Fine by me, but the point remains though that it is a preposterous proposition.
No arguement there, but while pros and high dan players have the knowledge and skill in the game to potentially understand and gain new insights from the AI moves, most of the Go playerbase doesn’t have the required skill to gain benefits that outweight the AI inscrutability, unless you have a high-dan teacher that uses AI and the teacher explains the AI moves to you.
What makes them doubful is whether they are the currently optimal moves, but there is no doubt that they still remain good moves which most amateurs would still struggle to come up with in their own games.
Yes, some openings have fallen out of style because the AI found a “solution” to them in the highest levels of the game, thus such trends have trickled down to the rest of the playerbase. However that does not mean that most players know of such solutions or the can remember them during the course of a live game.
I would recommend to any person that want to play/learn the game to experiment with all kinds of openings and ideas and see which one fits their own style and way of thinking. The main goals for an amateur are usually fun and enjoyment. Therefore whether those ideas are optimal or not, according to the current pro scene or the current AI suggestions, is irrelevant for non-dan level players, which obviously includes any new players/students of the game.
Since the topic is about teaching efficiency, then this is a sector that we should eventually focus, helping the student derive more fun and joy from playing the game, instead of quibbling about optimising point efficiency. Humans are not AI.
The AI plays the game because it has to.
We don’t.
Each player/student has a reason for playing and people rarely play a game out of obligation and if they do, they rarely enjoy it and learn it well, anyway.
I said “any person that want to play/learn the game” which obviously includes them as well. Also I belong in that category and I’ve tried those openings myself and more (like the Kobayashi fuseki) in the various “test this idea” phases that I had. And if they so like, they can try weird ideas of their own, if that fits their style.
So, it would have been quite odd if I didn’t suggest something that I happily tried myself and had a lot of fun doing
Well my intention was not to engage on the validity and universality of this advice. But let’s bring some more on this.
You have students like 6-2k. In your own judgement it seems that their games lack mostly of consistency. Their opening are quite erratic too and they seek for advices. So you establish that if they have a way to simplify it (I know what I have to do and I could win if I manage it correctly) and consequently a way to get a better self evaluation of the subsequent middle game, that could help them greatly.
Now what do you do when now AI go says sanrensei is dumb?
Please I’m not interested in a “everyone play as he wants” answer. They seek a specific advice here.
In which case: a) I try to provide them with ideas and pointers on their own games, b) I seek out feedback from them on what they were thinking when they played this move instead of a different move and provide them with some move suggestions and listen, consider and discuss their responses to those suggestions c) I’d try to reset the board in various positions and have them play it out again, with me, and see if some new idea arises without the stress of time and victory being present in their thought-process or if my suggestions work better for them or see if the other students have any feedback while we are trying these replays, if this is a “real life presence class”.
There are so many fun things to do while teaching a game. And when it comes to teaching, if you cannot make the “lesson” interesting and engaging, then it usually doesn’t stick with the students. They will space out and rightfully so.
Compare that to “aaaah and now let’s see what the AI would have played”.
Turning the teacher in to a parrot and the students into “audience of a man that recites words from what is basically a Go teleprompter”. Boring! For them and, worse of all, for me too.
And if they ask me “why did the AI play this variation?” what will I say when the AI is stronger than a 9-dan pro and I am not even an amateur dan player?
If you do not understand it either and you cannot explain it to your own self, then you cannot teach it to others. Simple as that.
So the answer is: “Nothing”. The students are human and I think that the “parrot the AI” concept sucks the fun out of the game (or teaching), especially when I, myself, cannot 100% explain the AI moves to them.
Noone should care at that level about what the “AI says”.
I’m not sure you got my question.
a)b)c) are included already in the suggestion, that’s not the point in fact. And I didn’t considerate any boring activities using AI.
I suggest a student to follow for some time an influence strategy with a classical opening strategy, so that he can get easy to find and concise materials to use from the beginning. How are your teaching advices related to my question?? When you direct to pointers on how the game should proceed (those sanrensei books with their basic josekis and how to get a big moyo) the student can proceed himself afterwards his evaluation, if he failed and consequently help detecting what to improve. For example white who should come first in your moyo lived too easely. Or like you put enough pressure but didn’t use well the newborn influence to inflict greater damage. Furthermore it trains to stay on tracks during a whole game, not staying confused by strategic fundamentals over his head. Note that I’m not saying that a sanrensei or a Chinese fuseki is something easy to play either at all, it just less worry about the opening stage, so a differed focus as usual.
Why talking about parroting the AI again? What do you mean by “nothing” as an answer? Do you have any alternative as the simplistic outdated influence fusekis so as to alleviate the minds and guide the student through the building of a game?
Waltheri or AI may be useful for advanced players who already know opening principles, but low SDK/DDK players would benefit more by studying books about the opening or by listening to a human teacher, who can explain with sentences rather than with sequences.
Remembering something is considered a lower level educational goal (e.g. according to the revised version of Bloom’s Taxanomy, where remembering is the lowest level). Therefore, being able to replay some pro openings can be considered a lower level goal too. It stops being helpful once your opponent deviates enough, which can happen very quickly.
And I think Waltheri doesn’t help much with higher level goals, as it only answers a very limited range of questions (what was played, by whom and when).
