Well, my counts are also wild-assed guesses

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be immersed

I think several things.

The most common and useful application of this is hamete. You could do a kgs database survey of what rank failure lines turn up in games and what your record is against that rank otherwise.

In this thread we're talking about demonstrably refutable moves. Not active moves, which would be difficult but possible seeming.

We actually do this in handicap games already with classic handicap tricks/unreasonableness that we think will work.

Playing our best, we are striving to always play the strongest move on the board, not one with an apparent failure instead. I don't mean anything silly by the word strongest.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Odds are only a simple form of statistic, and they tend to give statistics bad names in poker. An interesting poker statistic, is what is the probability of winning consecutive pots, it does't take genius to figure out that if you could calculate that, you could use that information to help predict a bluff, of course battle field statistics are a different ball game, and calculating more sophisticated odds, could be tricky.

Indeed, it seems to come down to this. I have to admit, I have never understood the camp not having the goal of winning. If you are not trying to win, what are you doing?

Sometimes people say they want to play beautiful games. If that's the case, why not play in random, yet pretty looking spots?

I suppose motivation for playing the best possible move might be to enhance your personal understanding and search for truth in the game.

Perhaps that's a good goal to have.

Thanks for sharing.

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be immersed

Sorry, are we talking about playing the most actively to have a chance to catch up when behind (which would be totally standard for everyone) or are we talking about making (over)plays that we have read definitely fail, when behind?

I play for beauty and the most beautiful move is the most functional one I can find, whether I'm ahead or trying to catch up.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

I am talking about playing stuff that should not work, and probably wouldn't work if you played it against yourself. But for whatever reason, you think that it will increase your chances of winning the current game.

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be immersed

I think this question has to do with morality. Should one try his best if the people around them can't tell the difference? Lacking that expert knowledge and having good faith sets the victim in vulnerable position. Media is ridden with stories how some famous person or organization has acted in immoral ways trusting that the possility of being exposed and punished is small. Resulting reputation loss is harsh, but as we gamblers call it "probably +EV".

I find this talk about probability odd on Go forums, though. Go is a game of perfect information, which should make swindles difficult. I play moves that look like they are leading to favorable outcome. Good reading contains built-in principle of charity - in fact the player who thinks that his opponent is going to choose poor line isn't a strong Go player in the first place! Just like you're not a good conversationalist by accepting strawman version of your partner's argument, as the principle of charity suggests. Many of the mistakes I recognize after game are the type where I thought my opponent would play different move. It's easy to understand oriental notion of no-self here. Each move stands on its own qualities and it's not necessary that there even is an opponent to trick.

Very nice thread you started Kirby.

I think about this differently.

If I'm behind but feel the game isn't lost, what that must mean is that statistically I am not the winner. I don't resign (unless I'm really demoralised). I try the most appealing (ie highest probability success I guess) strategy that can get me back in front, or be a step on the path there ("and I'll try really hard in endgame"). Breakfast calls this "choosing to play more actively" (where choosing to play needlessly actively while you are ahead is a mistake).

If I can't see anything to try and feel like I'm down too much to recoup in endgame, I resign (or if it's a capturing race I'm down one liberty on, I play it out and then resign).

I don't play defensively like I'm winning when I'm not winning.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

This is a very fascinating statement. I suppose minimax algorithms have their place for a reason. If you made a program to search board positions, ignoring the fact that the opponent could play the strongest line of play, it'd be a pretty lousy program indeed.

Thinking along the lines of computer programs, it would be cool to make a computer program capable of doing two things:
1.) Classifying moves in local scenarios based on similarity.
2.) After playing the same person multiple times, start to learn a probability distribution of moves that that particular person might make against a given local position.

It would probably be difficult to accurately do either of these, but if it were to work out well, the computer could, given a board position, match it with positions from the training data, and come up with a probability distribution of possible places the opponent may play if the computer were to play at a given intersection.

If the program could evaluate the value of a board position, it could then select the move that gave the best value based on the probability distribution of opponent responses vs. the resulting board value.

I think minimax is cooler than this, however, since it seems closer to a program that is "seeking the truth".

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be immersed