Life In 19x19

whether humans are going back to the pincer because the "best" move is only best if you play like an AI

This argument has always struck me as weird, if not fallacious. Every player, recreational or professional, will partly play moves they "understand", partly go for some adventure and in between ...

Different things seem to put off different people. I shy away from anything that reeks of chatGPT but I'm sensitive to language (while I'm a numbers guy!).

Nowadays I'm more into guitar playing. There's a lot of bad marketing in that area (too), fake shortcuts to mastery abounding. "You only need ...

I tried playing and drawing my kifu once and it was a disaster.
Try entering the moves into an SGF editor from memory at the end of the day. On a first go, you might only get the first 20 or 30 moves. But with practice, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to remember 100 moves, even several ...

The most fundamental realization I ever had is that Go is not about surrounding more empty points but about ending up with more alive stones.

Perhaps this thought can do similar wonders for you. Otherwise, as xela says, give us some positions to work with.

Indeed, many people have seen their comments disappear randomly.

You seem to have followed my advice of logging your progress as a KPI. And it seems to be going down. Compared to when you started out this exercise, let me ask a few questions:

- Has your rank increased?
- Regardless, do you feel your level of understanding has increased?
- Has your motivation ...

I think I know this one. The surprising move is :b3:

$$Bc Black to play in the corner
$$ | . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . .
$$ | . X X . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . . . .
$$ | . O O X O . . .
$$ | a O X O . O . .
$$ | 3 X X O . . . .
$$ | 1 C X X O O . .
$$ | C 2 C O b ...

I guess protect and make ko?

John, thanks for bringing back the atsumi/sa conversation. I have held this in my conceptual repertoire, but reading your linguistic expertise again, I realize it had taken a "shape" of its own in my mind.

I thought atsumi was the local quality of a group being thick while atsusa was the global ...

$$W
$$ +--------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .|
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X X . .|
$$ | . . . . . O . . . . . . . O . O X . .|
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . 1 . . . O X . .|
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . O ...

https://senseis.xmp.net/?DietersStudyWithAIIn2024%2FExercise15

$$Wm24 Moves 24 to 29
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 4 . . |
$$ | . . . . . O . . . . . . a 5 . 1 X . . |
$$ | . . . O ...

The biggest travesty here is that Kim Eunji is still a pro.

Anyway, personally, I don't really care what rank a pro has. There are many cases where it does not correlate to actual strength. It's nice to get a title, just like in other fields, but it doesn't guarantee anything. There are plenty of ...

I'm not a volunteer, but where I'm modding with xela, I've seen him doing a wonderful job.

Nice!

What you call the middle, I can relate to "Go Seigen groups", a concept introduced by John (again), due to Go Seigen writing & playing in this sense.

----

On the topic of unique solutions, it is interesting to compare Go with Sudoku. Both are games that were exported from Japan to the rest of the world. Like Go problems, the Japanese always construct Sudoku puzzles to have one unique solution, and I believe the main reason is that Sudoku ...