25 Recursive and Non-Recursive Algorithms for the Group Size Counting Problem in Computer Go

Computer Go has been recognized as an unconquered challenge to the Artificial Intelligence and Computational Intelligence societies since 1997 when Garry Kasparov, the human Chess champion, was defeated by the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. Computer Go is considered more than just an unsolved problem; it also serves as an excellent test bed for novel applications to practical problems because of its clear-cut objective and the vast amount of sub-problems that allow for tests of practicality. We propose novel recursive and non-recursive approaches to count the size of groups of connected stones on a Go board. The simple and elegant recursive approach always answers the correct group size. Inspired by the former's tree traversal mechanism, the non-recursive approach guarantees to return the correct answers in an autonomous and scalable manner.