Played another game against a pro, karroyjack Zhao Yifei 3p goratings #622. LZ #198 embarassed itself with a ladder delusion. And it wasn't just due to low playouts, it appears to me 198 has got worse at ladders versus older 40-block networks!


For move 49 198 wants to play s15, it doesn't want to ladder the white stones (which doesn't work), but seem to think white WILL think the ladder works and thus needs to tenuki this sente move to prevent the ladder, meaning black can then capture the cutting stones in the corner to make all his groups safe. A very short horizon effect? 194 on the other hand wants to defend at q18 for a long time, but it too goes for s15 after 25k playouts.

Crossing eyes and dotting tees:

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There is one human race.
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The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

Highlight of this game (network #199, 20s) was the deep invasion/reduction at move 40. LZ thumbs its nose at the black influence (top right joseki is rare because usually you don't want to give black the strength of the ponnuki even though it allows you to capture on the right side and keep corner) and lives with ease. I added quite a few variations of how LZ as white would deal with my various attempts (with LZ's help) as black to attack/kill it. LZ says it's best for black to just admit it's hard to punish and that territory's gone, tenuki to c9, let white spend another move to strengthen it and get another tenuki. Also 130-132 a nice example of "raising a flag" to create centre eyespace.

Move 64: 84% winrate. It's so hard even for top pro to calculate the chance of winning at this early stage.

Yes, the ability of these bots to detect a half point win 200 moves away is amazing.

Played another pro, "friedrice", Taiwanese-born Japanese pro Han Zenki 8p, goratings #490 at 3049. LZ #200 running on my 1060 GPU at 3 x 20 seconds was usually getting 1 or 2 thousand playouts per move but more when sequences went as expected (up to 10k or so). I didn't do any promising blue-circle jiggery-pokery, though there were a few instances where soon after playing a move LZ decided another was better (e.g. e12 over d12, r3 over k8). It beat him easily, impressive direction of play and haengma in a big fight from the first unsettled joseki. g4 was a sharp move which set up weakness in black's shape and would have preferred him to g5 defend and allow white d9 hane at head of two. The cheek of ignoring l5 was another highlight and subsequent sabaki, the way of living on lower side and right corner gave white moves like o5, p7 peep, j5 cut which meant it was confident to save the middle stones when he attacked at l9. This game was a good illustration of how LZ really doesn't like to connect on dame, and likes to force the opponent to connect on dame (but he refused and played p2 so LZ rescued the middle stones). LZ was at 96% by move 100 and it would have been about 25 points win if it went to counting (resign at 162). So still not played a top pro, but shows that LZ on mid-range hardware is a lot stronger than this level of pro (at least when no ladder delusion).

I tried GX88 against a human 9d on Fox. It was interestingly: messed up big time in the opening by playing a move which was only good if it had a ladder to counter opponent's resistance (which it barely considered so didn't read) but didn't. But impressively it managed to come back from 15% to win.

After about 10k playouts at move 24 it decides s5 is better than r7 so wouldn't get into the ladder mess, but if I play r7 even after 100k playouts it doesn't give enough consideration to r6 (only 24 playouts) to realise the ladder doesn't work and white playing there will totally stuff it. Once I play white r6 it needs only 1k playouts to realise the ladder doesn't work, but it still suffers from a delusion in that it expects black s6, white q7, s7 connect, and then white q8 extend to defend against a ladder atari which doesn't work. Of course white can instead play s4 to capture the corner stones because there's no ladder, and once played it again sees a big drop in winrate.

A game with LZ #202 as white, interesting blind spot in that after k13 wedge (n10 kosumi directly was other main choice) it never dreamed black would atari from outside, but as soon as black did that winrate plunged (although there is a throw in tesuji to capture m16 white loses many points from sacrificing the 4 stones. I analysed with a minigo weight (000513-revenge_converted.txt.gz) and it wanted to kosumi directly, but it too was blind to k12 atari outside. However, good-old 157, and 157b (the 157 with extra 40 block training) did find the k12 counter in just a few seconds, demonstrating my experience that although they are in general weaker they tend to explore a broader range of moves. Elfv1 also found it. k10 was a good move it only just found in time that turned the fight in its favour.

