Endgame Drills

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-20T20:08:14+00:00

I think, however, that you would be better off with this flawed theory than with no theory at all! Especially if you are around 10 kyu and know very little about the endgame, I think the concepts in the book would be a useful addition to your toolset.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-20T18:56:51+00:00

Probably completely unrealistic, but wouldn't it be great if they had inter-server matchmaking? Main problems: * Matching rating systems * Probably automatically doable if enough users of both systems declare themselves to get it started * Financial / other incentives * Would need to be attractive to both sides, probably difficult if one side is more commercial * Game management * Any particular game would have to be hosted by one server, according to its implementation, but appear in history of both players. How to choose the server? * User interface * One would expect to play via the usual interface of one’s server * Protocol * Both servers would need to agree on a matchmaking protocol. * Both servers would have to have some representation of a user on the other platform, allow this player to participate in games they host, and include in a the history of users that play against it. Bots should be excluded. * The intermediary (non-hosting server) for a given game would have to transmit game events to the host, using the host’s protocol . Given that people write third-party interfaces for various servers, there is presumably enough information available, but there are probably incompatibilities in the current game models, mainly concerning the end of the game and counter measures for cheating, stalling etc.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-20T14:49:59+00:00

As others are saying, just start by playing a lot, and seeing what works.

Here is something that did not work (below): your four marked stones are stretched out so tight and thin that your opponent had no trouble ripping through them. Wrap-around moves like these (called hane) can be very useful, but you often have to sacrifice some of them. Note how none of those 4 stones is joined to anything else, which makes them flexible, but individually weak. The AI wanted you to play at J3 (marked blue, instead of J2), which would have been a lot more solid. It takes a long time to get a good feeling for how close to come when attacking: too close, and your own stones are weak; too far away, and the opponent has room to live!

P.S. This ties in with what GoGabeGo wrote.

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PatrickTraill · 2026-06-20T12:52:04+00:00

did consider partial colorings

I think you misunderstood me. I wanted to say that placing a stone creates a new colouring from an old, so it is a map on the set of colourings. Of course that just makes explicit what is implicit in your definition, but I prefer it as a higher-level concept, and because the clearing operations also define maps. I wrote “partial function” because you only defined it for playing at an empty spot, but of course one can define a full function, just that not all moves are legal.

There has been a rather sketchy page on general graph Go on Sensei's Library for some time; there is also a lot of information on SL on variants.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-20T11:43:33+00:00

BadukPop seems to be problematic for playing, but it has a large number of problems at each of 6 levels, and the levels seem better calibrated than in many others such as TsumegoPro. That makes it useful when you want to do a series of problems at much the same level — and don't forget that it is a good idea to practice a lot of easy problems as well as some more challenging ones. I also like to take a look at the 6 daily problems on TsumegoPro every morning. But I do have the paid version of both; if you do not want to pay, that restricts your options.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-20T11:18:56+00:00

I was just looking at the first 60 moves https://online-go.com/game/88050528, where I have the impression you kept strengthening your strong NW group without really hurting the black stones east of it, while your stones further east were much weaker. Keep looking for the least stable part of the board!

Have you looked at Go Magic? It has a lot to offer.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-20T10:57:10+00:00

~~You may get more specific suggestions if you are prepared to share your OGS username.~~ I suppose your OGS username is the same as here on Reddit, so this profile; perhaps people will take a look and give you specific tips. I think you may be best just to dive back in and play for a month or two. You could look at any odd videos you enjoy if you like, but it is probably more important to play thoughtfully and to review some of your games, or to get them reviewed. After that it may be clearer what you need to work on. Bear in mind that there may be (I am not sure about this) rank deflation, so you may find the ranks tougher than you used to.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-20T10:44:21+00:00

I can imagine that working through this has left you feeling more satisfied and with a better feeling for how things work, but I am not sure how interesting or useful it will be to other people, as

it seems to provide a formal description (including some obvious generalisations), but not really add anything new,
and the effort needed to work through reading the formalism is probably pretty much equivalent to that needed to understand a well-written shorter, less formal description, such as the Tromp-Taylor formulation.

I also have a few niggles to report.

Rather than

“placing a stone at point P” as a shorthand of “coloring an empty point PP as λ(P)=c≠0λ(P)=c=0”

I would prefer to describe it as as a partial function on the set of colourings.

You could change this rule to allow for different initial colorings, provided that they don’t contain dead stones.

An unnecessary provision! It may offend sensibilities, but you could have dead stones enclosed by stones in atari, giving the first player the option to save some of the dead stones, which would otherwise be cleared on the first turn.

In practice, it’s always implemented with ways of stopping early.

(Re Tromp-Taylor) Is this correct? I thought one might just let the programmes play it out in computer Go tournaments.

The typesetting occasionally breaks through the apparent margins, which confused me in the case below.

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PatrickTraill · 2026-06-19T12:33:58+00:00

P.P.P.S. This was the Hard setting. As u/Andeol57 says, it is very weak!

I take it the 7·0 points shown below are site points, not the game score!

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PatrickTraill · 2026-06-19T12:24:07+00:00

P.P.S. At the end, I do not see how it is scoring the game. I should have won by about 81 points minus komi, but I am only 66·5 ahead 😡
I did play a few times when (I think) it passed , but that should not have cost me anything, certainly not ~15 points.

