KataGo Distributed Training

About This Run

KataGo is a strong open-source self-play-trained Go engine, with many improvements to accelerate learning (arXiv paper and further techniques since). It can predict score and territory, play handicap games reasonably, and handle many board sizes and rules all with the same neural net.

This site hosts KataGo's first public-distributed training run! With the help of volunteers, we are attempting to resume training from the end of KataGo's previous official run ("g170") that ended in June 2020, and see how much further we can go. If would like to contribute, see below!

Updates

  • 2023-05-23 - KataGo v1.13.0 is released! Supports a new version of neural nets with improved output heads for policy and error prediction and various other analysis and search and training improvements. Once most or all contributors upgrade, we will be able to switch to the improved nets. If you're an active contributor please upgrade when you can!

  • 2023-03-04 - We're fully switched to v1.12 now and the first new net of the new architecture, b18c384nbt, has been uploaded for testing! Note the learning rate has been kept far higher than every other network, so it might not be as strong yet as the "uec" version of the new net on the releases page.

  • 2023-02-18 - KataGo is now up to version v1.12.4, with some bugfixes for training data generation! Once enough users are upgraded to this version and particularly off of v1.11, we can try the new improved b18 net and architecture for rating games and data generation. Please upgrade if you can!

  • 2023-01-07 - New release of KataGo, v1.12.0, supporting a new neural net architecture! The new net, b18-uec is about as strong as the 60-block nets but should be faster to run.

  • 2022-05-16 - Disabling support for versions older than v1.11.0 in selfplay data contribution so that we can make full use of new graph search parameters for search during selfplay.

  • 2022-03-20 - KataGo v1.11.0 is released! New graph search algorithm instead of tree search, and various parameter improvements.

  • 2022-01-27 - Switching to 60-block net for selfplay data contribution! 40-block net will continue to be trained as well on the data and be rated as well.

Downloading KataGo

If you simply want to run KataGo, the latest releases are here and you can download the latest networks from here. You very likely want a GUI as well, because the engine alone is command-line-only. Some possible GUIs include KaTrain, Lizzie, and q5Go, more can be found searching online.

How to Contribute

Contributors are much appreciated! If you'd like to contribute your spare GPU cycles to generate training data for the run, the steps are:

First, create an account on this site, picking a username and secure password. Make sure to verify your email so that the site considers your account fully active. Note: the username you pick will be publicly visible in statistics and on the games you contribute.

Then pick one of the following methods.

Likely easiest method, for a home desktop computer:

  • Download and install KaTrain
  • Inside the GUI menu, select the option for distributed training, provide the username and password for the account you created, and choose a few settings, then just let it run!

Command line method: if running on a remote server, or have already set up KataGo for other things, or if you want a command line that will work in the background without any GUI, or want slightly more flexibility to configure things:

  • Download KataGo from the latest release.
  • Edit the contribute_example.cfg that came when you downloaded KataGo, use a text editor to fill in your username, password, and the few different settings you want.
  • Run it on the command line like: ./katago contribute -config contribute_example.cfg on Linux, or katago.exe contribute -config contribute_example.cfg on Windows. If it is working, it should print out various stats as it runs, including when it finishes and uploads a game.

Either way, once some games are finished, you can view the results at https://katagotraining.org/contributions/ - scroll down and find your username! If anything looks unusual or buggy about the games, or KataGo is behaving weirdly on your machine, please let us know, so we can avoid uploading and training on bad data. Or, if you encounter any error messages, feel to ask for help on KataGo's GitHub or the Discord chat.

For advanced users, instead of downloading a release, you can also build it from source. If you do so, use the stable branch, NOT the master branch. The example config can be found in cpp/configs/contribute_example.cfg

And if you're interested contribute to development via coding, or have a cool idea for a tool, check out either KataGo's GitHub or the this website's GitHub, and/or the Discord chat where various devs hang out. If you want to test a change that affects the distributed client and you need a test server to experiment with modified versions of KataGo, it is available at test.katagodistributed.org, contact lightvector or tychota in Discord for a testing account.

Stats for kata1

This run is named kata1 and began on 2020-11-28 20:23:43 UTC.

Data Generation

Across all time, 915 distinct users have uploaded 2,133,830,597 rows of training data, 41,183,220 training games, and 918,879 rating games.

In the last week, 58 distinct users have uploaded 16,858,807 rows of training data, 346,898 new training games, and 7,572 new rating games.

