Hello BigLameBear
I really identify with your struggle to wrap your head around this tangled and complex game. The problem here is you have to “un-ask the question” – to borrow a term from Zen Buddhism.
You’re thinking about Go as a game where there is always One Right Answer. And there is a limited context where that might apply - usually in very high level games where both players have achieved a high degree of mastery.
For beginner and intermediate players, it’s much more useful to think of Go as a Choose Your Own Adventure book, where you always have 4 or 5 options available to you, with varying degrees of risk/reward and complexity attached. Choosing the appropriate fork in each part of the story then becomes a matter of
- what sort of complexity / risk are you comfortable with, and
- can you actually execute the plans you see in your mind?
The short answer to your question is that there are computer programs that will examine a given board position, and provide you with a range of responses, including what the computer thinks is the “best” response. However, these programs are complex enough that they won’t really fit on your smartphone - you’re going to be looking at desktop computer programs due to the processor/memory requirements. Here are my two favorites:
Katrain (here’s a nice OGS thread about it with images:) KaTrain: AI analysis/playing/teaching tool based on KataGo
The desktop version of Leela: Sjeng - chess, audio and misc. software
Both of these programs will give you a heatmap of possible responses to a given board position. Katrain will even provide you with a 10-move look-ahead to give you some idea of what the consequences of each move might be.
The PROBLEM is - these AI teachers are providing the beginner with very high level instruction. In the Choose Your Own Adventure metaphor, they are encouraging the beginning player to try out strategies that might be much more complex and risky than you’ll be able to understand. Katrain has some neat settings you can tweak in this regard, but - in general - it will take you some time to digest their guidance, and apply it to your own level of learning.
For me, the thing that made the biggest difference was learning to see the interactions of individual stones and groups on the board in terms of the risk and opportunity available at that moment. Think of it as learning a new language. Until you begin understanding the MEANING of various stone placements, you don’t know whether it’s time to attack, or defend, or play somewhere else. You’ll keep doing the “right things at the wrong time” and not understanding where things went wrong.
I’ve been writing these 19x19 for Beginners articles for a while, trying to help folks learn the language of the game. In order to really benefit from the teaching that these AI are going to try to give you, I would encourage you to read them and try to grasp the fundamentals of
- what are the various goals you’re trying to accomplish in the game
- paying attention to the interplay of sente / gote and knowing when breaking that order is worth the risk
- settling your stones or leaving things unsettled for a good reason
- knowing which opportunities on the board are bigger than others.
Here are the 4 articles I’ve written so far:
Hopefully, once you begin learning this new way of seeing the board, the underlying reasons for each given move will start making more sense, and you can begin to digest the lessons that the AI are trying to teach you, and be more selective about which branch of the Choose Your Own Adventure story you’re comfortable exploring.
Good luck!