I’m not exactly sure where to put this so I posted this here.
I have been playing many games by selecting “Computer” and choosing the opponent “Kugutsu (12K).” This is proving an excellent way to knock 15 years of rust off of my game, and though it has been beating me on a regular basis I am losing by less and less each time. All in all an excellent teaching tool without annoying actual players while i chip the rust off.
My question is “What can anyone tell me about Kugutsu (12K)?” I am curious about the computer program that’s getting me to “re-learn” the game after all these years.
Well, I can reveal that Kugutsu is not bashing my face mercilessly into the GO board for the sheer sadistic pleasure of doing it. It is merely doing its job. In the meantime, I keep picking myself up and challenging it again (Picture of ant trying to push over palm tree).
wow! you played that machine quite a bit! maybe youll tire it out eventually .
while i think that this much effort cant possibly go unrewarded, especially if you keep it up, i will still point out that there is no reason to be scared of playing human opponents (or worry youll annoy them)! just try! you might even find it more fun than playing kugutsu.
To second what Kickaha said - there is so much wisdom and experience out there that people are willing to share it does seem a bit masochistic to bang your head on the palm tree when others can show you how to climb
(Although I do appreciate a goal like “I want to conquer go myself” just like people wanted to conquer rubics cube themselves rather than get instructions or advice).
If you don’t want to play people, an other thing you could do is open some games for review - getting a review can be a great learning experience too.
Actually there is method in my madness. I was used to playing live human beings (though we weren’t too sure about one of my opponents, we did give him the benefit of the doubt) way, way back. But it has been a long time and I wanted to get back into the game with the minimum of embarrassment. Additionally, a computer opponent was also available at the moments I was, so it became very handy. I could have an hour or so to kill, sit down, and VOILA! There it was. The fact that it gave me some great, if humbling games, and piqued my competitive interest were unexpected bonuses. I will be getting back into live gaming very soon when things settle down here (we’re selling our house and moving into a Condo. Retirement is a beautiful thing…) and that is something I anticipate with relish. I grew up playing chess, and was quite good; my father was quite well known during the 1930s and my oldest brother was a major force in chess when he was in college, but the game gave me a certain feeling of claustrophobia. When I discovered GO I was hooked. Life gets in the way, unfortunately. Ah, but retirement is a truly beautiful thing and we soon discover that the things we loved never left us, they were just waiting quietly in the shadows until we were done messing around.
Hello Mogadeet. A brief comment. Feel like we’re blood brothers; somewhat similar experience. You’ll understand if you visit my profile. Just a thought.
I wouldn’t call that a madness. As I told you, Kugutsu was (and still is a bit) based on GNUGo without using MonteCarlo Tree Search, without using Neural Network. It’s been over 3 years since I discovered GNUGo and started messing with it as an example of a well-coded C program. I learned the rules of Go as a child but never played this “pastime for old people (a common image in Japan)” seriously. As I couldn’t beat GNUGo in games, I got interested in playing Go myself. So I have started coding Kugutsu earlier than I started playing Go seriously myself.
Once my play strength came close to Kugutsu’s, I wanted to see how strong he is relative to people, and found OGS to test it. I started playing on OGS, learned ins and outs on the server, then registered Kugutsu as a bot.
As fiddling with the program intending to improve it was/is my hobby, there was no deadline to meet, so I left it as it was with very few modifications while I trained myself in Go with the way Kugutsu played as my guide. When I finally became stronger than Kugutsu in a year or two, I stopped the training and studying, and made more programming improvements to the level where I couldn’t beat him any longer. Then I re-started my own Go study.
So this seesaw improvements to my own Go playing ability and the program became a repeated cycle up to early this year when I hit a ceiling in no longer being able to make the code stronger, or most of the ‘improvements’ as I thought actually made the bot weaker (without using MCTS and/or DCNN).
In many many ways, Kugutsu has taught me how to play Go better, and in a way he is a representation of my Go career. I’d like to think Kugutsu plays more human-like than GNUGo does, and I am happy that there are others who enjoy playing him.
As one who had completed his College education before the Hewett-Packard calculator was invented (let alone the modern computer), understand that, to me, AI activity like that demonstrated by Kugutsu borders on magic. It does indeed play GO more like a person would. I notice this especially in corner-play. It is easy to forget that one is playing a machine.
I’ll be playing people soon enough. This is the first GO bot I have ever played. A part of my brain still can’t believe it is an actual machine program. When I first started playing GO the only computers were big, clunky mainframes that occupied entire floors of buildings. I remember when the TRS-80 came out with 4K of RAM (Greek Chorus goes “Ooooooh!”)! This is a new experience for me.
Sure. I understand the fascination. My comment stemmed from my own preference to play humans, but it sounds like you are having a blast as is, which is great!
as is, which is great!