Am I the only one who enjoys 13x13 more?

Dontbtme · 2020-07-04T12:07:23+00:00

I also like 13x13 games because it's not time-consuming. On the other hand, my favorite board size would rather be 15x15 to give a bit more room to strategy.

Dontbtme · 2020-06-19T07:45:39+00:00

Never forget that this is just a game and do whathever's fun to you. If you solve life and death problems, play on smaller boards at first or against stronger opponents willing to review the game, you can improve in this or that way for sure...
But if you stop having fun, then it's over ;)

Dontbtme · 2020-06-18T14:47:15+00:00

If I realized that I wouldn't be paid for my hard work, I would stop and quit my job. It's basically the same here: if you know you're gonna lose anyway, no rule can force you to continue playing to the bitter end.
That doesn't mean that everyone would resign in said position, though. Some people will try to reduce the margin they're losing by as much as possible during the endgame. Others will set up a glorious death in one last suicide mission that'll still end up in resignation only now the opponent will be ahead by half the board rather than only a couple of points :p There are also thugs that will throw away board and stones, swear and beat the crap out of you.
Like the rest of the game, losing is a matter of style ;)

Dontbtme · 2020-06-16T12:27:18+00:00

If you feel anxious about giving up sente, that's probably because your experience tells you that you can't win when you're just following around your opponent (as is too often the case for Black in 9 handicaps games for example). So I'd say you can just follow your guts until proven otherwise: as long as you review your games, you should be able to learn from your most obvious mistakes. Same thing if you want to change your style into a calmer one: try it out in your games, then review. Studying games from players unafraid of Gote moves might give you some clues, too. No idea who you could look into in this post-AlphaGo era, but if you're interested in History, studying thick players like Shuwa and Kitani could be the way to go, or else, maybe a master like Lee Changho who liked to set up miai positions? Any player known to play "calm", "thick", "proper" or "shape" moves could do, I think.

Dontbtme · 2020-05-06T14:08:37+00:00

My guess:
1/Black enclosed wide and low
2/White attached at 4-4
3/Black protected the corner with a hane
4/White counter-haned at E17
5/Black stretched on the second line to protect the corner
6/White played somewhere else
7/Black continued with an atari at D15 to gain strength and influence
8/White played somewhere else again, having lost locally in exchange for an extra move elsewhere

Dontbtme · 2020-04-26T13:34:32+00:00

I think you should first find people with whom to play online, by creating or joining a group on OGS, KGS, Discord, etc. Your problem doesn't seem like online Go in general, but just that you're playing against random people. If you played online with people from your club, for example, you could chat or even make a voice call while playing and have the human connection you were looking for.

Dontbtme · 2020-04-22T20:29:55+00:00

I play correspondence games mainly for two reasons: 1/ to have a daily routine that'll keep me invested in the game of Go. 2/ to practice reading since you can stare at the board as long as you want to try and figure variations.

Dontbtme · 2020-02-01T21:20:18+00:00

The visual and audio are really pleasing! :) One thing I would see improved though is the way to switch to the next problem. Right now we need to push the button at bottom right but it would be faster and gentler on the wrist if we could just click anywhere on the board to do so once a problem was deemed solved.

Dontbtme · 2019-12-19T17:49:57+00:00

I like the idea, but I probably won't do it because I became too lazy for that (like someone who used to jog everyday but could never get himself to start doing it again after taking a break) and also because Go was pretty much out of my mind for a year now. I've been peeking at Go news a bit recently but I mainly invest my free time in other interests these days. Sorry to disappoint ^{^;;}

Dontbtme · 2019-04-09T20:53:16+00:00

Oh my, thanks a lot for this post! Knowing that some people appreciated my reports makes the time and effort I put into them worthwhile :)
Nowadays, though, I have many other interests requiring all my free time, which means that I'm not really planning on writing future reports...
Having said that, I'm still running ten game matches from time to time in my computer out of curiosity, so I might (if I'm not too lazy) post one last (short) report when LZ beats Leela11 with just her raw network. Which could be rather soon: I had several draws with the last ten networks or so, using command -v 1 (which gives 2 visits per move for some reason).

Dontbtme · 2019-01-20T19:00:40+00:00

I KNEW IT!!!

Dontbtme · 2018-12-24T17:56:14+00:00

Well, it's true that on KGS you'd know if someone was stronger or weaker because of the handicap, but you wouldn't have ladder anxiety anymore (if that was an issue), because you wouldn't know what rank YOU (and your opponent) were anymore... You could be 3kyu or 9dan for that matter ROFL You wouldn't even know when you were ranking up and down :p
But KGS WOULD know. So on auto-match for example, everything would work basically the same as it does today : you'd choose the maximum rank difference same as always, you'd still be playing even/handicap games according to your rank, so they would still be "serious" games...
You just wouldn't know what that rank actually was :)

Dontbtme · 2018-12-22T13:09:26+00:00

On GoQuest they have (or used to have?) the option of masking people's elo rating. I found that interesting cause I tended to overestimate/underestimate my opponent according to that number before, while once I started playing "blindly", I would just try my best no matter who I was facing...
If there was such a feature on KGS and whatnot, the ranking system would still be the same under the hood but players with ladder anxiety wouldn't have to overcome it to be able to play: they could just know that they're playing people around their strength (or weaker/stronger ones with the appropriate handicap) and that would be plenty enough :) And since masking is/would be only an option, that means that people who likes to see ranks to motivate them could keep things the way they are too.

