Life In 19x19

Hello, I am a beginner and mostly play against Go AI bots (GNUGo) for practice. I've played almost exclusively 9x9, and just recently started getting into 19x19, but I think I will stick to 19x19 from here on out. I occasionally play face to face with a few friends (about once every two weeks), but we mostly play 9x9 for the sake of time, but have recently tried play 19x19 blitz, also for the sake of time. I haven't really played on KGS as I get nervous and would rather get my skills up a bit before I play online.

Now for the topic on hand...

I'm looking at the pros and cons of using the undo button while playing against bots.

Pros:
- Allows me to play out different sequences which will allow me to see what works, and what doesn't.
- Allows me to correct myself in direction of play if I play too small.

Cons:
- I'm not sure if I'm learning/remembering my mistakes as much as I would if I took the full punishment (not using undo) for a move.
- I'm not sure if I'm helping my reading ability, since I'm not really reading out the sequences, I'm playing them and undoing.

Let me know what your thoughts are on this topic. I'm sure there are some pros and cons that I'm not thinking of. Should I continue to use undo, or not?

Thanks

I don't see a problem with taking back moves, or not taking back moves. As you have already pointed out, both methods have advantages and disadvantages, so you can do it both ways.

Just go and experiment with the bot and the moves. It's the best you can do. When you have arrived at a situation where you want to take back moves, study the situation that led to the (for you) disadvantageous situation and learn how play a better move.

If you're much weaker than the bot, you can also try to give yourself a few handi stones and play competetive games without taking back moves. This will also give you the opportunity to observe the long-term consequences of bad moves.

One thing to remember is that this kind of undo-use is only possible when playing bots. If you start playing against humans in the future, don't expect to undo any moves except maybe obvious miss-clicks.

For this reason, playing with undo against bots may develop into a habit of not reading and relying on an undo to correct your mistakes. It may be difficult to unlearn this habit once you move from bots to human opponents.

My advice is actually to move to humans as opponents right away. I believe there is no reason why a beginner should start with bots instead of real opponents. Especially as you are already moving from 9x9 to 19x19. The small board teaches you valuable basic shape and fighting techniques (spotting ataris, basic cuts on the second line etc..) and in that area bots are good. But the whole strategic level of the 19x19 board is more difficult for bots. While bots have a decent playing strength on the bigger boards that shouldn't be confused with "playing good".
So my advice is, if you can you should start playing against humans, other beginners or stronger people who can review your game afterwards. You will learn much more from one game against a stronger human opponent (with review) than from ten games against a stronger bot.

If, for whatever reason, you can't play against humans (no club nearby, no stable internet connection) then don't rely on undo. Decrease the thinking time for the bot to speed up the game and play it like a game against humans, living with your mistakes and reading ahead to avoid them is part of the game after all.
Then after the game you can try out different variations or continue the game from a certain point with a different move. Playing and learning go can be pretty time-consuming but i think taking the shortcut of undos will do more harm than good - especially if you only play against bots.

I haven't really played on KGS as I get nervous and would rather get my skills up a bit before I play online.

There is no reason to be nervous because you are too 'bad'. There are plenty of people of all playing strengths on KGS and that includes beginners and total beginners. Also what do you feel would be an adequate skill-level to play online? 25k? 20k? 10k? 1d?
This kind of thinking will get you nowhere. There is always so much to learn in go that this feeling of "i'm not really good" never really goes away. If that is your reason for avoiding KGS you may never get to play there.
Just log on, look for the beginners room (there is one) and for the beginning just chat or watch others beginners play. This should put you at ease and make it easier to actually play there as the next step.

In terms of cognitive development, Piaget talks about concrete operations and formal operations. Here, playing out variations on the board (or screen) involves concrete operations and playing out variations in your head involves formal operations. Just as concrete operations normally precede formal operations in cognitive development, in learning go you can use concrete operations as a stepping stone to formal operations.

But, IMO, using undo against a bot to do that is not so good, because the bot chooses one and only one response. First, you want your play to be good against any response, and to learn about the position you face you have to explore a number of replies. Second, the bot chooses the response (or responses if it incorporates randomness) instead of you. You do not get the benefit of coming up with a set of possible responses yourself. Unless you are able to do exhaustive brute force search, you have to select which moves to try. That is an important go skill in itself. If you let the bot choose the responses, you lose opportunities to develop that skill.

So here is what I suggest. Do not use undos against bots. Instead, use another program, like an SGF editor, to explore variations until you feel you understand a position well enough to make a play, and then make the play and stick to it. It is important to stick to it, so that you get a sense of when you have explored a position well enough. As you use this method, you will find that more and more you will see variations in your head and will rely less and less upon playing them out in the other program. You will develop your ability to select possible plays and replies and will gain confidence in that ability, as well as in your ability to play out variations in your head and in your ability to judge the results.

Good luck!

That may depend on the bot << for example, whether you can force it to make certain moves by changing the move it selected to something else >>. We really need to be careful over generalizing.

IMHO there should be two different "undo" options for bots that do not provide "ghosting" of the move you are about to make. I'm old enough to have hands and eyes not as good as they once were and sometimes "drop" the stone when making a move so it ends up on an adjacent intersection to where I wanted it to go.