Hi

Can any Go program that plays at KGS 1d strength or up analyze sequences? Most chess engines since the 90's can be put into "analysis mode": they just run in the background, and put out the 1 to 5 best variations they have found as of yet. When a move is made, they start again.

While I have played chess long enough to be able to visualize a written sequence of up to 10-12 moves or so, and then know how the board looks, I can't do that very well in Go yet. Some chess programs also display a small board that animates through the variation, or displays at least the end of it.

Does one of the current engine/GUI combinations do this; especially the visualization? I don't mind if the program is paid. I have no problem paying up to $100 or so if I can get a program that can point out better moves to me.

Many Faces of Go seems to be able to do it, but I don't know for sure:



I know, the program doesn't tell you 'why' a move may be better, but a chess engine doesn't either. In chess, I can often see why a move is better after it, and it's variations are pointed out to me. I'm sure that at some point, I'll be able to do that with Go as well.

Thanks

I think Many Faces of Go can be configured to recommend a variety of moves based on situation (attacking, making good shape, etc). It hasn't been updated in forever, though, so it's well behind the cutting edge these days.

Thanks. Yes, I just remembered that I saw something like this on the MFOG site. It plays up to 1d it says, but indeed, it hasn't been updated since 2008 or so.

Do the analyze functions also work when plugging in a different GTP-engine such as Pachi? When I look through the command lists of several GTP engines, it seems that they are not standardized as well as UCI for chess is. I can imagine that MFOG's engine requires additional commands on top of standard GTP to make analyzing/visualizing work.

It's the same with Chessbase. It uses its own engine format (".eng"), while the rest of the world uses UCI (or even the much older XBoard/Winboard protocol). While the Chessbase GUI's can load and use UCI-engines, their ENG-format provides some functionality that is specific to their own user interface and visualizations. If you use a UCI-engine, this functionality is not available. (Fortunately, those extra functions are only 'to make it pretty': the UCI engines can still analyze.)

Crazystone (deep learning version is the latest and strongest - circa 6-7 Dan) & will do game analysis. - its currently being discussed on this forum so the threads should be easiest to find.

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I am John. John-I-Am.

I've seen this thread, but it seems to me that CrazyStone's analysis function is a bit weird during use, except when you just let it run and analyze the entire game for a long period of time. It seems to have limitations.

Also, I'm not keen on internet activation. Does it need to activate once, after which you get a key that you can use for any new installations, forever, without activating again (this would be OK), or does it need to activate each and every time you install it (in which case I will never buy it)?

Give Leela a try, it's free now.

I think it must be one of the best options because of its strength - but Go software is not really as developed for analysis (yet) as Chess, probably because this is the first year ever that sufficiently strong software has been commercially available. With CS you can give it the whole sgf file and specify a time limit for whole analysis, eg 10 minutes, or you can click on a specific move and let the analysis run for that. As for registration, you get an unlock code when you buy but I believe you'd need to allow it to activate over the internet with each install.

_________________
I am John. John-I-Am.

Thanks. Whole game analysis, or per move analysis with, let's say one or two minutes per move for one side, would be enough for now. Pity about the internet activation. That makes the use of the program dependent on the existence of the company, and I don't want that.