In the last 24h, 31 distinct users have uploaded 2,308,015 rows of training data, 47,491 new training games, and 1,072 new rating games.

Look up and view games for this run here.

Networks

A total of 607 networks have been uploaded for kata1.

Latest network: kata1-b18c384nbt-s6356423936-d3360593423

Strongest confidently-rated network: kata1-b18c384nbt-s5832081920-d3223508649

Approximate Elo Ratings Graph
Graph is based on about 918,879 rating games using mid to high hundreds of playouts. Ratings might still be mildly inflated due to only playing other KataGo nets, but otherwise are fresh and unbiased and involve a variety of nets to avoid rock-paper-scissors. Vertical bars indicate approximately a 95% confidence interval.

Click and drag to zoom. Double-click or click on a button to reset zoom.

Top Contributors

See here for a full list of contributors for kata1.

In the Last 24h

User Training Rows Training Games Rating Games
水底2022 1,097,674 rows generated 22,650 training games 533 rating games
Friday9i 367,200 rows generated 7,546 training games 256 rating games
SymplectGO 209,619 rows generated 4,338 training games 0 rating games
OmnipotentEntity 178,418 rows generated 3,655 training games 54 rating games
maxueba 173,198 rows generated 3,495 training games 69 rating games
RTX4090 50,819 rows generated 1,034 training games 36 rating games
toledo 32,446 rows generated 684 training games 8 rating games
Bubblesld 31,741 rows generated 607 training games 12 rating games
直接进入 27,545 rows generated 581 training games 16 rating games
jojo 26,570 rows generated 545 training games 32 rating games
Kabu 15,704 rows generated 322 training games 4 rating games
maverick 13,100 rows generated 275 training games 0 rating games
YangZ 11,617 rows generated 232 training games 8 rating games
egri-nagy 10,823 rows generated 226 training games 8 rating games
ntkylin 8,223 rows generated 181 training games 13 rating games

In the Last Week

User Training Rows Training Games Rating Games
水底2022 6,448,371 rows generated 132,619 training games 3,287 rating games
Friday9i 2,998,889 rows generated 61,687 training games 1,562 rating games
OmnipotentEntity 1,278,025 rows generated 26,363 training games 362 rating games
maomaochong 1,163,274 rows generated 24,164 training games 559 rating games
maxueba 1,144,164 rows generated 23,123 training games 517 rating games
SymplectGO 664,603 rows generated 13,783 training games 0 rating games
test111 608,357 rows generated 12,566 training games 0 rating games
maverick 550,296 rows generated 11,405 training games 152 rating games
ingwen 313,918 rows generated 6,415 training games 208 rating games
直接进入 207,495 rows generated 4,291 training games 91 rating games
thenorthcore 170,567 rows generated 3,470 training games 100 rating games
bash99 157,950 rows generated 3,240 training games 84 rating games
Bubblesld 126,246 rows generated 2,483 training games 44 rating games
jojo 95,827 rows generated 1,986 training games 48 rating games
peter 86,084 rows generated 1,789 training games 52 rating games

Overall

User Training Rows Training Games Rating Games
luckyangman 342,435,207 rows generated 6,418,062 training games 140,115 rating games
yaoge123 256,971,359 rows generated 5,036,186 training games 67,588 rating games
AiqiGo 148,551,176 rows generated 2,819,086 training games 53,342 rating games
jiusi010302 111,549,344 rows generated 2,157,135 training games 32,148 rating games
Friday9i 96,541,208 rows generated 1,943,492 training games 37,575 rating games
水底2022 79,389,667 rows generated 1,627,838 training games 35,907 rating games
VegetableKnife 79,204,855 rows generated 1,470,688 training games 23,367 rating games
maomaochong 72,879,622 rows generated 1,474,339 training games 31,116 rating games
katavip.net 70,355,820 rows generated 1,379,526 training games 18,872 rating games
jameswen429 65,701,378 rows generated 1,211,481 training games 30,013 rating games
badukmegapack 54,297,818 rows generated 1,065,934 training games 17,532 rating games
kcwu 45,131,243 rows generated 865,458 training games 90,968 rating games
Sponsorship 35,233,550 rows generated 668,781 training games 13,461 rating games
菜鸟老树 34,775,811 rows generated 704,300 training games 10,720 rating games
spark9 34,586,663 rows generated 663,843 training games 13,537 rating games