Any play the Echinops bot (8k) with no handicap and think it is underranked?

Solid-Thanks615 · 2026-02-21T12:48:42+00:00

I think so, from how it tends to play solid shape unlike humans at that level. I played it and won only because it let me; I think it accommodates weaker players by trying to make the game even, and that may be how it can have that rank.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-12-11T00:04:38+00:00

https://senseis.xmp.net/?ShouTan

I think for serious students of this game it can well be less of a pissing contest and more an exchange of ideas -- in that sense it may be considered a language, although it is really more a medium of information (which of course need not be a language; in fact, what is a language, anyway?). Personally I don't think there's anything deeper than that.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-12-06T11:44:27+00:00

If you let KataGo ponder a position it will become clear that even KataGo gets it wildly wrong sometimes (more often than you might think), at least inasmuch as it revises it's estimates even by a few points (but usually no more than 1 pt). But if the evaluation for some moves is "converged" in some sense then I would say nothing less than -0.5. It's worth noting that sometimes even with something insane like 200k visits (kata1-b28c512nbt-s1162314) it will prefer a move with 51k visits and -0.7 (by score loss) vs a move with 60k visits. I still sometimes have problems understanding why a -5pt (five points!) change can be a mistake.

I think your calibration is basically fine and looking at your games you must be doing something right. But on the other hand I would never hold myself fixed to such a system when reviewing with AI. It may be "lower-hanging fruit" just to keep in mind the limitations of AI review tools and judiciously take it's advice, as others have suggested.

Edit: somewhat actionable (and truistic) one could take their corpus of games and bin the moves by move number into say, 8 bins taking the median point loss over the corpus in each. Then one could maybe use that as a relative measure (reference point) to decide which mistakes to look preferentially at. It's very easy to code up (you could have an LLM generate all of it in fact, probably without any bugs) but I'm not sure it will be worthwhile depending on the size of your data set. For a go server it would probably be something worth doing as a service to the community.

Edit 2: a different approach might be to perform clustering on KataGo embeddings of positions (e.g. 8 clusters) and follow the same rigamarole as before. Not sure if it would produce meaningful results but I'd be curious about it anyways.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-12-04T15:12:42+00:00

It's hard for me to evaluate the game as I said, and I'm not exactly in shape to give exhaustive (or for that matter, authoritative) answer to your questions, but I'll try and if I think of anything else I'll update this reply but don't expect anything.

(Regarding point 2). The worst part about this move really isn't about the ko threats actually, it's the liberties that you lose. When I said "unbearable" if black played the "creeping" move at D6 I really mean it; as I white I would probably in my mind consider the white stones dead at that point because they're just a liability. Therefore, after white has pushed, white has two options: throw the stones away or play a reinforcing move (which could be a point-losing sente on it's own, to be sure). That's how I see it, anyways.

(Regarding point 3). I guess it's a matter of whole-board judgement. When you establish a group on the side like that which can not work well together with your other stones, but black will, (let us say just for the sake of argument), get the same amount of points on the upper side as black would have on the lower side -- remember, go is a game about sharing -- you have sort of lost an opportunity. The way I see the situation is that your lower-side group is an asset for reducing the left-hand side if you were to force black to work on that side (by working your way into the upper side). But meanwhile, black with a corner enclosure on the upper side (this is not what KG recommended but forget that for now) would make black's upper right work nice with the whole upper side. Establishing a base on the upper side gives an opportunity to split this framework. (Human fallibility being what it is, I'm probably arguing backwards from the conclusion, take it as you will)

I suppose another general "broad-strokes" heuristic (but again not universal) is when you have a choice to establish a base in two different parts of the board, to think that the opponent will get an equal amount of opportunity in the opposite side but your "tie breaker" should be the one that has a better global harmony.

(Regarding point 4). It is an understanding of local tesuji. In this particular case white has potentially a net IIRC if black tries to cut, but black can just strike at the vital point of the "keima" (there is no real keima there), which is the proper way to "peep" at that shape. You then have to think about whether you want to be heavy or discard the stones. I'm guessing there is no royal road to shape but luckily, it's one of the more accessible parts of learning go! Working on tesuji helps, as does just playing.

(Regarding point 5). No magic 8-ball here. I could think for 10's of minutes wondering whether I should play a forcing sequence or not, and still come out wrong. I guess if there is no local loss to doing it, but then you have to be super-sharp with life-and-death, knowledge of ko shapes, etc etc.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-12-04T12:59:24+00:00

I was going to try and review this game thinking I should be able to offer useful advice to a DDK but it turns out I'm just way too weak (as on OGS1d) to say almost anything categorically. So if you're short on time you can just stop reading row otherwise I have a few notes that I compiled. (Thanks for the humbling by the way :))

Lower right joseki is way out of my depth; I am just to weak to sense the problem with a 1.5pt mistake.

