Re: Zen 15.0 on CGOS very strong new wersion
Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 6:00 am
Some thoughts:
* If Zen's policy and value nets are strong enough to start to have some AlphaGo-like qualities in the opening and early-middle-game and to produce some innovations in joseki, then even if Zen overall is not clearly stronger, playing it a bunch could have plenty of value.
* Given that new-generation Go bots are strongest in whole-board judgment and weaker at complex fights or races, I could also see value in playing the first 100 moves with it a whole bunch to practice just the opening and early midgame, where Zen is most likely to be super-human and have things to teach, particularly if you also get to see Zen's evaluation (getting very rapid feedback about Zen's opinions on different positions).
* Exclusively only using Zen as an opponent would be strange. If Zen is at least close in strength to the players, then there should be a lot of value in also playing games with each other rather than Zen (so as to practice against humans and not just bots), and renting a bunch of servers and running Zen overnight with long-time-control searches on critical parts of those games for analysis for moves where Zen might have useful suggestions to study. The long searches should improve any weakness in Zen a bit and make use of a plentiful resource that would otherwise go unused - overnight computation time.
* Having Zen suggest moves "one by one" in hand-crafted positions would probably be a pretty inefficient way to use a bot. It's the 2%-5% of moves where you make a notable mistake or where the bot would play something innovative and interesting that you want to focus your study, as most of the time it will consider and suggest the same moves you would. Playing games whether with Zen or other players, and having Zen sweep over all the moves in the whole game and finding points where it disagrees is a good way to get around this.
* If Zen's policy and value nets are strong enough to start to have some AlphaGo-like qualities in the opening and early-middle-game and to produce some innovations in joseki, then even if Zen overall is not clearly stronger, playing it a bunch could have plenty of value.
* Given that new-generation Go bots are strongest in whole-board judgment and weaker at complex fights or races, I could also see value in playing the first 100 moves with it a whole bunch to practice just the opening and early midgame, where Zen is most likely to be super-human and have things to teach, particularly if you also get to see Zen's evaluation (getting very rapid feedback about Zen's opinions on different positions).
* Exclusively only using Zen as an opponent would be strange. If Zen is at least close in strength to the players, then there should be a lot of value in also playing games with each other rather than Zen (so as to practice against humans and not just bots), and renting a bunch of servers and running Zen overnight with long-time-control searches on critical parts of those games for analysis for moves where Zen might have useful suggestions to study. The long searches should improve any weakness in Zen a bit and make use of a plentiful resource that would otherwise go unused - overnight computation time.
* Having Zen suggest moves "one by one" in hand-crafted positions would probably be a pretty inefficient way to use a bot. It's the 2%-5% of moves where you make a notable mistake or where the bot would play something innovative and interesting that you want to focus your study, as most of the time it will consider and suggest the same moves you would. Playing games whether with Zen or other players, and having Zen sweep over all the moves in the whole game and finding points where it disagrees is a good way to get around this.