Acknowledgments

We’d like to acknowledge the whole team at Manning for making this book possible. In particular, we’d like to thank both of our tireless editors: Marina Michaels, for getting us the first 80% of the way there; and Jenny Stout, for getting us through the second 80%. Thanks also to our technical editor, Charles Feduke, and our technical proofreader, Tanya Wilke, for combing through all of our code.

We’d also like thank all the reviewers who provided valuable feedback: Aleksandr Erofeev, Alessandro Puzielli, Alex Orlandi, Burk Hufnagel, Craig S. Connell, Daniel Berecz, Denis Kreis, Domingo Salazar, Helmut Hauschild, James A. Hood, Jasba Simpson, Jean Lazarou, Martin Møller Skarbiniks Pedersen, Mathias Polligkeit, Nat Luengnaruemitchai, Pierluigi Riti, Sam De Coster, Sean Lindsay, Tyler Kowallis, and Ursin Stauss.

Thanks also go to everyone who experimented with or contributed to our BetaGo project, especially Elliot Gerchak and Christopher Malon.

Finally, thanks to everyone who ever tried to teach a computer to play Go and shared their research.

I would like to thank Carly, for her patience and support; and Dad and Gillian, for teaching me how to write.

—Kevin Ferguson

Special thanks to Kevin for bringing this home, Andreas for many fruitful discussions, and Anne for her constant support.

—Max Pumperla