Guess the black stones

The app Tsumego Pro actually has a “Monocolor” option if anyone wants to try something similar for themselves :smiley: There all stones are shown as white, so it’s a little bit different. Also the previews are still shown with color, so you can get a glance of the position if you want, and then open it up and do your main reading in Monocolor mode.

One good way to use it is to play through 10 problems from a pack with color (or study the previews), and then solve them all sequentially in Monocolor mode. Then you can gradually increase the number of problems you do at once to make it more difficult.

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The poll timer is up. Anyone else wants to submit their guess for this round?

@S_Alexander do you want to join in?

As to how do I come to my guesses, first, there are common joseki shapes, they are easy to identify especially those split the corner, or territory and influence balanced one. Then, there is the direction of play when one color is over-concentrated in one place, and assuming players of equal strength, some opposing force will be at play to force them. And them there are fighting shape, ponnuki, tiger’s mouth, connecting joined, or stick with cut points, and they usually imply there are attempts to split groups. And if there are jump fighting toward the center there would the force to force the jumping.

Finally, the overall global territory/influence balance, some equal exchange happened to balance them. Locate the starting moves which area do one side claimed from the opening, and what would be the response to them, their exact sequence might not be exact, but the story of their exchange should make some sense.

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I think Claire left us on “read”. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I am just waiting for if anyone wants to give it a try, and it requires some background introduction for this famous game.

If you are a history buff like me (and @mark5000), this game should be pretty familiar. It is the famous Game Of The Century, between Go Seigen and Honinbo Shusai (the last to hold the old hereditary Honinbo and Meijin title) played between 10/16/1933 - 1/29/1934, and opened the era of modern fuseki, and Go was no longer bounded by centuries of traditions.

It started with the famous 1-3-5 moves of 3-3, star point, and tengen by Go Seigen, completely unthinkable at the time (and still would be unorthodox). Consider with no komi at the time, it is certainly doable.

And by move 14, Go Seigen already build a “box” as his moyo taking a quarter of the board, with an upper right corner.

This is the point where I set this question, and it is very interesting if you only look at the white stones and black stones. Shusai literally built a box outside the black box. And this is a very clear demonstration of why the 3rd and 4th lines are considered having “fair trade”.

This is the whole game with a result of W+2 (no komi)

And it also had a famous (infamous?) tesuji at move 160


Where white just throw in inside a massive black “territory”, and disrupted the whole black groups on all sides, and black would have no good answer for. It is infamous because Shusai paused the game for over a week and said to have discussed with all his disciples, and it is believed that one of his disciples Maeda Nobuaki came up with this move. So it is also a game where Go Seigen alone fought with the whole house of Honinbo, and gave rise to his superstar status.

And finally, the scoring time for this round
:white_check_mark:@Harleqin : 8 correct x2 - 8 incorrect = 8 points
:ballot_box_with_check:@shinuito : 7 correct x 2 - 9 incorrect = 5 points
:ballot_box_with_check:@gennan : 6 correct x 2 - 10 incorrect = 2 points
:ballot_box_with_check:@Gia : 2 correct x 2 - 10 incorrect = -6 points

:checkered_flag:@martin3141 : The piXelAteD piXieS :fairy: acknowledge the thinking inside the “box” and playing on a new plane of existance. The idea of closing the upper right and a split of the bottom white group is spot on.
o( ̄▽ ̄)ブ

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Are we getting your quiz?
I need my negative points fix.

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Isn’t @Maharani next in carrying the touch?

I replied to the edited post, maybe it’s the weekend and we’ll get one tomorrow.
Unless someone else wants to post a new quiz, I suggest we wait and give Maharani this turn.

Ya, and we can have a weekend off and wait for @Maharani.

BTW, nice folding board. I haven’t seen one for a long time. Wouldn’t the split in the center make placing a stone there difficult and wobbly at the K-line?

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Alrighty :slight_smile: A high-playout KataGo (NZ rules, 7 komi) self-play game. (Don’t go through them to find it, I would consider that cheating ;P) The winrate is 50 % at this point.

18 white stones are missing. 2 points for every correctly placed white stone, -1 point for any incorrectly placed white stone :slight_smile:

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It actually arrived broken down the middle, so it’s permanently glued in the open position, no folding.

But it’s my baby goban and in my eyes it’s perfect. :slight_smile:

Cameo appearance in this thread as well

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There are 19 black stones…

Some of the folding boards are magnetic, but the stones don’t look like magnets.

Mine is magnetic, and they stay on pretty well, for now.

that explains why no wobbly problem.

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Yes. As I said, 18 white stones are missing. The marked black move is move 37.

Edited the post to add that the winrate is 50 % at this point.

My Guess

I am not confident about this one - specifically, I am confused about the upper-right black stones. These stones are close to each other but not touching, indicating to me that some sort of running battle is going on, with some room between the black and white stones. I had difficulty coming up with something that made sense to me - blacks position seems overconcentrated to me. I’m thinking there are probably some more white stones there, that explain why black played moves such as O13, but I did not know where to put them.

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My guess

I’m taking a chapter from @claire_yang and including move numbers, which helps keep things organized. It took a while, but I finally got something down that makes sense to me. Lots of tenuki.

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My guess for round #11

Summary


The starting fuseki is pretty easy to guess (still the lower-left enclosure can be any, but I feel it is loose), but the odd lower right and upper left, indicates some different sequences were played instead of common joseki with lots of tenuki. And a concentrated upper right with lots of jumping to the center as well as back R18 so far behind to protect means pretty strong white corners on lower sides. The distance between the two concentrated D16 group and H18 group, means there are stones there to cut them off, and K14 as the last move is meant to cut off the jumping running group and this separation group.

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I don't get AI 🤷‍♀️

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Gonna wait one more day to see if gennan or le_4TC want to submit solutions :slight_smile:

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