Sneak Peek

daniel_the_smith · #1

Announcing: dailyjoseki.com!

For the past six months or so, I've been working on a web app in my spare time. I was hoping to have a functional beta going by congress, but it's a complex project and I'm busy.

What it will be: The website will help users memorize joseki. [But that's bad, you say? See note.]

Why am I doing this: I'm unhappy with current resources.

How will it work?: I'll post more details on that once I'm ready for people to start trying it.

Where do I get the list of joseki: They are automatically extracted from professional games (specifically, the 60,000+ games of GoGoD). This allows me to be pretty confident I won't be teaching people something stupid from Kogo's.

What the website is right now: The browse page allows you to look up josekis in my automatically generated tree. When you play the joseki on the board, you'll see some ghostly stones on the rest of the board. These stones are the average of the rest of the board when the joseki appears in professional games-- in other words, they answer the question, "What does the board look like when pros play this joseki?"

I hope you will all take a look. I still have a lot left to do, but I think it's already quite useful and I'm ready to have more than just three people look at it. It's been tested on Firefox and Chrome. I don't know how fast it will run if you all visit it at once...

Note "It's bad to just memorize joseki!!1!1!! You must understand every move!!!1!":
A) I do not prevent you from trying to understand why the moves are what they are.
B) Josekis will always be memorized in the context of one or more pro games.
C) Having something memorized should make it easier to make choices in a game: you know what a reasonable result should look like.
D) If nothing else, memorizing joseki should teach you something about shape.
E) If you use your newfound powers for evil and attempt to violently punish moves just because pros don't play them, you will lose games. You've been warned.

Li Kao · #2

You should erase the lines on the points where you render a label. Just render a board colored rectangle on top of the board.
Do you need/have permission of GoGoD for creating this?

daniel_the_smith · #3

Li Kao wrote:

Do you need/have permission of GoGoD for creating this?

Yes.

Jonas · #4

Wow the idea is awesome!

With the "sourrounding" feature it isnt just memorizing joseki, the website teaches you how/when to use a certain joseki.
But i encountered some performanceproblems f.e. when selecting A (3-4) and next the attachment F (4-4) the site slows down very much, dont know if you are able to enhance the performance a little bit more.

Also the black lines while the board is refreshing dont look good, maybe you can do something about it?

Anyways: Thanks for the great work, this is a super cool thing ~ I've added it immediately to my favorite-bar

daniel_the_smith · #5

Glad you like it

There are a few things I think I can do to speed it up a bit. And I'll be looking into the ugliness while it is refreshing, too. It runs very fast without the ghost stones but I haven't optimized it with them yet. (I just got the averaging feature bug-free a few days ago and I couldn't wait to show it!)

k1ndofblue · #6

I think this is very cool also. I look forward to the progress you are making.

On a side note (and I do not even know if it is possible) it would be cool to to see joskis for corners that have had two approch moves played against them.

Chew Terr · #7

Okay, this is really awesome. Do we get to hear a sneak-peek of any other features you're adding? What, exactly, is the eventual unlimited membership going to offer? Will there eventually be a feature to play through random common joseki? Also, the randomized witty comments are nice. =D

prokofiev · #8

daniel_the_smith wrote:

When you play the joseki on the board, you'll see some ghostly stones on the rest of the board. These stones are the average of the rest of the board when the joseki appears in professional games-- in other words, they answer the question, "What does the board look like when pros play this joseki?"

Wow, this is really great!

daniel_the_smith · #9

k1ndofblue wrote:

I think this is very cool also. I look forward to the progress you are making.

On a side note (and I do not even know if it is possible) it would be cool to to see joskis for corners that have had two approch moves played against them.

Thanks!

Use the "pass" button at the bottom and you can do that right now.

Chew Terr wrote:

Okay, this is really awesome. Do we get to hear a sneak-peek of any other features you're adding? What, exactly, is the eventual unlimited membership going to offer? Will there eventually be a feature to play through random common joseki? Also, the randomized witty comments are nice. =D

I'll say more as I get more done and/or make up my mind. There will be a "teach me a random joseki" feature. There will also be a "teach me a joseki related to one I already know" feature.

