like to thank my roommates, colleagues, and former colleagues (Natascha, Evgueni, Allard, Frank, Joop, Yong-Ping, Gerrit, Georges, Peter,
Niek, Guido, Sander, Rens, Michel, Joyca, Igor, Loes, Cees-Jan, Femke, Eric,Nico, Ida, Arno, Paul, Sandro, Floris, Bart, Andreas, Stefan, Puk, Nele, and Maarten) for providing me with a pleasant working atmosphere. Moreover I thank Joke Hellemons, Marlies van der Mee, Martine Tiessen, and Hazel den Hoed for their help with administrative matters.Aside from research and education I was also involved in university politics.I would like to thank my fraction (Janneke Harting, Louis Berkvens, for the pleasant cooperation, the elucidating discussions, and the broadening of my academic scope.Next to my research topic, Go also remained my hobby. I enjoyed playing Go in Heerlen, Maastricht, and in the Rijn-Maas liga. I thank Martin van Es,Robbert van Sluijs, Jan Oosterwijk, Jean Derks, Anton Vreedegoor, and Arnoud Michel for helping me neutralise the bad habits obtained from playing against my own program.Over the years several people helped me relax whenever I needed a break from research. Next to those already mentioned, I would like to thank my friends from VFeeto, Oele, TN, Jansbrug, Delft, and Provum. In particular I thank, the VF-promovendi Marco van Leeuwen, Jeroen Meewisse, and Jan Zuidema, ‘hardcore-oelegangers’ Arvind Ganga and Mark Tuil, and of course
Alex Meijer, with whom I shared both my scientific and non-scientific interests
Book Link:
http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/~uiterwyk/Theses/PhD/Van%20der%20Werf_thesis.pdf