Tried out minigo v16 000513-revenge on Fox (black). Likes to start at 3-3, looks strong, though did have quite a few blindspots where it didn't see opponent's move and then winrate drops when they play it. An interesting mix of solid play and asking the opponent where the 2 eyes of groups are. Also some fun wedges of one point jumps at moves 115 and 121.

I also tried the 20-block minigo v15 990 cormorant. Won one ame, but this one was an embarassing ladder mess up. It then played sente moves in the hope the opponent would unnecessary honte capture the ladder and ignore the sente move, so I resigned. (Comments from lizzie say Elf but I used minigo and then looked at elf's view).

Played a game with the new Elfv2, it didn't really get a chance to demonstrate its strength as the 9d human opponent made a order mistake in that common joseki mentioned elsewhere was down to 5% by move 55. Still it was interesting to see how leisurely Elf was in the subsequent attack, happy to give a load of territory and push along the 3rd and then 4th line in gote on the left, allow the weak black group to jump out, but thinly, and only play sharp moves later. In fact the j3 push in was my choice of a move with few playouts but higher winrate (and I checked it remained so playing out variation) than the passive g2 that was Elf's highest playouts move because I wanted to make him resign (he did so at 118) so I could do something else.

P.S. Elf thinks it's a big mistake (-13%) for white to play a 2nd 4-4 if black plays a 4-4 and a 3-4 (slightly more if 3-4 facing instead of skew).

Another Efv2 game. Highlights were:
- how big a mistake it thought black's atari of 19 to live inside was, a result I supppose many humans (myself included) would think was reasonably even given black lives in sente and can pull out the q12 stone. See var for suggestion in this sort of middlegame joseki shape, a nice lesson (I've seen same sequence suggested by bots before).
- t11 (bad) vs s11 (correct) connection makes a difference to a semeai if white wants to get s6 as kikashi, Elf so sharp to instantly see this.
- m10 to stop the wall getting attacked at black n10.
- j4 should be o6 to prevent white easily connecting 2 groups. Topology is king.
- move 100 was a misclick of atari, but still winning and soon back to 98%.

It appears in Sakata's Tesuji and Anti-Suji of Go.

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There is one human race.
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The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

Another Elfv2 game with some blindspots. Elf thought j6 was a big mistake, and it all went as expected for a while. However, when white played h4 atari the winrate dropped a lot: black can connect and is safe against e3 with g2 and g1 tesuji, but did it misevaluate the ladder? Anyway, things were looking good again in the top left fighting, thne f12 was a semi-blind spot (it was a move it explored before but winrate for white improved when played), but then it didn't expect white to be able to connect at c14 so f14 etc weren't good moves. In the end it could capture white but got horribly squeezed (and played some silly sentes to postpone doom).

I wonder, are we talking about specific blind spots, or some kind of horizon effect? The neural net bots do whole board reading, and unless they recognize certain patterns they will not necessarily explore a local region thoroughly.

I have noticed DDK errors with Deep Leela, particularly as the dame get filled. Some of them may be explained by hoping for the opponent to make a mistake, but not all. It makes me think that if I ever played Leela 11, I should never resign.

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There is one human race.
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The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

Another Elfv2 game (white), I think the opponent was a strong human 9d. First talking of blindspots, there's one on move 2. If Elf plays 4-4 as black first move then it's at 48% it only expects white 4-4s in reply. But if white plays an adjacent 3-4 then Elf is surprised by this innovative move and black winrate drops by 5%! Anyyway, this game was high quality with Elf gradually taking a lead but some ups and downs. Then in the endgame with Elf leading for move 188 obvious sente b2 and e11 atari were neck and neck, so I picked the #1 at end of byo yomi e11 atari. It was a massive mistake as black has e1 tesuji, which was not mainline after e11 atari but was spotted once played. Even then it still thought f14 atari was 80%, but then when black collapsed the winrate plummeted. Strangely replaying it now I get a different story. Anyway, black returned the favour with 227 blunder (should s2) because Elf now started a ko and had one good threat, whereas black had lost his h6 atari threat. The 2nd game variation is Elf lsoing to a minigo bot on super GPUs.