Any recommendations for a good Go AI preferably with a nice interface for Mac? Before I play humans online I like to warm up against a computer, but the KGS bots are always taken. I've looked on sensei's . . . but that site is . . . not great. I did a quick search here but I'd like to have some good up to date recommendations if anyone would be so kind. I'm happy to pay for a good computer opponent. Thanks!

Leela works with wine.

Or you can use something like VirtualBox, depending on the specs of your machine. Not mac native, but it's a potential solution.

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Go Books

Singular, have you ever used your Mac at the command line? If so, do you see what operating system you are really using "under the hood".

Aye-- gives me 10.9.5

Oh dear, I lost all my 'nix books in a 2006 house fire and never replaced them (by that time I was pretty much retired from writing software)

Can somebody show him how to find out what "shell" his command line is using and what lies underneath?

Yes, you are (normally) using a Mac OS but I believe you will find that underneath that is a 'nix of some sort.

Oh,



Gives me:
GNU bash, version 3.2.53(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin13)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Mac OS is a certified UNIX operating system based on BSD, though there are a lot of custom components. But what does it matter? There are lots of pre compiled binaries for Mac OS, and I'm not aware of any open source engines that can't be compiled for Mac.

If you're DDK or on the weaker end of SDK, GnuGo works well. I think it plays up to about 6 kyu, and the moves are more human like than the Monte Carlo bots that don't always scale well down to weaker levels.

Fuegi and Pachi can both play at around dan level. I've had a better experience with one than the other, but I can't remember which while away from my computer. Make sure to use the opening book, or they will play bizarrely in the opening.

Leela is my new favorite. I run it in WINE under Linux, and it comes with its own GUI. It doesn't have options for scaling back the strength, though, (or at least they aren't visible in the GUI and I haven't gone hunting) so you have to play with handicap stones. It's about 3 dan strength on most hardware.

For GUIs, I used Goban when I had a Mac. It hasn't been developed for a while, though. I really like Quarry under Linux, which is also no longer developed, particularly because it makes it easy to export diagrams. GoGui also works well.

Good luck!