So using different approaches (like discussing opening theory) to aim for other kinds of goals should not be neglected.
(AI is different than Waltheri, as it can provide judgment for alternative moves, which can somewhat help with higher level goals too.)
On the one hand, yes, by itself. Remembering is kind of like step 1.
That said though, being able to recall an idea or a plan might be a big advantage over someone that hasn’t even come across such a plan.
For instance you might see a pro try out a move, and and when you try it, the opponent blunders in response.
We don’t even have to go to pro games, to see an example. Think of the monkey jump: the first time a player plays a monkey jump against you, you probably lost a huge amount of territory, I mean I did. It’s quite hard to come up with the perfect answer if you’ve never dealt with it before. So being aware something exists means you have an extra resource to try to apply, which is further up the taxonomy.
It might be more reliable also than purely trying to create without any experience.
Edit: I guess my point is, there’s more to remembering than just memorising. You can have reasons to try to remember something other than to play exactly the same pattern that comes up in a game, which is the usual shade learning joseki gets from amateur plays explaining things.
I think you can use any tool you want for any number of outcomes, especially for leaning Go.
You can use Waltheri to memorize basic opening patterns and sequences and then replay them until your opponent makes a mistake, then you’re “by default winning” at that point,
you can use it to compare the next 5-15 moves between your game and the pros game to see how the outcome is more “even” in a pro game and yours isnt,
you can use it to explore higher concepts like “whites plan with the first 2 moves is to secure fast territory by playing the double 3-4, which is what I did… however I tried to play for influence while the pro made fast and solid groups and then invaded. I didn’t do that… so that must mean…”
etc etc.
The point about Waltheri is that it’s like a choose your own adventure book, unlike a structured beginners book. You need some fundamentals in the first place to use it well enough. I don’t recommend it if you’re below 15k or so.
Anyway, to answer the original question… If you want my overall opinion on how to best teach Go, it’s to just give people a ton of options for studying and let them pursue the ones they enjoy most. I loved tesuji and the opening, and I barely studied life and death (i hate doing life and death problems). I know a few who only studied life and death problems and made it to dan. There’s also people who never study and just play and play and make it up there too.
Whatever keeps you playing and enjoying your time is the path you should take. If a hobby becomes a chore then you’re doing it wrong.
You can use Waltheri to discover the corner-sides-center opening principle, by observing that pros follow it in most games.
But you can’t use Waltheri to understand the principle. You can come up with an explanation for it by yourself and maybe it’s correct, but Waltheri doesn’t help with that (beyond discovering the principle).
I agree, and it’s good that you’ve pointed it out, I think it wasn’t said in this thread before.
One valuable resource* IMO is In-seong Hwang’s lecture How to improve:
He provides a list of Elements of Go strength:
Knowledge
Pattern (Joseki)
Opening Formation (Fuseki)
Typical Tsumego and shapes
Reading
Reading Imagination
Reading Intuition
Reading Accuracy
Territorial intuition
Pick “points” moves
Counting ability
Balance ability
Technical intuition
Find the right moment to play sharp moves
Chop, weaving, squeezing
Strategy
Actively leading the game
Apply theories into game
Mind control
Remove bad habits
Keep the concentration
Control the game / tempo
Game experience
Gain practical power
Get more background knowledge
Find the connection between real cases and theories
And he defines different player styles based on which of these elements a player uses in their games. E.g the street fighter type’s strengths are technical intuition, game experience and reading, while the philosopher type’s strengths are strategy, knowledge and territorial intuition.
Then he claims that players get stuck due to:
Lack of abilities (e.g. too weak reading ability), which is often wrongly believed to be the reason for being stuck; it can be overcome by improving those abilities
Wrong approach, which In-seong believes to be the reason for most players that are stuck; it can be overcome by changing the style of play
My interpretation of this is, that at some point it becomes almost futile to work on something a player is already strong at, compared to players of a similar level. If you have dan-level reading, but terrible territorial intuition and strategy, improving you’re reading even more won’t help, because your opponent will just take big points and simplify the board so you can’t make use of your superior reading.
So a player has to change their style at some point, to explore different aspects of the game and work on those. It might take some time to actually gain an advantage by doing so (because one makes less use of their strengths), but at some point it will lead to a rating jump.
What I’m wondering about now is, why In-seong emphasizes the change of style and why he doesn’t just say “you have to work on your weaknesses”. Maybe it’s because of limited ressources: In a game one can’t read, read, read like always and focus on something new too.
*thanks @Shinuito for pointing me to it again recently
And if anyone wants to learn from In-seong himself, he has an online go school: yunguseng.com
I think it’s probably that you can’t always know your weaknesses, but your style is more of a catch all thing, it encompasses a lot of other parts of your play.
I think when you change your style it can show up weaknesses you weren’t aware of, weaknesses in fighting or invading, just by what goes wrong when you change to a territorial style or moyo style or fighting style etc
Maybe, but In-seong looks at strengths and weaknesses first. Probably it’s not hard for him to figure them out for his students with all the experience he has.
Sure but at the same time he also needs some games to review, so you try something different you make some new mistakes, then you get something new to be told to fix.
Boring! For them and, worse of all, for me too.
