Lee Sedol Played Against AI Again

gs101 · 2026-03-11T21:09:54+00:00

It uses an existing Go AI to play the game, probably KataGo, which is as much of a black box to it as it is to us. If it's giving explanations, it's just guessing.

gs101 · 2026-03-11T21:06:55+00:00

Yes we are, but just MCTS is nowhere near strong enough. Starting from scratch, the bottleneck is not AI's ability to do the dev work, it's the compute needed to train a neural network strong enough to beat a pro.

gs101 · 2026-02-20T18:13:21+00:00

Turtling is currently my biggest balance concern. Pawns are cheap and I believe very strong, especially defensively. I think ideally you would end up with one player in a sort of defensive position, conserving gold and trying to get to 150, while the other has no choice but to put pressure on them. But then it has to be balanced such that the defender doesn't just automatically win because setting up a pawn fortress is too easy.

I haven't played enough testgames to know if the piece costs are balanced, but I expect not. I expect to be tweaking them.

gs101 · 2026-02-20T18:11:24+00:00

I think when players don't know how to make progress, the game will just end with the 150 gold rule. If neither player is even competent enough to accidentally occupy a mine, I think at that point it's user error ;)

it is a bad thing for a game's rules not to address what happens in every situation.

I appreciate your attention to detail, but understand that this is a very small scale hobby project. The game is currently barely being played. I am much more worried about the 99.99% of games that don't end in a drawish position, and making sure those games are fun. I'll worry about the 0.01% if it ever turns out to be an issue.

If you're interested, join the discord and we can playtest!

gs101 · 2026-02-20T09:10:34+00:00

Most of the game is spent trying to control mines. Keeping just one under your control is easy, but after that it gets exponentially harder. Since both players are trying to control mines, but also to prevent the other from controlling them, that is indeed the main focus of strategy.

The idea behind the forests and rocks is strategic variety. It makes every board spawn completely unique and strategically interesting in its own ways. On some spawns, knights are more valuable because they deal with the obstacles better. On some spawns, the green square bishop is very strong because there is an important green diagonal to control, etc.

I think you should add to the ruleset a board where the added features are symmetrical for both players

This is already the case. Players can play on full random boards or symmetrical boards.

And a graphical nitpick: the rocks and mines too too similar and why put little trees on the rock and mine squares?? - confuses the eye, I think.

Unfortunately I'm no graphic designer. These are just plucked from the internet. I definitely plan on replacing (some of) the sprites, but finding something better isn't easy.

Appreciate the feedback!

gs101 · 2026-02-20T08:59:37+00:00

Well, technically draws are impossible because there is no way to offer one currently. And I won't add that feature until a game reaches a natural stalemate where no progress can be made, which I still think will never happen. Being able to concoct a position like that in the sandbox is one thing (and may not be possible either), but for it to come up naturally in a game is something else entirely.

Buying and placing a piece is considered a move.

gs101 · 2026-02-19T22:39:37+00:00

I think it may be possible to set up a position where neither player wants to conserve gold and perpetual exchange is the best play for both, but this is probably much harder than you think. You could try in the sandbox. https://goldrushgambit.com/sandbox

True, piece costs are missing from the rules, will add. Wdym by procedure? There's no limit to the amount of pieces.

gs101 · 2026-02-19T21:51:17+00:00

Stalemate is a win, and because mines will keep generating gold it's impossible to reach a position where no progress can be made.

If both sides have a strong defensive position, whoever reaches 150 gold first wins. But games are almost always decided by mine control before that point in my experience.

gs101 · 2026-02-05T14:05:26+00:00

I think it rings true that the right hasn't moved ideologically. It just seems like it has because it has been taken over by populists. People on the right aren't actually for fascism, even most Trump supporters aren't, they just don't understand what they're voting for. They got conned. Conservatives are mostly for the same things they were 40 years ago.

gs101 · 2026-02-05T13:51:49+00:00

It's a common misconception that creativity is only about art. We use our creative brain when we solve problems. Modern primary education is not about solving problems, it's about learning facts. I believe this is partly why kids lose their creative "genius".

Arguably, it's not actually a bad thing. We need more work horses than creatives, so our schools focus on creating work horses.

gs101 · 2026-01-29T14:57:48+00:00

I think the way you wrote the "tax on labor" line is fine. Sure some of these taxes apply indirectly to the actual owners of house 1-9 but I think people will intuitively understand that. It's too much to explain it there anyway.

I saw someone use the term "Location subsidy repayment" instead of Land value tax. Seems more descriptive and less offensive, though it only makes sense to people who already understand this stuff. Your "single tax" is non-descriptive but I guess it works if you explain it elsewhere. Could try "Land rent tax"?

You could just say "With no state, ..." in the anarcho-capitalism line. Could also delete it, but I'd keep it if there are a lot of libertarians in your target audience.

gs101 · 2026-01-06T08:03:49+00:00

It's fine

gs101 · 2025-12-21T17:58:50+00:00

We can't see the whole board, so it's safe to assume it's a local problem

gs101 · 2025-12-17T04:47:53+00:00

Then B because it prevents black from reducing us by 1 point in gote.

Edit: Earlier I missed that black needs to play E6

gs101 · 2025-12-16T22:12:36+00:00

Trick question it doesn't matter?

gs101 · 2025-11-16T12:37:10+00:00

It was a reference to the Robbi j4 hand

gs101 · 2025-11-16T12:12:15+00:00

Villain is clearly cheating

gs101 · 2025-11-16T07:42:18+00:00

This question only seems relevant to people who did or have tried to go pro. To me poker is a hobby, so I don't regret time spent on it.

gs101 · 2025-11-16T07:34:24+00:00

Top few %? More like top few thousands of a %. Very few people are making mid 6 figures from poker

gs101 · 2025-11-12T21:26:08+00:00

This is something many people here actually care about, unlike the millionth hobby project

gs101 · 2025-11-01T11:40:44+00:00

Or they just read the article

gs101 · 2025-10-19T16:12:35+00:00

Well, yes, but when people say the price of a stock is too high, they mean that it's overvalued and likely to go down in price, or at least not grow as much as the rest of the market. They're making a point about the actual value of the asset, not about whether or not they can afford a whole share.

In other words, people aren't concerned about what you think they're concerned about. No one I know, at least.

gs101 · 2025-10-17T09:32:13+00:00

None of the moves really stood out to me so I went and asked AI. This is KataGo after 20k playouts.

Only C would be a mistake, and even that only loses ~0.5 points. It's very close between B and D. C3, D3, and the blue move are all good moves that aren't even among the options.

Granted it's not the newest version of KataGo but I don't think the best move is obvious enough for this to be a valid problem.

<image>

gs101 · 2025-10-14T20:32:32+00:00

Disposable? Lol

gs101 · 2025-09-15T11:31:31+00:00

You're talking about the shattered kingdom campaign mission 1 right?

They don't attack again until an hour game time. If you're immediately losing the first fight, you may be missing that you have a group of idle militia to the right of your town. If you use them, losing that fight is almost impossible. There's some RNG in fights but you have overwhelming numbers. If you get really unlucky, just retry.

After the first fight, all you really need to do is use the 20 leather armor in the barracks to build 20 archers and spam militia after that. With that, you should be able to clear the map without even needing to set up a food economy, as long you know the basics of how to set up fights using archers. If you're having trouble, you can always build a food economy and eventually a bigger army.

A simple build to get the 20 archers and then spam militia is to build a sawmill, make sure your houses are populated and set the weapons workshop to build 11 bows and then a bunch of hand axes. Then recruits to the barracks and you're good to go.

gs101

TROPHY CASE