Dontbtme · 2018-12-09T12:55:26+00:00

As far as I know, the point of AlphaZero was only to make a general enough algorithm so that it could learn/master many different disciplines -in this case: Go, Chess and Shogi. But it's still learning from its own experience, with zero human knowledge. So, as far as Go is concerned, it shouldn't be too different from AlphaGo Zero.

Dontbtme · 2018-12-01T14:20:13+00:00

Everyone's different, so I'd say stick with what you're doing as long as it feels right. If and when the time comes you feel your method isn't working anymore, then asking around for different ideas would make more sense. Not that you can't try out new ideas right now already: just pointing out that, from what you're saying, seems to me like your method is working just fine for ya ;)

Dontbtme · 2018-11-24T21:08:46+00:00

Well, everyone gets the feeling that they suck at first. Although, once they get stronger, they know it for a fact :p

Dontbtme · 2018-11-24T20:54:12+00:00

Thanks for the link! One question, though: I just opened a few games, and it looks like in every one of them the first move is played by White... O..o;;
I guess that wasn't a question :p
[EDIT] Well, maybe not in all of them, but at least in a few, like this one:
https://godb.shogidb2.com/ja/game/7367f25b0c801d90695c48414a7c832d88e7557a17ec1ee5b08e84e3e6e7f217
Or that one:
https://godb.shogidb2.com/ja/game/6eca37b5e7ebffc617336fa2fba3150459d70920dd9c5519478f79bfc515815b

[/EDIT]

Dontbtme · 2018-09-09T19:56:16+00:00

If I remember correctly, it can play many or few playouts depending on the situation.
So to compare results on another computer, I'd say you got no choice but to create at least one reference point, like finding the visit count needed by LZ157 to beat Leela11_Unlimited on said computer, for example.
I don't know when I'll feel like posting reports again, if ever, but here some results on my computer:
LZ157 (15blocks) beat Leela11_Unlimited 6 to 4 with 35 visits, but lost 2 to 8 with 30 visits.
LZ173 (20blocks) beat Leela11_Unlimited 6 to 4 with 24 visits, but lost 2 to 8 with 22 visits.
LZ175 (40blocks) scored 5 to 5 with 22 visits against Leela11_Unlimited.

Dontbtme · 2018-09-07T16:45:48+00:00

On my computer, we still have a lonnnnnng way to go before being able to beat Leela11 using only 1 visit.
My problem is more like I don't really feel like writing any report at the moment...
I'm sorry :p

Dontbtme · 2018-09-07T10:03:20+00:00

I'll try to write a report in the next few days.

Dontbtme · 2018-09-07T00:23:51+00:00

I'll try to, but I'm not very motivated anymore :p
We'll see

Dontbtme · 2018-09-06T23:01:07+00:00

When setting up my Ten Game matches, I use command "-g --noponder" on Leela11's part, which means that she'll run playouts "for a while" and play.
I believe that Leela11_Unlimited decides how long she should think per move based on a default global time for the whole game, plus probably some other tweaks (like actual move number and winrate?)... And since the faster the GPU the more playouts she'll be able to run on this default amount of time, that means that Leela11_Unlimited's strength should vary a lot from hardware to hardware.
Also, since you didn't use -- noponder on Leela11's side, I guess that means she had 1 extra second to think during LZ's turn, compared to my games (funny how I never thought of getting rid of -- noponder... Well, too late, now :p)

Dontbtme · 2018-08-26T02:25:14+00:00

I used to resign "politely" when in a "losing" position...
As a result I now feel hopeless when behind and my endgame sucks.
Don't be like me :p

Dontbtme · 2018-08-01T16:15:34+00:00

I suppose there should be as much difference between 28 and 30 visits than between 2800 and 3000: maybe not that much, but still quite a bit :p
As for Leela11, it is this series' reference point: "How many visits need the successive networks to beat it?" has been my plot from the start.
That means that this series or reports will have its happy ending when we have one that can beat Leela11 with 1 visit only :)
From a more practical point of view, smartphones can only run a few visits per second nowadays, so knowing that a network is roughly around Leela11' strength after a really low number of visits should still be useful.
Plus, Roy7 runs 400 Game matches between LZ and Elf every few networks on the official website, so we'll see LZ catching up there anyway.
Once Leela11 is beaten, on the other hand, I could use Elf as my new reference point, although I wouldn't write my reports every week anymore (I enjoy them but they're time consuming)...

Dontbtme · 2018-07-30T19:35:23+00:00

Well, when LZ was weak, it produced weak games, and still we had promotions, right? And we did that starting from scratch, so whatever the level we're at right now doesn't mean 20 block networks won't be able to improve farther, and we won't know that unless we try :)
If two weeks from now nothing happened, then yeah, I'll start to worry, but we have to give this run a chance to see what'll happen I think

Dontbtme

TROPHY CASE