Do you agree with Mangus Carlsen’s take?
I feel like this applies to Go too. With AI-Sensei and other great AI reviews, Go is becoming more and more a AI’s game. I still remember Lee-Sedol which has a great defensive style with a great middlegame, and another Korean guy (Couldn’t remember the name, my apologies) who was a specialist at endgame. Now all the players are just focused on playing what AI thinks is the best move, not their actual style.
Thoughts?
The other side of the coin is these AI tools can make studying the game easier, it can reduce frustration in trying to identify what went wrong and it can help you learn things faster. My intuition tells me that removing barriers to learning would make the game more attractive for newcomers.
Can’t remember where I saw it, but there was a video where Lee Se-dol was lamenting what had become of professional Go as a result of AI. However, in the same video he said that he thinks AI has been greatly beneficial for amateur players.
Would you really say that chess is dying because of AI? The AI revolution in chess happened many years before go, but sites like chess.com and lichess have grown to have quite a large user base.
Huh?
Sorry. I meant that he plays kind of defensive, and he waits for the perfect moment to strike. I don’t know if I agree with that or not (I read it somewhere), but yeah, that is what I meant.
I agree! That makes Go way more easier to learn and progress! But couldn’t Go Players also progress being taught by teachers in the 1900s? Just not faster, but it actually allows you to develop your own styles.
I don’t know if Go is dying and if yes then from Ai.
Only thing I can say is that playing non Top-Ai moves is totally possible and wont lose anyones game.
For casual players it doesnt really matter, Im sure of that. The more I play, the more I realize that non-top-Ai moves are often way better and cooler. Me personally and I think most ppl, are often way too focused on Ai moves.
For Pro’s tho, it may be different.
Go is a long game, much longer than chess. Even if we study extensively with AI, we inevitably encounter unknown positions after move 50.
In addition, even at the opening, there are many ways to deviate from AI and just lose 1 point or 2, to bring the opponent into unfamiliar territory. Small mistakes like that are not damaging in go, even at pro level.
But AI plays like a certain way. That’s why top players play like AI now. It’s not about the memorization, it’s about the style.
I don’t follow enough pro matches to say anything about top pros, but at least among “ordinary” pros, I see many different styles.
And also I think I remember Ryan Li saying that he doesn’t even study with AI (although he studies games from pros that study with AI so AI affects indirectly his way of playing).
Hmm, I mean, there are plenty of records of 1900s legends.
We should come up with a Go 360 or Freestyle Go soon.
That video is a poor representation of what Magnus has actually said. He has lost interested in classical chess (long time controls) because you have to memorize thousands of opening variations in order to even remain competitive. And in games between two strong players with similar opening knowledge the result is overwhelmingly likely to be a draw because the game reaches an equal middlegame where neither side has any chance to break through.
But he doesn’t think chess is dying at all. He’s very active in speed chess, where time pressure makes it hard to kill a game even if the opening is played perfectly. He is also a proponent of a chess variant that involves randomly scrambling the starting position, making it impossible to memorize more than maybe a few opening moves.
Go doesn’t have any of these problems. There are no draws, so you can’t kill a game with safe opening lines even if you want to. And there are many, many more viable opening variations in go versus chess, so it usually only takes a handful of moves before you reach a completely new go position.
I don’t see this at all - there is a lot of stylistic variation in high level go. Compare, say, Park Junghwan to Ke Jie; the former is a solid positional player, the latter will cut anything that moves. Certainly most players are influenced by AI analysis, but in most positions there is no single best AI move, and human players simply don’t have enough understanding to distinguish between the top few moves.
Like this: Random Opening Generator ?
Chess is more popular than ever so it’s far from dying. The main issue at the highest level of classical chess is that draws are the norm and that hurts it as a spectator sport. However Rapid and blitz formats are gaining in popularity and viewership. That being said Magnus is also promoting his 960 freestyle tour (which is great). He thinks Freestyle is the future and I kind of agree with him. It’s a great format.
Practically speaking though, no normal chess player below master level is memorising that much theory. So it only applicable to the highest levels.
Chess is not dying, it is evolving. Same goes for go. Nothing to be scared of.
Only if you can’t let go of the status quo, you will be startled by it.
Chess and go rules are not permanent.
Having said this; I am not happy with AI’s involvement of go. Not that I can change it, but a consequence is that the game is losing its intuitive and artistic dimension.
Hum not so sure about that. Because AI showed us that we were feeble and weak in our interpretation.
Chess is not dying, in terms of popularity, but it is a game that slowly has the fun squeezed out of it.
Go is fun at any level and the higher you go, there is a definitive skill difference that you can spot on a lot of levels, appreciate it and, eventually emulate, potentially, with a certain amount of effort. What is important here is that you can choose from a wide array of skills that you think that you like/prefer or suit your style and focus on them. You can be a 2-3k player while you are a 10-12k tsumego solver.
Chess, having a smaller board, is not like that. It is still fun between total amateurs, but once you try to go even one step higher, then the harsh truth of the mountain of memorisation lies ahead of you, even if you want to move just a little bit up the ladder. It is now only two skills: Pattern recognition and memorisation. And you cannot choose. You have to have both.
Go has a lot more skills involved, so it is safer from that danger.
I don’t understand why this is a bad thing. Go players are simply optimising towards a style that they think will win them games.
I don’t have much Go experience, so I’ll bring out an example from world of football. Pep Guardiola, the current manager of Man City FC, gets a lot of comments about how he has ruined the spirit of the game because of his style. Which is to play a lot of possession game, and keep the ball rotating as much possible, which entails playing a lot of back-passes (which is uninteresting).
But that guy and his style was winning him trophies. So, the consequence was that many other managers and clubs started playing like him.
My point is, if you think that a particular style of game is dull, then why not come up with a better style and beat it. That’s the only way to kill a style. To show its weaknesses.
It can be argued that this is not exactly correct reasoning since “dull”/“fun” and “effective”/“weak” are two totally different things.
The catenaccio was dull and effective and it is still used today by teams when facing a far supperior opponent and it still works and generates upsets. In fact it can be said that this “dull” tactic is used to exploit and show the weaknesses of the “fun” tactics like the one currently employed by Barcelona.
Therefore any style that might “beat” the current AI style, might not be more fun than the current style. Just more ruthless and effective. Just a new “meta”, but “dull or fun” is not something that comes into consideration for the pros themselves. That’s an issue for the spectators (that pay time and money to watch) and the amateurs. Those are the ones that play for fun. 
Klopps gegenpress is a good example of that