A good OGS learning strategy?

[tonybe]

The short answer is - you CAN’T get this type of AI assistance from the OGS site while you are in the middle of an unfinished game. You can only get a review after a game is finished, showing you where your moves differed from what the AI would have played in that situation.

One of the main reasons the site doesn’t have this is that such a mechanism could be used to cheat by unscrupulous players.

Now obviously, you said you would only use this in unranked games, and only as a learning tool, but it’s important to keep in mind that there are other players out there that routinely get reported to the site admins for exactly this kind of AI-assist cheating, so please be aware that it is an issue out in the greater community.

If you would like this kind of assistance, I would recommend playing against an AI opponent on your computer or on other sites besides OGS. There are many options available:

ON YOUR COMPUTER:

KATRAIN:

KaTrain: AI analysis/playing/teaching tool based on KataGo

I’ve just released version 1.4 of KaTrain, a tool based on KataGo which you can use for playing against a wide variety of bots, analyzing your games, and playing teaching games with the AI. It is aimed at focussing on your biggest mistakes in terms of point loss, rather than how your moves are different from AI style. Latest release: https://github.com/sanderland/katrain/releases Github page with manual: Latest features The latest update introduces: Easy access to all the KataGo version…

LEELA
https://sjeng.org/leela.html

These are AI tools you can install on your desktop computer, and they will have buttons you can enable / disable that will show you what the AI thinks are the best moves for that position. You can also upload SGF files of your own games, and get a move-by-move review showing AI suggestions. You can then play forward as many moves as you want from those positions (against the AI rather than your former opponent) to see how those alternate strategies may have worked out going forward.

ONLINE:

Study With KataGo

Go Game Online with KataNet AI by pazoff

The one caveat I will mention here is that these are very high-level AI, so their play-style and level of expertise would be more appropriate to experienced SDK players.

As such, if you’re trying to find play-styles that are closer to your levels, it may be worth your time to find a lower-ranked AI bot like GnuGo (between 12 - 8 kyu), play games against that, and use KataGo to generate suggestions for your next moves

You can download a PandaNet SGF editor here which comes with a free version of GnuGo

PANDA-glGo

So yeah, rather than messing around with AI-assisted play on OGS - which runs into all kinds of issues - it’s much easier to just do it on your computer.