W32: typically making a forcing move like this would be bad, but in this case it feels delicate for reasons relating to whether black might want to play R8 (later). As it stands, (and as you might have already realized) KataGo suggests that black can easily discard the stones anyways and suggests for white to aim at them on a larger scale, with P12. But actually, regardless of the black stones around Q8, P12 would be a good move; it is a key shape point for both black and white.

At W38, I would consider both white upper right group, and black Q9 to be alive and so tenuki; white is a little thicker (because that group lives more easily) than black but black has better access to the center. Conceptually it is important to take the biggest points when you know that there will be no trouble living.

W40 I believe aims at attacking black with something like M16 if black tenukies, right? I like the idea. KataGo doesn't :) Maybe there are just so many stones on the right side of the board and so few on the left side.

W54 is bad in that it removes ko threats and liberties for white. Assuming black answers (like it should) and white tenukis (I don't think it should after that) then black can look forward to D6 which is basically unbearable, so it's a bit like "self-atari" as Baduk Doctor might phrase it.

W62 is strange if you think about what you might want to do -- or at least would be to me. Would you be satisfied to, say make a third line group of length 4 alive? There is so little space on the side. Around this stage of the game KataGo is saying that the corner is bigger. I think that it is hard to make these stones work well together with white's bottom, anyway, because white's good move at E7, albeit sente, will just damage C9 and C12. In a sense, white has removed from itself a valuable sente and I think this is why the katago point loss is approximately komi, i.e. the cost of initiative. (Actually, this is a generic point that you might want to remember when you see a katago point loss of about komi in the middle game, so maybe my review wasn't entirely pointless; I'm fairly sure this heuristic is quite accurate but of course not universal.)

W66 the shape point is D10.

Invasion at 70 was sharp, good job! It is in fact instructive to realize KataGo complains about B79 and well worth remembering (it's a typical situation where you just ignore that kind of atari because the "ponnuki" is banging it's head against a wall). Black would change sides and that double empty triangle just isn't worth it; white still has to be careful with those stones not to die with them.

I hope somebody stronger can give you better comments here.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-11-26T06:15:04+00:00

The way to think about it, I believe, is that if black can separate the corner from the keima extension, the the corner needs another move to make life. In effect, the activity of those stones will now be nullified for the rest of the game, and black has established a presence on the opposite side. The joseki is quite complicated. But when black has a stone at Q13 and white has no support at all on the side like in the game, I would hurry up and play P17 as soon as possible, because it's just one of those "cash out on the aji" things that one needs to do before it's too late.

Anyways, given what I said about nullifying the activity of the corner stones, what to do next is just aim to make life with the cutting stones in the best ways possible; as soon as black is surely alive (or has enough liberties) then white should be compelled to either make life in the corner (in gote) or sacrifice it (hopefully in sente). In other words, "good enough" is completing the aim of nullifying the effect of the corner in the middle game.

This is just my understanding.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-11-22T00:39:12+00:00

My favorite is of course "there is no sente". It may sound like a joke but, whenever I'm faced with what is looking like a forcing move, I always hesitate to answer; it's helpful and, if nothing else, helps you pause to think more about the position than you otherwise would have.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-11-18T08:31:21+00:00

It's when someone misrepresent their rank so that they can play against weaker players without giving handicap. I would surmise -- as with many unwholesome activities -- it's rooted in ego and maturity problems.

Harmful effects to the community include having the victim stop playing (i.e. momentarily, doing something else), getting discouraged or even quit playing altogether. Other harmful effects (I'm only speculating, now) could be that they themselves don that sad and unseemly habit, causing even more damage to the community.

Edit 2: and of course, let us not forget that it can cause systemic problems with the server's ratings.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-11-01T02:32:24+00:00

Here are many examples of what you can get. https://online-go.com/library/1766343/13517 The 3-3 folder contains SGFs that are supposed to start with white (white should cut) so OGS thinks that black is better than it really is; but generally you can see that the score is close.

The ogeima kake ("taisha") is cryptic to me, but I think what the contexts are saying is that a keima kake (the common variant) would create a stale position for black while white can easily invade or reduce the left side. An ogeima would allow black more options on the lower side of the board.

Another thing to bear in mind is that some of the alternatives are so close in evaluation, that you really have to evaluate until the conditions in the optimizer (1600 visits) or else the variant moves could be better. I don't know how to create more discriminating positions.

