I note that nowadays the easy availability of decently strong go playing software leads many beginners to rely on playing bots far more intensively than earlier generations.

I personally believe many players adapt to particular weaknesses of the program instead laying the groundwork for more steady growth. Especially when people start to give significant handicap to decently strong MC bots I really start to wonder. I tend to advise 1) playing against people otb and online 2) playing the bot on a smaller board where it does better and treat the whole thing as a reading exercise. The whole issue was fairly obvious with Igowin to most, but with a Smartgo engine on iPhone it became harder to convince people of that opinion. Smartgo isn't so obviously weak after all.

I also believe it is bad for the attitude to the game. As nobody forces you to adapt to a new handicap after winning ten games in a row, you get used to winning and playing in your comfort zone - even games with their 50% loss probability become a very difficult experience. And I believe there are people out there who in fact avoid playing against human opponents for that reason. The whole argument may change when bots become 2-3 stones stronger again, but it don't see this in the near future.

I talked a little bit about this at the end of the Chew Terr game, but here's what I think:

I think most players progression looks something like this:

• Learn rules
• play against computer or other beginner friends (maybe two friends learn together, etc)
• find club or online play

So it seems like the main concern is that players are tempted to stay to long at the second bullet before venturing out into the world of go. To beginners, I would say: find a club! play online! There are many more benefits than just the player variety: social aspect, motivation, etc. On this I think we agree.

However, I disagree about a bot being a worse opponent choice for beginners. Let's say you are in a place where there aren't many strong players (maybe there is no club in your area), and you are about 15k. Which will give you worse habits: taking 9 stones from a bot, or playing other 15k players? Weaker players will let you get away with slack moves and misreads in a way a stronger player will not, bot or otherwise.

As for attitude, I think there are players who stop at all rungs of the go ladder, and say "I'm comfortable being this good". Some do not even realize that they have stopped striving, but they have. What about players who only play free games on KGS? It's easy enough to say you're 10k (and maybe even believe it) if you're really 8k, play casual games, win 60%, and feel all is right with the world.

i agree with tapir that playing real people is superior to playing bots. i agree with you that playing bots is not much an issue

ad quotation: i think neither playing 9 handicaps nor playing 15ks is very good for a player, as first case severely changes playing style and the other doesn't motivate to improve. in my opinion best is to keep playing opponents about your level and that can be easiest achieved by playing online (and i am mostly an online player myself). otherwise i would combine the two options together, to get the better from both.

as tapir said, if you play only against one bot, you face only one possible style and become used to it, no matter how high is its level. this is equally harmful if you play only one human opponent, you fall into a stereotype.

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Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

There are also engines that play more dynamically and more "human-like", and adjust to the player's strength without making random moves just to seem weak. The "Many Faces of Go" engine for example is quite fun to play against, and I think it's actually a good choice for a beginner as you don't have to take a huge handicap in order to stand a chance (and don't learn how to play even games).

The plain MC engines, like SmartGo on iOS features, play very much like a computer and I would agree that they are not suited for beginners, if only because they are bound to offer a fairly frustrating experience. (Just to clarify, I love SmartGo Kifu on the iPad, and feel it's a marvelous product, but I'd not use it to play Go against.)

I disagree with the comments on handicap. Taking handicap is very beneficial, 1st you don't get the wrong conclusion that you have to develop fuseki preferences 2nd all the stones are placed perfectly, 3rd you soon recognize it is a game about living and dead groups, 4th you see your progress. What I was talking about was beginners who soon give handicap to the bots they play, but only in part because of general playing strength but because they developed some overadaptation to bot play, sometimes amazing amounts such as giving Smartgo 4 or 5 stones on the 13x13 board.

I'd like to meet a beginner who can give a MC engine four or five stones and win. You added the limitation to 13x13, but even on that size I don't see how this can happen without a player picking up quite a bit of tactics on the way -- and then they're no longer a beginner and probably have gained decent fighting skills.

To exploit the weaknesses, you have to know them, which requires playing a lot and experimenting with your moves and the computer's responses. This also makes the player stronger. Plus, bots don't all play the same, at least the ones that have been "customized" and aren't just MoGo in different packaging.

I'm not saying that bots should be preferred to human opponents, or that playing only against computers helps to gain well-rounded experience, but I don't see it as harmful. In some ways, especially with fighting in mind, I think they make good, patient sparring partners, and there are no "online gaming anxiety" issues either, or having to find a suitable opponent.

I think that also giving handicap (also to bots) is a necessary experience. I had been very weak at giving handi stones, and by giving a bot like Aya six to nine stones helped me overcome a bit this extreme weakness.

I get the impression people don't believe me. And don't forget that I didn't talk about people, who have much knowledge already and have to experient to get out the best result against the differently playing bot, but about people who learn by playing bots (that is the bot that comes with the software they use) and according to bot style without much outside input. Don't they pick up w/ tactical skills some rather disturbing bot knowledge in the general approach to the game that may hamper their future growth and that may be hard to forget later?

Hopefully, I am just overprotective.

I don't think that it's a matter of people not believing you, it's just that it's difficult to ascertain the extent of the problem. How many people actually learn by playing the bot that came with the software they use? If you go so far as to buy go software, don't you usually have plenty of prior go experience? And what exactly are the bad habits one acquires from the bot? Have you seen evidence of people making particular it-works-against-my-bot mistakes?

My personal experience with bots was that I played them fairly often in the beginning when games against real people seemed too stressful, and I was utterly thrilled when I first beat one. Shortly thereafter however, I pretty much stopped playing them altogether. Before that though, I was often amazed how some bots, particularly gnugo, would exploit weaknesses in what I had assumed to have been rock-solid positions. Seemed like a good learning experience.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I played TurboGo quite a bit before I ever played a human, but by the time I played humans I was still so weak it was hard to say if I had learned anything worse than just being weak.

As for bad habits, there are three I can think of that might come from playing gnugo, altohugh I don't know whether these are still problems in current versions. The first is that gnugo used to be very bad at recognizing when its groups were being surrounded from a distance, so as long as you didn't get too close, it was pretty easy to kill a group or two. It also misplayed josekis that depended on ladders, so it was possible to look up something in Kogo's where it says "black must have the ladder to play this way" and you could get it to play that way even if the ladder wasn't working. Finally, there is this crazy strategy of playing shoulder hits against every corner move that's described in this thread.

I know better than to try the ladder trick and the shoulder hit thing against humans or non-gnugo bots. Loose surrounding still kind of works a little too well aganist weaker players, but not against equally matched or stronger players. Maybe it can be classed as the kind of bad habit where one plays as if giving a handicap.

On the whole, I'm not sure playing modern bots is any worse than any other restricted set of opponents. I've noticed that some of the MC bots don't play contact moves as often as many humans, so they may not prepare you so well to play against the class of aggressive players who are tsuke-crazy and like to start a fight everywhere.