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

  • 2023-03-04 - 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, 853 distinct users have uploaded 1,970,430,525 rows of training data, 37,816,222 training games, and 850,525 rating games.

In the last week, 65 distinct users have uploaded 9,239,364 rows of training data, 193,782 new training games, and 6,933 new rating games.

In the last 24h, 35 distinct users have uploaded 1,682,451 rows of training data, 35,265 new training games, and 1,194 new rating games.

Look up and view games for this run here.

Networks

A total of 580 networks have been uploaded for kata1.

Latest network: kata1-b40c256-s12860905472-d3197353276

Strongest confidently-rated network: kata1-b18c384nbt-s5503060480-d3193512631

Approximate Elo Ratings Graph
Graph is based on about 850,525 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 364,630 rows generated 7,688 training games 209 rating games
Friday9i 262,225 rows generated 5,467 training games 128 rating games
菜鸟老树 212,717 rows generated 4,426 training games 64 rating games
maxueba 139,067 rows generated 2,860 training games 56 rating games
lizzieyzytest 99,168 rows generated 2,089 training games 0 rating games
soya 84,033 rows generated 1,761 training games 32 rating games
iKataGo 77,570 rows generated 1,633 training games 0 rating games
yauwing 74,019 rows generated 1,587 training games 16 rating games
manrelygo 62,154 rows generated 1,303 training games 28 rating games
OmnipotentEntity 60,250 rows generated 1,255 training games 12 rating games
RTX4090 60,116 rows generated 1,251 training games 60 rating games
maomaochong 59,460 rows generated 1,279 training games 24 rating games
thenorthcore 23,547 rows generated 493 training games 27 rating games
bash99 15,970 rows generated 345 training games 4 rating games
peter 14,995 rows generated 294 training games 4 rating games

In the Last Week

User Training Rows Training Games Rating Games
水底2022 2,215,612 rows generated 46,830 training games 1,374 rating games
Friday9i 1,722,689 rows generated 35,823 training games 802 rating games
菜鸟老树 1,370,913 rows generated 28,604 training games 381 rating games
lizzieyzytest 604,141 rows generated 12,578 training games 0 rating games
maomaochong 570,533 rows generated 12,329 training games 221 rating games
manrelygo 361,987 rows generated 7,533 training games 184 rating games
maverick 277,891 rows generated 5,839 training games 70 rating games
yauwing 248,116 rows generated 5,218 training games 90 rating games
iKataGo 232,393 rows generated 4,864 training games 0 rating games
RTX4090 210,782 rows generated 4,396 training games 152 rating games
thenorthcore 160,868 rows generated 3,329 training games 88 rating games
maxueba 155,069 rows generated 3,201 training games 72 rating games
ingwen 133,258 rows generated 2,751 training games 68 rating games
soya 103,314 rows generated 2,195 training games 36 rating games
simon3000 103,085 rows generated 2,240 training games 33 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 256,697,014 rows generated 5,030,511 training games 67,500 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
VegetableKnife 79,204,855 rows generated 1,470,688 training games 23,367 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
Friday9i 64,708,891 rows generated 1,287,849 training games 29,680 rating games
maomaochong 58,549,874 rows generated 1,175,212 training games 24,622 rating games
badukmegapack 53,983,899 rows generated 1,059,492 training games 17,357 rating games
kcwu 45,131,243 rows generated 865,458 training games 90,968 rating games
水底2022 38,435,943 rows generated 781,681 training games 13,506 rating games
Sponsorship 35,233,550 rows generated 668,781 training games 13,461 rating games
spark9 34,586,663 rows generated 663,843 training games 13,537 rating games
菜鸟老树 29,768,257 rows generated 600,895 training games 9,287 rating games