W+Res.

[tekesta]

My apologies if it looks like I'm spamming the forum here. I just played as White against mfgo09kyu1 on KGS and I was able to win by resignation Again I had to play a rather unconventional opening. Below is the game record.

http://files.gokgs.com/games/2013/7/1/chincharra-mfgo09kyu1-2.sgf

[Joaz Banbeck]

My apologies if it looks like I'm spamming the forum here...

Don't worry about it. Electrons are cheap.

[frankie99]

This post has no analysis but i do have a suggestion.
Don't play these weak bots, play some non-bots (humans, aliens etc ). I say this because some of the moves by this bot were pretty bad. To give an example, the upper left corner would not be open for that length of time against a normal opponent of your rank. So, playing these bad bots you are more prone to picking up bad habits. The stronger bots may be ok. Just play tons of games and get them reviewed like you are doing here and you should improve easily. Ofcourse, tsumego never hurts.
Good luck.

P.s. heard good things about the 2k and stronger bots on kgs but i've never played them. ><

[billywoods]

Don't play these weak bots, play some non-bots (humans, aliens etc ).

I second this. Don't get into the habit of trying to win by playing weirdly!

[Joaz Banbeck]

Don't play these weak bots, play some non-bots (humans, aliens etc ).

I second this. Don't get into the habit of trying to win by playing weirdly!

Third.

You need to develop an intuitive sense of what 'normal' good moves look like. These bots are playing mediocre moves, and if you try to learn from them, you will end up playing mediocre moves too.
Futhermore, on the few occasion in which bot strategy does work, it requires processing/reading capacity that we humans don't have.

Go play a real person. Then post that game here.

[Bill Spight]

I disagree about the problem with getting bad habits from playing a bot. Of course you will pick up bad habits from a 9 kyu bot. But you will pick up bad habits from a 9 kyu human. The fact that they are different bad habits may actually be a good thing, because when you start playing humans they will take advantage of the bad habits you pick up from bots, but they may not do so for the bad habits you pick up from other humans.

My recommendation: Play against bots on the 9x9, where they are stronger, and play against stronger bots with handicaps. You could also play stronger humans.

[tekesta]

Which is why I play mainly on IGS these days. At least it's easier for me to find players of my rank there. Most of the good players on KGS are too strong for me, or seek SDK or dan-level players.

I do tsumego, especially life & death and tesuji, to develop good playing habits. Each problem is a piece of a Go game. Thousands of them add up to a few games' worth of situations. So I believe strongly in doing large sets of relatively easy problems. If I could get my hands on the entire Korean Problem Academy series or something similar, I'd do so in a heartbeat!

The problem with finding someone stronger than oneself to play with is that even the stronger ones seek players stronger than themselves. So it's something of a self-reinforcing cycle. When I play against someone weaker than myself, that person has the benefit of reviewing the game and discovering what went wrong. However, playing relatively weaker players on a frequent basis can affect my game negatively in the long run.

To defeat mfgo09kyu1, I had to play unconventional openings, which would've been easy for a relatively strong human player to defeat. Whenever I played "normal" opening patterns, MFGO would eat me alive. I'll have to take Bill Spight's word for it and play bots on 9x9 games.

[tekesta]

Go play a real person. Then post that game here.

I posted just such a game a few days ago I played it on IGS. In the future I will be posting more IGS games for your kind analysis.

[Bill Spight]

So I believe strongly in doing large sets of relatively easy problems. If I could get my hands on the entire Korean Problem Academy series or something similar, I'd do so in a heartbeat!

Aren't they available online?