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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Any Go players around?

21:48 / 26.10.05

I've been playing Go for a number of years on and off at the local club and am utterly in love with the game, though I find that I don't have sufficient time in my life to devote to the study required to be truly proficient.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it is played on a 19x19 grid with black and white stones and a very simple set of rules that lead to incredibly deep and complex gameplay. A fairly good introduction to the rules is here and gobase.org has numerous other resources for learning and study of the game as well as current news from the Go community and large libraries of historical and current professional games and positions.

An interesting thing about Go is that it is extremely computationally expensive for computers to play due to the high branching factor, and consequently the strongest go playing programs play at a weak amateur level.

Due to the simplicity of the rules and complexity of their implications, it is said that if there is intelligent life on other planets, they also play Go.

22:51 / 26.10.05

I'm a huge fan of GO, and have been playing it for a few years now. Incidentally, and although a computer is never a comprable opponent to a human, this may interest you.

semioticrobotic

01:14 / 27.10.05

In my public speaking class, a student recently gave an informative speech on Go. I was very interested, as I'd never heard about this game before. I appreciated the above explanation about the reason(s) a computer doesn't play this game very well; my student mentioned this, but didn't elaborate.

06:12 / 27.10.05

The PC version I mention above plays a moderate game, and certainly the best I've ever seen a non-human opponent play, but can still be beaten. I also discovered a rather worryingly simple algorithm that guarantees a win every time, a tactic that would fail against a person.

Just out of interest, Mirror, which counting system do you prefer in GO? The Chinese or the Japanese?

06:22 / 27.10.05

i play go.
i'll admit i became quite a bit more interested in it once i found out it was more of a challenge than chess for our programmed assistants.
chess is a great game, but the fact that it can be played well by a machine definitely detracts from it's appeal.
go still has that "ah, but it's our humanity that makes it interesting" thing going for it.

its clearly only a matter of time, but it still feels like 'our' game at the moment.

13:04 / 27.10.05

I use the Japanese counting system; I've never quite understood why the Chinese system works, given that it ignores the prisoners. Also, 181 stones or whatever it is just seems like a bit too much of a "magic" number.

I don't know how accurate this is, but my A.I. professor told our class that when humans play go, a lot of the neural activity is in the visual cortex, which suggests that a lot of pattern-matching is going on for the development of large-scale strategy. Computers of course are excellent at life and death problems because that's just search.

Tezcatlipoca, do you ever play online?

I hadn't seen TurboGo before. According to the FAQ, it says it plays at about 12 kyu. I think that GnuGo is up to about 7-8 kyu these days, and there's another one from the folks who make the IgoWin 9x9 game that supposedly plays at 4-5 kyu. Computer strength is so hard to judge, though - I can beat GnuGo giving it 7 stones, but I'm ranked 4k AGA, and of course there's that famous example where Janice Kim gave a 5k program something like 30 stones and beat it by over 100 points.

The little IgoWin 9x9 game is pretty cool because it adjusts to your strength as you play it, adding or removing a handicap as appropriate. Once you get to the point where you're giving it 3 or 4 stones in a 9x9 game, it gets pretty difficult.

13:56 / 27.10.05

Is there an online Go program or website out there on the intertron?

rising and revolving

14:18 / 27.10.05

Interactive way to play go is an excellent interactive tutorial for those new to the game.

I personally play at around 14 Kyu - poor but with a solid grasp of the basics, effectively. I love the game but just don't get to play enough. As a 'game professional' it is, in my opinion, the king of all games. None of this chess bullshit with different rules for every piece - a very simple, intensely elegant rule set (Only three rules! Well, sort of ...) and the most complex and sublime game known to man. Every improvement I make in play opens a new perspective on its beauty.

Don't like playing online so much though - half the game for me is the visual, kinetic, slam of the pieces and vauge inaccuracy of placement.

Love it.

19:07 / 27.10.05

I have to agree that the kinesthetic pleasure of slate and shell on wood is fantastic. I only have a 2" table board, but my go mentor (who sadly died a bit over a year ago) had an amazing 10" thick katsura floor board. Playing on that thing was an absolute dream.

13:39 / 28.10.05

To get back to the Chinese counting thing, I found a website that described it, but I'm still a bit confused. Because you count all of the stones on the board, does this mean that it matters who fills the dame?

Also, seki is a bit confusing to me. Anyone out there who can explain how this works?

rising and revolving

16:59 / 28.10.05

Seki is basically a situation where you're in stalemate, because you both have a group that will die if (and only if) you place a piece first. So you don't, but neither do they. The groups aren't technically alive - they basically share an eye.

The logic is basically

If player A plays in the eye, then player B can play and take the group (forming a living group)

If player B plays in the eye, then player A can play and take the group (forming a living group)

Which means that neither A nor B is going to play in there, unless things get into a Ko-Fight situation.

There's a nice illustration here towards the bottom of the page of an example Seki situation.

Does that make more sense?

23:28 / 28.10.05

No, no, I know how seki works. What I'm not sure about is how seki works out with chinese counting.

23:29 / 28.10.05

Also, a nitpick but the seki will still remain unplayed during a ko fight unless it's smaller than the value of the ko.

23:33 / 28.10.05

As a follow up, I figured out how seki works with chinese counting - you just subtract the number of points in seki from the number of points on the board before dividing by two. Seems like a hassle to me.

rising and revolving

11:51 / 29.10.05

Cheers - thanks for clearing that up.

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08:03 / 23.12.05

w00t!

Go FTW!

This is the correct motorcycle!