Life In 19x19

https://www.zbaduk.com is a new website for studying your go games online, and to play go bots.
It uses a server with some NVidia GPUs which runs LeeLa Zero.

You can just play LeeLa Zero without the need for any registration.
But if you do have an account you can save your games online.
There is a checkbox which can be used to enable/disable teaching mode.
Teaching mode means that the computer plays suboptimal moves intentionally,
to make the game more interesting.

There is also support to review your games with AI,
but is only accessible after creating an account.
After creating the account, you have to click the "Smart Review" button.
Next, you have to connect to an AI server (currently only 1 available server).

After connecting, it will calculate statistics using LeeLa Zero.
It has 2 modes to do this:

[*] pondering only the selected node, the position that you are looking at.
[*] a full scan, which analyzes all positions, and tries to create a chart for you.

The chart is useful to detect score estimation drops in the process of the game.
Those indicate mistakes. You can click the chart to jump directly to that mistake.

Unfortunately our Russian backend server has been down since yesterday evening.

ZBaduk uses a low-end backend server to do its LeeLa Zero calculations (~100usd/mo).
Because this server is down, most functionality of the website is unavailable.
The cloud service provider has been contacted, and is investigating it right now.
ZBaduk is expected to be fully operational again in a couple of hours.

---

In future we plan to migrate to high-end cloud providers (probably AWS).
But first we need more sponsors/funding.
ZBaduk is looking for sponsors.

---

For feedback, feature requests, sponsorship, don't hesitate to contact me on: zbaduk361 [AT] gmail [DOT] com

Back online in mean time.
Still investigating log files to find out what exactly went wrong.

Which LZ network are you using?

It's a version that still runs on the previous engine (v16):

206 2019-02-26 15:21 2d46c327 40x256 13758 69528 12569400

But considering to upgrade soon.
Especially curious to try the new GTP commands. (e.g. command for clearing the memory)

I've been trying it out, very nice and I like it. It's the easiest web-based software to use from what I've seen so far. And the membership is quite acceptable, especially in a long run. Thanks for a great tool.

Hi spook,

Thank you. Do you know if the current version supports analyzing an SGF with handicap stones ?
Example:

Apparently zbaduk doesn't support analysis of handicap games. I uploaded an H3 game I played on KGS, and zbaduk doesn't see the three handicap stones.



Other remarks:

• when you analyze a game, it displays the principal variation for each move it considers (something like "S12 R17 R18 S17 S18 P15 P18 P19") but the coordinates are not displayed on the board...
  
• when playing against a bot, I couldn't find "resign" or "pass" buttons.
  
• Nice job!

Hi BramGo and spook,

Could you add an option for different coordinate systems, such as the one used here (and CGoban, SmartGo, Panda, etc. ) ?
Example: Lower Left corner: A1, Top Right corner: T19.
The current ZBaduk uses A1 as the Top Left corner, it seems.

Thank you.

You're absolutely right about the missing pass, resign and coordinates. I will prioritize those features.

Handicap is a bit more difficult. There isn't a straightforward way to do those because LZ can only play with 7.5 komi - a known limitation. There is a dynamic komi version of LZ though, which could solve the problem. While it's certainly something to look into, it's something we can't prioritize right now.

I made a page on senseis library to: senseis.xmp.net/?ZBaduk

PS: thank you for your support and kind words everybody. After 4 months of development it's great to hear people actually like it.

Handicap is a bit more difficult.

Hi spook,

I'm OK to edit the SGF to change preset handicap stones to actual moves --
( )
( Pass, ) \\ handicap
( Pass, ) \\ handicap
( Pass, ) \\ handicap
etc. --

Hopefully Zbaduk can handle in-game Passes and 0.5 komi OK...

Thanks.

EdLee wrote:

Handicap is a bit more difficult.

Hi spook,

I'm OK to edit the SGF to change preset handicap stones to actual moves --
( )
( Pass, ) \\ handicap
( Pass, ) \\ handicap
( Pass, ) \\ handicap
etc. --

Hopefully Zbaduk can handle in-game Passes and 0.5 komi OK...

Thanks.

Here's the raw SGF to insert after the ruleset, if that helps anyone (like myself):

Out of curiosity, how does the "teaching mode" work? I remember there used to be an LZ fork someone made that tried to keep the winrate as close to 50% as possible, instead of trying to maximize winrate; are you using that branch, or are you just selecting such moves over GTP?

About the handicap, passing, resigning, coordinates and other feature requests,
don't worry, an update is coming up which will deal with most of these requests.

---
@apetresc

About the teaching mode, it uses the official Leela Zero version.
Not that spectacular actually. It just uses the stats of the lz_analyze command.

In other words, it doesn't ask LZ to play a move, but instead it asks LZ to give stats.
Then if ZBaduk is winning it will take suboptimal moves from those stats.

Actually, if you do an "Undo" while playing, you can see the stats on the board.
In all honesty, when I play it, (I just play at 2d level), I still lose 9/10 games.
But I do enjoy the fact that it plays a different kind of game.

In all honesty, In future, I may dumb it down another notch.

New features that are coming up:

1) a better list of your saved games, which only renders a preview of the selected game.


2) pass and resign buttons. The computer will also pass and resign when applicable.


3) when the game finally comes to an end, the score will be visualized. (points or +R),
and if you are logged in, you will be able to review it, just by clicking the "Review" button.


4) previously, the chart only showed the winrate of the main line,
New: if you select a variation, then the winrate of the variation will be displayed on top of it. (in yellow color)