I'm not sure where you see witty comments... ? Unless I'm funnier than I think I am?

Chew Terr · **#10**

[quote="daniel_the_smithI'll say more as I get more done and/or make up my mind. There will be a "teach me a random joseki" feature. There will also be a "teach me a joseki related to one I already know" feature.

I'm not sure where you see witty comments... ? Unless I'm funnier than I think I am?[/quote]

Okay, those features are as much and more than I would have suggested, so rock on.

For 'witty comments', I just meant the goofy stuff like 'Side effects may include winning.'
edit: yes, I am easily amused. =D

daniel_the_smith · **#11**

Oh, right, yes-- duh

My talented wife did the design for me, including all the witty things.

fwiffo · **#12**

Is it possible to expand it to include side and middle-game joseki? For example:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$W $$ --------------------------------------- $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . 1 . . . . . X . . . | $$ | . . . X . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | $$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

(To continue my obsession with this opening), there are a number of standard/joseki sequences following from this.

kirkmc · **#13**

Very nice! It works fine in Safari on Mac, though the letters are not too attractive. (I'm guessing the letters look the same on all platforms.)

GoCat · **#14**

Very nice; I'm impressed. Have you considered (at some time in the future) making this into an application to sell? That is, for someone like me who has GoGoD and other pro collections, I'd buy just the application, install it onto my computer, load in my own game collections, and off I go. Personally, I think that would be nice.

daniel_the_smith · **#15**

fwiffo wrote:

Is it possible to expand it to include side and middle-game joseki?

I may work on those at a later date, but at the moment, it's only set up for corner joseki, sorry!

kirkmc wrote:

Very nice! It works fine in Safari on Mac, though the letters are not too attractive. (I'm guessing the letters look the same on all platforms.)

It was a huge pain getting the caching to work right with Safari (on my iPad), I'm glad someone appreciates it!

Yes, the letters could use some help, and yeah, they're .pngs, so the same everywhere.

GoCat wrote:

Very nice; I'm impressed. Have you considered (at some time in the future) making this into an application to sell? That is, for someone like me who has GoGoD and other pro collections, I'd buy just the application, install it onto my computer, load in my own game collections, and off I go. Personally, I think that would be nice.

Possibly, but my plan is that you would want to access the site daily to run through the list of josekis you're currently learning, and that you'll want to do so from your phone, iPad, etc., no matter where you are when you have a few minutes to kill.

Also, generating the tree takes a fairly serious computer an hour or two and uses 30gb or so of hard disk space-- that code wasn't meant to be run by anyone but me. But if there was enough interest I'd consider cleaning it up and packaging it.

Bill Spight · **#16**

Congratulations, Mr. D!

Very cool!

kirkmc · **#17**

I see no reason for it to be other than a web app.

After looking a bit more, this is clearly the best joseki tool out there. Congrats!

As for the letters, I'd say they should be a bit bolder, and if you could put shadows around them they might stand out from the board a bit more.

Li Kao · **#18**

I think only variations above a certain probability(say 1%) should get a letter and for the rest just use the same kind of marker to indicate there is a variation at all. Currently it is rather hard to find the most common variations.
And for the ghost stones you might want to use a css tilemap, that way only one (big) image has to be loaded for all of them.

k1ndofblue · **#19**

daniel_the_smith wrote:

k1ndofblue wrote:

I think this is very cool also. I look forward to the progress you are making.

On a side note (and I do not even know if it is possible) it would be cool to to see joskis for corners that have had two approch moves played against them.

Thanks!

Use the "pass" button at the bottom and you can do that right now.

That is very awesome! Thanks!

daniel_the_smith · **#20**

Li Kao wrote:

I think only variations above a certain probability(say 1%) should get a letter and for the rest just use the same kind of marker to indicate there is a variation at all. Currently it is rather hard to find the most common variations.

Good idea, I might do that.

Li Kao wrote:

And for the ghost stones you might want to use a css tilemap, that way only one (big) image has to be loaded for all of them.

Currently there are rather too many of them for that to work (they are generated on the fly by the server), but I will be reducing their number to speed things up anyway. I didn't actually realize you could do that with css, thanks.

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