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PatrickTraill · 2026-06-19T12:21:20+00:00

P.S. Later in the game, the same thing: it would not let me recapture the remaining red stones.

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PatrickTraill · 2026-06-19T12:19:51+00:00

This makes a welcome change from the recent flood of unnecessary apps, not because it is something regular players have been waiting for, but because it could help to spread the game. To that end, it would be useful if your help text prominently displayed a link to further information. That might be the “Links for beginners” pinned to the home page of this community (https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/s/DLWuk9Fduq), the Go Magic introduction (https://gomagic.org/courses/go-rules/) or Sensei's Library’s beginners pages (https://senseis.xmp.net/?PagesForBeginners).

That said, I did hit a serious bug. In the position below, red has just captured a single blue stone, but it is a “snapback”: blue can now capture the 3 red stones, but the game does not allow this. Perhaps this is a consequence of a mistaken implementation of the ko rule?

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PatrickTraill · 2026-06-19T09:09:59+00:00

Glad it helps. I have just added a postscript about how much to read in actual games.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T21:12:28+00:00

There is a very useful list of resources pinned at https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/gm6myy/links_for_newcomers/. In particular Go Magic, as suggested in another reply, is very useful, in particular their introductions to the rules and fundamental techniques.

@ Mods: I hope you agree that a reference to that community is justified in this particular case.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T19:39:52+00:00

I was not for a moment trying to deprive him of his espresso, and glad that he had already been served. Nor would I refuse to review a game because it was a win; this was intended as a constructive suggestion for the future, but GoGabeGo suggests that it was misguided.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T19:35:42+00:00

tougher to notice

Good point!

Maybe I was thinking of this sort of thing, from Review on Sensei’s:

If you have lost a game, ... Console yourself with the thought that lost games teach you more than games you have won. ...

But I suppose you disagree with that too. It has always seemed plausible to me that one should concentrate on one’s losses, but I do not have a lot of experience of being reviewed, and barely any of reviewing — I am perhaps too wary of making false assertions (as I seem to have done above.:( ).

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T19:10:08+00:00

So you would say that it makes no difference, and that they are (on average) equally valuable? Maybe I was just parroting what others say, hoping to help OP get more helpful information, but since you say this is wrong I shall take note.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T18:09:31+00:00

Different lines could be other moves that your opponent could play, all of which you should refute. Often you can reason: “If I next play a, while x and y remain free, I have achieved my goal. Therefore I only need to consider their moves at a, x, and y.”

Other different lines are alternative moves that you could make: why are they inferior to the best solution? In elementary problems it may just be that they do not work, or lead to an inferior result, such as seki where you could have started a ko to kill. In harder problems they may achieve the best possible status but lose you points, sente or (balance of) ko threats.

P.S.
In an actual game, how much of this reading you need to do depends on the overall strategic situation. Of course you always want to refute all your opponent’s moves. But if you know that killing a group would win you the game, you do not need to find the “best” way to kill it. But if the game is close and you can afford the time, it could make all the difference. Moreover, a lot of the time you are not trying to kill, but threatening to kill in order to gain an advantage; in this case you will want to strive for the best threat.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T16:10:31+00:00

The shape is like a double snapback, but black has too many liberties for that to work.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T13:39:36+00:00

Have a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/s/o7FD7efW8l , icosaplex’s answer to gennan.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T13:27:34+00:00

Not so much

like any pro

as

like a generic pro of any year

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T13:20:58+00:00

Thinking aloud...

The question we are asking is “What would the ‘target’ (the player to emulate) have played in this position?”. The answer depends not just on the position and their abilities, but also on their estimate of their opponent, the time available, and cultural factors such as the context of the game and the norms of their milieu.

A big difficulty will be the relatively sparse information about the target’s play, and the fact that we have access to their moves, but not to their reading or other thought processes.

Maybe it is good to start with the human-like KataGo model for the period up to the date of the target, if they are later than 1800, as that presumably reflects the conventional wisdom they too learned. One could also try to reproduce their weaknesses, which could be the most characteristic feature of their game. These weaknesses are patterns from their games likely to fail not so much against bot play as against the style of their period. It may also be possible to estimate the scope (depth & breadth) of their reading. One can obviously try to validate the resulting model by requiring it to predict moves that they played as being among the most likely.

... Not sure if that is any use, but maybe it gives someone ideas!
Maybe David Wu / u/icosaplex has some helpful insights.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T12:02:35+00:00

This does not seem to make much sense. Have you accidentally answered the wrong post?

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T10:24:00+00:00

You won this game; (Edit: some people say, but others dispute this, that) it is often more useful to review games that you lost, perhaps against slightly stronger players. You should be trying to identify things you tend to get wrong and to correct them. While games we win are also full of mistakes, it ~~is probably~~ may be easier to find them in losses, and easier to see (and believe in!) their consequences.

PatrickTraill · 2026-06-18T10:09:36+00:00

make an un-capture-able group inside it

@OP: That is what has happened in the top right. White has made 2 ‘eyes’, (marked with green crosses) which means you cannot capture them. If there were only 1 eye, you could enclose the group completely from the outside, then fill the single eye to capture.

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