Jesse
Go / vs KataGo by solidSF / arena record
solidSF / Jesse / Go

Jesse vs KataGo.Every game, under every rule set.

The record

Jesse plays KataGo 1.18.2 around the clock in the solidSF arena. Here is every game, scored under the arena's Tromp-Taylor rules and again under Chinese, AGA, New Zealand, Japanese, Korean and stone scoring.

01Record

The record, every rule set.

Jesse's wins against KataGo by board size, under each scoring system.

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02Scoring

How these games are scored.

The arena plays strict Tromp-Taylor rules. When both players pass, the board is counted exactly as it stands: every stone still on it counts for its owner.

The arena's rules

Tromp-Taylor

Area scoring with no dead-stone removal. Stones plus the empty points only you reach, plus komi. Jesse's wins here are wins under these rules.

Rescored

Chinese

Area scoring after dead stones come off. KataGo decides which stones are dead from the final position, then the board is counted.

Rescored

Japanese

Territory plus captures, after dead stones come off, with the same dead-stone call as Chinese.

In the wins

Under the arena's count every stone left on the board counts, and Jesse's wins stand under that count. With dead stones removed, KataGo wins almost all of those positions. The breakdown loads with the data.

Seven rule sets, four counts

Rule setFamilyDead stonesWhat countsUsual komiSuicideOn these games
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Rescoring: KataGo final-position analysis. Details load with the data.

03Splits

Every split.

Pick any combination: opponent, komi, board, the colour Jesse played, KataGo's visits and the Jesse engine. Every rule set updates together, with Elo against the opponent and a 95% interval.

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Rule setWins / gamesElo difference95% interval
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Matrix: rule set × board × colour

Each cell: Jesse's wins / games, then Elo against the opponent. Komi, visits and engine from the filters above apply; board and colour are the axes.

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Komi other than 7.5 is a what-if on the final positions: every game was played at 7.5, and KataGo played to win at 7.5. A cell with no wins has no finite estimate; it shows the one-sided 95% bound (rule of three) instead of a point. A cell with no losses shows an "above" bound the same way. Draws, possible at whole-number komi, count as half a win.

04Elo

Elo against KataGo.

Rating difference to KataGo for each Jesse engine and KataGo setting, by scoring system. Logistic (Bradley–Terry) fit with a 95% interval. Where Jesse has no wins, only an upper bound exists, and we show that bound rather than a point.

All boards

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Jesse engineOpponentWins / gamesElo difference95% interval
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Negative means below the opponent (KataGo unless the row names another). A cell with zero wins has no finite estimate: the "below" value is a one-sided 95% bound from the rule of three (fewer than 3/n wins expected); a cell with zero losses gets an "above" bound the same way. The arena also keeps its own running rating for Jesse (1113.2); that number is measured against a fixed 1,950 the arena assigns KataGo, so it is not a measured rating and is not used here.

05Wins

Every Tromp-Taylor win.

Each win the arena recorded, with how the same game scores under the other rule sets. Pick any row to replay it.

Arena receipts (PNG)
GameDate (UTC)BoardJesseTromp-TaylorChinese · AGA · NZJapanese · KoreanStonesMovesNotes
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06All games

Full data.

Every scored game. Sort any column, filter, download.

JSON
Game Date (UTC) Board Jesse Opponent Moves Tromp-Taylor Chinese · AGA · NZ Japanese · Korean Stones Notes
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07Board

Play Jesse. Replay any game.

You (Black) · captures 0 Black to move Jesse (White) · captures 0
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Interactive play vs Jesse

Jesse's in-browser policy: captures, atari escapes, opening corners, liberties. It is a small local version, not the arena engine.

Latest arena games

GameBoardJesseArena result
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08About

Jesse Go, zero weights.

Jesse plays Go without a neural network: search, D4-symmetric pattern beliefs and a SQLite memory of past games. KataGo is an 18-block residual network. The two are very different machines.

KataGo (arena opponent)Jesse Go
Modelb18c384 residual network (kata1-b18c384nbt-s9996604416)0 neural weights
Search in the arena25 to 250 visits per move, set per session (see Elo)PUCT lookahead over D4 pattern beliefs
Hardware in the arenaKataGo 1.18.2, Mac Studio GPU (Metal)Mac Studio CPU, DGX Spark (Grace ARM64)
Knowledge storeFixed network file~40 GB SQLite memory, written live
Rules and komiTromp-Taylor, komi 7.5

Margin against KataGo, by search depth (Tromp-Taylor)

1-ply static greedy
−368.5
Jesse MCTS-50
−237.5
Lookahead-100 (adaptive)
−198.5
Dynamic Hybrid-200
−165.5
Game #196
+304.5 TT win

Game #196 (716 moves, against the older AlphaGo-1 arena label, same KataGo) is the one win that also scores for Jesse with dead stones removed. 8 of its moves cannot be replayed legally from the record, so Chinese and Japanese score its reconstructed final position, and we list it with that note.

Concepts found in KataGo games

Following the PNAS 2025 concept-discovery method, an SVD of 151,872 KataGo trajectory positions isolated five directions outside common human Go vocabulary. JSON

Novelty 0.69961. Topological harmony plan-5

Center-board framework that values living moyo and captures over early corner safety.

+moyo_expansion .55 · +capture_yield .41 · −corner_anchor .57
Game #127552, ply 110 (K8)
Novelty 0.36742. Topological harmony plan-4

Diagonal pivot across quadrants using edge pressure to break a center framework.

+edge_tier .42 · +quadrant_pivot .28 · −capture_yield .51
Game #127549, ply 35 (O5)
Novelty 0.29863. Vital-point eye puncture

Sacrifice inside the opponent's half-eye space to take away eye potential.

+eye_puncture .48 · +atari_pressure .37 · −edge_tier .38
Game #127553, ply 171 (P19)
Novelty 0.29344. Flank inversion (tenuki)

Leave a local fight once returns shrink and take sente elsewhere.

+quadrant_pivot .60 · +tenuki_dist .60 · −local_response .44
Game #127553, ply 149 (S5)
Novelty 0.19495. Liberty preservation

Early reinforcement that keeps escape liberties and avoids ladders.

+net_liberties .49 · +atari_pressure .35 · −cutting_point .27
Game #127544, ply 72 (G4)
PipelinesWhat runs behind the arena

KataGo analysis distilled into Jesse's memory; Jesse-vs-Jesse self-play on the Studio and DGX1; a Dirichlet belief update that credits game outcomes back to 1,461 pattern cells.

Pattern beliefs: 1,461