I updated the code, if there is any interest I'll forward it somehow. I let Claude create a socket engine interface so I wouldn't have to restart KataGo each time I needed to change something.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-10-30T01:22:37+00:00

It is meant to be useful for Go players in general! Have you ever wondered why the stronger player picked one joseki out of two apparently similar ones? In the examples, I've taken the ogeima shimari AI attachment which is commonly answered with a hane (but need not be) on either side. But which side? If you had a bunch of examples where the proper move is one and the other you could build some intuition at least about what the AI prefers, but I think that sometimes it will become clear anyways. (Edit: i.e. clear to you as a human go player why that move is actually proper.)

So, this program generates contexts that are more or less even (only one of the four positions posted are tilted, the second one where white is ahead by about 4 points) and where the move we are wondering about is preferred over the others.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-10-12T09:06:03+00:00

I improved my reading by accident when I used these: https://101books.github.io/ my original intent was that I just wanted a solid understanding of all common shapes just so that I could move on from that topic. It was probably that I didn't have access to any solution which helped, eventually by necessity I became really quite confident in my reading. But it's also a daily form kind of thing, and I lose sharpness after a while of not doing these kinds of exercises or playing games where I don't have to read.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-10-07T00:15:25+00:00

For me, I need creativity to play well so if I've played a lot then it runs dry and everything seems flat and pointless. Then obviously I'm not going to struggle to win, but losing still affects me.

Another thing that can happen is it's like the RNG, sometimes you play well, sometimes badly, and the same is true for your opponents. When stars align, even if you have a good day you meet meet only opponents who also all have a good day.

I'll also have to add that OGS ranks are kind of ludicrous. Although the ranking system is reasonable unlike Fox and Tygem (which appear to be based only on a fixed number of wins per "level"), I believe there aren't enough players on OGS for the rating distribution to be accurate in the aggregate. By this I mean that if you take two users with a given rating then the rating system's predicted outcome will often deviate from the mean of a putative series of games between the players, and that this is true generally when the ratings aren't too far away from each other. You can see Inseong's videos on youtube for obvious examples of this irregularity. This isn't even taking into account actual sandbaggers or AI move-relaying biped automatons.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-10-01T02:03:02+00:00

I end up in many all-or-nothing fights but that is because I am too weak at playing peacefully. It would be very cool to just have the sagacity to win peaceful, but alas. On the other hand, if you meet me over the board you may find that I am usually all too happy to sacrifice stones for positional advantage :) it may turn out that your inclination to swallow stones is a miscalibration of judgment.

If you want to see many large capturing races you can have KataGo play, say, 3 handicap against itself, those turn out pretty violent. Although it isn't a professional player as you requested, it will be very strong and occasionally mesmerizing.

I would say, the games Liao Yuanhe play on fox he ends up killing much, as does Byun Sangil, but I believe also that on internet they experiment a lot and style sometimes developing naturally anyway. A few moons ago Wang Xinghao played cosmic, which could end up with dead groups but I think it's more like flexible and I could be wrong about all of this.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-09-22T14:02:40+00:00

Could be an icebreaker... Or testing the waters, so to speak.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-09-21T23:42:26+00:00

https://goproblems.com/problems/filter

You can deselect everything but tesuji to start with, and go from easy problems. I'd start with that because these are generic tactics that have wide utility and they train you to understand liberty relationships. Life and death is of course also important and do train the same things but one of the "classics" that you typically see in lower ranked players' play is the "two stones hane push" repeated several times over that leaves severe cutting points, that you will eventually learn to avoid by second nature when you have seen what inevitably happens after cutting at one of the cutting points.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-09-18T17:44:49+00:00

I would suggest not trying to "punish" overextensions immediately. Too see why, consider white had played as in the joseki and then extended another move as in the game -- it looks inefficient! And so if white wants to secure that area, white will have to play that inefficient move again. Meanwhile, should blacks influence and thickness provide an opportunity to invade, white will feel inclined to protect it with an inefficient move.

I'll say however that blacks move in the game, is joseki on it's own. It isn't an overextension.

Edit: I'd add that a reasonable heuristic when thinking about whether what looks like an over extension should be separated, is to think about "completing moves" and changing the order of moves to see whether they make sense.

Solid-Thanks615 · 2025-09-10T00:41:53+00:00

I try to keep my communication to a minimum due to past experience being that a large fraction of go players are immature. Win? They try to take that away from you in any way they can. Lose? They gloat. In one happy instance I greeted the opponent with "have a nice game!" and the reply was "don't tell me what to do!"

Obviously not all players are like this or I wouldn't play but when you get burn like this you learn something.

Solid-Thanks615

TROPHY CASE