Marcel Grünauer wrote:
Two things I'd really like is a "benchmark" command like Leela Zero's and a way to make the first moves more random, using something like Leela Zero's "--randomcnt" and "--randomvisits".
I'm using KataGo to play handicap games and it always goes into all available 3-3 points, or if I use a free handicap of, say, four komoku, it plays a keima against the first one and then always attaches against the other komoku stones.
Yep, if you've ready my reply to hoa803 right above the next version will have better support for testing and tuning performance. In the meantime, if you're willing to experiment further you might be able to do a bit better than just setting it to a number like 10 (unless you did experiment a fair bit in order to eventually settle on 10 as best!). Otherwise, just stay tuned I guess for future versions.
For randomizing early play, you can fiddle with the "chosenMoveTemperatureEarly" parameter and the other parameters near it. Actually, if you want to tune anything about KataGo, you might just want to read through the whole gtp_example.cfg! The comments should explain roughly what most of the settings do.
The policy output does weight 3-3 quite heavily. I agree opening variety is a bit low a common problem for all the 'zero' bots to varying degrees. Still a topic of research how to encourage variety in a non-totally-contrived way and that actually helps training strength, rather than hurting it. For now though in the worst case you could force-play alternative moves for white in one or two of the corners before continuing as a normal handicap game. You can also try free-placement patterns that don't involve a stone in each corner - use the stones for corner enclosures of different kinds, or chinese/star-point/other side formations, and let white have a corner.
And wrote:
what does "special ladder support" mean?
KataGo's neural net gets an input plane that marks all stones that are in or can be put into repeated inescapable atari, both now and over the last 2 turns (to help with seeing when moves are ladder breakers/makers). So it should never be mistaken about the status of any direct ladder. In rare situations when very losing and also very behind in score, you might still see it play out a step or two of a broken ladder though.