Lizzie, the interface to our AI overlords. It supports LeelaZero one KataGo.
Some of those results are quantitative - I ranked up. Iām a slow learner - largely because I mostly play correspondence games. I like playing live games in person, with a board and stones, but on a computer Iāve just never gotten into live or blitz games. The couple of times Iāve tried it, I havenāt done very well. I enjoy correspondence games because I can really take the time to read out options and make a move I feel good about. However, the downside is that my correspondence games usually take weeks or months, and learning comes slowly.
For a long time, I was playing with a friend of mine online, and we both stumbled around from ~20kyu to ~ 17kyu. However, I noticed that my skills were kind of plateau-ing. I wasnāt really learning much, I was making the same mistakes and trying the same strategies. I stumbled onto another player who was stronger than me, and found that I learned a lot more from playing them.
Once I stumbled onto the learning-from-AI technique, I stopped playing other people for over a year, and when I came back, I noticed myself playing better, and I was able to win against stronger opponents. Hereās an older game of mine from when I was 17 or 18 kyu
Hereās a game after I took that year long break to learn stuff:
For me, the main differences between then and now are qualitative. In the past, I constantly felt lost, and didnāt know what to do next. Now that I have gotten better at analyzing the board, the game has taken on more of a narrative and I know where I am in the story. Now, granted, I still get in trouble because there are so many options for what to do at each point in that narrative, and I need to get better at picking the best strategy at each point.
My problem is I discover a couple of new strategies - in my case using cut points to create forcing moves, and using light play to move quickly across the board. Those are great, but I also need to slow down and balance those with some solid connecting moves that create shape.
But - at least now I can understand WHY and how Iām making those mistakes. I look back on my old games, and I find myself cringing realizing that I was making moves where I had no idea what I was doing, and I was handing my opponent an advantage making moves that I thought ālooked cool,ā or failing to secure my territory and having big groups captured because I couldnāt pay attention to who had sente/gote.
Last year, I played a series of unranked teaching games with my friend soterios. We played something called Centaur Go - where we were both using AI training wheels, and most of the learning involved looking at the AI suggested moves, discussing which strategy each represented, and then having him pick one and play through the consequences.
Once the game was finished, I wrote up a move-by-move analysis of the game which you are welcome to read here. Itās long and dense, but it will give you a sense of the type of analysis involved. If you want to follow along, restart the game from the beginning in analyze mode, go to the top of the comments text, and then increment the moves with the text.
After I came back and played a few games, I ranked all the way up to 13 kyu. Then I lost a few games trying out new stuff/experimenting with new styles, and Iām back to 15 kyu. Just gotta get my nose to the grindstone and apply the stuff Iāve learned better, and maybe Iāll rank back up.
The Leela software I recommended does all that - and thereās an Ubuntu version
cheers
tonyb
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Worth mentioning,
This site has a link called āother resourcesā that gives a LOT of nice tips.
There is a section with software recommendation:
Link:
Cheers,
Dr. BĆØco
I still use ps.waltheri and old tesuji booksā¦
Iāve started using Ah Q Go on the bus for learning new opening stuff. Itās been quite nice. I feel stronger, but conflicted.
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