What is WinHonte?

Go is an ancient board game from Asia. It is harder than chess, although it has simple rules.

For more information on go, visit http://senseis.xmp.net/

WinHonte

WinHonte is an application for playing go, and for viewing go game files saved in the SGF format. More specifically, WinHonte can be used as:

An opponent when playing go

You can play against WinHonte at six different levels of difficulty and with handicaps of up to thirteen stones. WinHonte supports both territory-based and area-based scoring, as well as in-game evaluations. WinHonte can also be set up to play against itself.

A tool for entering go games

By setting up WinHonte for human-versus-human play, you can enter games and have them saved in the SGF format. Variations and move comments are supported.

An SGF viewer

WinHonte supports most of version 4 of the SGF format, and can be used to inspect and analyze games saved in this format.

WinHonte’s playing strength

We estimate that the rank of WinHonte 2.0 is around 4–9 kyu. However, WinHonte, like other computer programs, has strengths and weaknesses that are different from those of human players. Therefore, human opponents will often be able to improve their results against the program by adjusting to its style.

WinHonte does well against other go-playing programs, and it is one of the strongest programs available. Here is a sample game played against one of the most popular competing programs.

More about the AI (Artificial Intelligence) in WinHonte

WinHonte 2.01 Trial is only available as free download

WinHonte 2.01 is commercially available and can be bought at the Virtual Software Store