http://eidogo.com/#2iqSyDLj

I beat panda go at it's highest level and I'm only a 13 kyu (unless it was at it's lowest level, it's not labeled but I had it all the way to the right) I've heard computers are supposed to be able to play at 6 kyu.

You might consider playing human opponents, they can be much more interesting.

Anyway, GnuGo isn't bad. I some times play it on my phone but I have to give it stones.

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Keep in mind, I am frequently wrong.

You're a 3k, I get my ass handed to me. I was playing kgs but it takes awhile before they match you with the appropriate opponents so I got tired of it. Plus the people at my go club know my user name so if I get to a better level I'll feel like I have to do better rather than being without expectation.



which way would you expect to be the way to make the computer level harder?

I just played another game only I moved it all the way to the left instead of all the way to the right and it kicked my ass. It ended up with nearly the opposite score of the other game. Why would you make left be the stronger end?

edit* I can't figure it out, it might be psychological. I can't gauge it.

It is counterintuitive, and poor GUI design, but think about it this way: most number lines go 1-2-3-4-5-6.... etc. But in go, 1 kyu - 2 kyu - 3 kyu - 4 kyu represents weaker and weaker opponents.

GNU Go plays in a very strange way. If you're having fun playing it knock yourself out, but it will probably teach you strange habits and odd ideas about "the right way" to play. (And also, if you eventually want your games reviewed, there's less interest in reviewing computer games because the way they play can be so odd.)

Automatch on KGS should be matching you to appropriate opponents within three or four games. If you're worried about expectations, turn off your rank. KGS will still keep track of it to match you to opponents, but your buddies will have no idea that you're getting better.

That's an interesting idea. And thanks for the gnu info.

I was playing quite a few games on kgs, and not only that but my one friend who's the same rank as me got down to something like 8 kyu, consistently winning, before he finally got bounced up to 12 kyu. I should probably just keep playing though, but first I'm going to figure out what computer setting I can beat so I can keep track this time.

Never heard of that. AFAIK only your rank influences the matchmaking. Rank in turn in influenced only by ranked games, and you can't play those while deranked.

My suggestion is to make a new secret account and play ranked games on it with automatch. I've been playing automatch from the very beginning, and there were always opponents at my level available.

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Sanity is for the weak.

There are computer programs out there who are a lot stronger than 6kyu.

http://www.koreaittimes.com/story/12367 ... o-software

No, you're right. Because you can see the people who turn on their ranks for twenty days out of the year change so much, I assumed they were playing ranked games all along, but I guess not.

a) The strongest programs are in the dan range. And since they are using some variant of MCTS for move evaluation they aren't going to teach you bad habits. Under certain circumstances these programs will play somewhat unlike a human opponent but that's perhaps because we humans do not always play go rationally.

b) The programs using some sort of AI evaluator (go knowledge based) tend to teach you bad habits if you weaken them to your own level. However if set to be several stones stronger than you are you haven't yet gotten to the point (haven't learned enough good habits) that they will be teaching you bad ones.

Understand? You might be able to get away with weakening a MCTS program to your own strength and playing even games against it without learning bad habits. But if you do that with a "go knowledge" AI program you have nothing other to blame than your misuse of a tool. Set the program to as high as it will go and take the necessary number of handicap stones.

Understood. What are these bad habits? Anything that would be a big thing or something that could be explained or is it just a bunch of tiny things? I'm always amazed at how it will start something and then go somewhere else long before it's safe but then again I've played 4 kyu humans who kind of (seemingly) did the same thing.


That is sweet.

the common belief that playing a computer program will teach you bad habits, is just an unproven theory.

I've yet to have met anyone who has actually learned one bad habit from a go bot.

The worst habit I've seen is people play the computer and refuse to play people until they beat it. That way they never actually join the rest of the go playing population.

...and then there is Zen on kgs, which is 4d in slow games and 5d in blitz (9x15 seconds). I believe it runs on MCTS.

It is quite strong. :X

I don't think we're going to get dueling double-blind placebo-controlled natural experiments here, so it's hard to tell empirically to what extent the odd play of a beginner who has played X games against GnuGo is due to playing GnuGo, and to what extent it's only having played X number of games. Nonetheless, let me boldly venture theoretical reasons to encourage beginners to at least experiment with playing human beings.

1. Playing the same opponent all the time is less interesting and less educational. I would give the same advice if we had people coming on here saying "I only ever play my Uncle Bob, but recently I've wondered how I can make my games with Uncle Bob more educational/fun/challenging." Specifically:

a. You come to expect that a certain move is sente or gote because that's how Uncle Bob always responds.
b. You come to expect the specific continuations that Uncle Bob loves - and perhaps some of these continuations are mistakes, so you provoke them.
c. You develop a style which you only like because you know how Uncle Bob responds to it and what sort of game that leads to; your play is inflexible.
d. You won't be introduced to new repertoires of fuseki, joseki, strategies, and tesuji.
e. You will get petrified ideas about the relative strength of other players at the opening, middle and endgame; you won't get the experience of falling far behind at one stage and making up huge amounts of ground later, and vice-versa.

Those five have nothing to do with GnuGo per se. The next few are specific to what I know about GnuGo (and, anecdotally, about some other programs).

2. Tenuki

a. If you learn to play Go by imitating GnuGo, you'll tenuki way too often. (Unless you're crawling on the second or third line, in which case you'll never tenuki.)
b. Likewise, because you won't expect your sente moves to be treated as such, you'll probably take longer to understand the strategic role of sente.
c. And you will probably play out 1-2-3 forcing moves far too often. Beginners need to learn to play the third move - the threat that would make "1" effective - but if they are harboring the hope that GnuGo will ignore 1, and occasionally that hope is rewarded, it will take much longer to unlearn the habit.

3. Unknown numbers of hard-coded errors

a. It's far too easy to manipulate GnuGo into giving you a huge central moyo (because of its submissive behavior towards shoulder hits - you can search for the thread in this forum if you don't know what I'm talking about). Whether you're imitating GnuGo or unconsciously adapting to take advantage of the error, you aren't playing better go.
b. I can't quantify this problem as well, but GnuGo isn't very good at brawling. Last February I was travelling and wasn't able to use KGS, so I tried beating GnuGo on 9x9 with 2H, and then with 3H. I only got within 3 pts. of winning on 3H, but there's something wrong with that. I couldn't have gotten that close to a beginner with 3H. Same logic as 3a, mutis mutandis.
c. Who knows what other weird behavior GnuGo has that hasn't been recognized yet? And no matter how many times you play with GnuGo, it won't get better or learn from its mistakes.

The bulk of what I am going to say (again) is that it is very wrong to discuss the behavior of computer programs in the absence of specifying which program or at the very least, which class of porgrams.




No, they are quite specific to the class of programs using an "go knowledge" AI to choose the next move and run with the option "randomize" turned off. A program using a MCTS based evaluator will not be making the same moves each time. There are "go knowledge" based programs that also will not make the same move each time (but even when set to "randomize" likely to make the same sort of move)



That doesn't teach you to imitate the behavior but does force you to learn to cope with an opponent who complicates the game instead of keeping things simple. The programs aren't making a mistake by playing tenuki. Were you correct in assuming that move was sente? Maybe it just looked like sente to you but could be ignored in exchange for a gain elsewhere plus the aji being left behind here. Yes, a human opponent of your own strenght level would likely have treated that as sente because no more able than you to afford complications and trying to remember everything that was left pending.





Again, the passive behavior of the AI evaluators has been well noted but that is not true of "go playing computer programs". Nor do they lack brawling capability. I don't just play against the computer but also at the local go club and when the last update came out I took in MFOG 12 on a moderately powerful two core machine so our strong players could decide if it was really 1 dan (Remember, forget about the bots on the server playing on much more powerful machines. That translates into a lot of thinking time per move. MFOG is only ~1.5 d on a more realistic machine such as we might have at home). The results were interesting. Both the 7d and the 5d gave the program the appropriate number of stones and in both cases lost the games. But most interesting (from what you said about weak brawling) was that they lost in the same way, misjudging the amount of aji left behind as they thought they were beating it. In other words, they lost to the brawling counterattack. In both cases they expressed the opinion that the program was weaker than 1d in the strategic sense but much stronger than 1d in fighting.

Perhaps if you only want to consider "open source" programs you might want to check out fuego. You really need to understand that perhaps people continue developing the "go knowledge" based program because they are at least as interesting in studying how an AI might be programed to play go as they are in having the strongest playing program at the moment. Besides, that AI could be used as a "plausible move generator" even if some form of MCTS used to evaluate moves (chooes the best from the set of the plausible). When that is done, athough the progam should be classed with the MCTS progams it should be free from the objection of "weird move no human would think of".

Look, people trying to use a computer program to get games in and learn need to be careful how they use this tool. But that is true of most tools.