Having an AI besides you in a game is just like having sAI help out in Hiraku no go.

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Quotable

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I'm the same way; going through a problem set and feeling the progress is a nice experience, but every time I stumble on a problem, it generates a disproportionately negative response.

I used to be really into competitive video games, to a point where I read meta books on learning, improving, about the mentality of winners, formed a practice regime and some such nonsense. It took an immediate toll on my mental health, as anything that goes unmoderated can, but one everlasting consequence of that endeavor is also that I don't really, truly enjoy activities involving competition. This is because those activities, in course of time, were boiled down to their binary results: success or failure. Not a very thrilling matter, is it? Go has a social aspect to it that I appreciate - after joining a club and meeting familiar faces every week, it's been a pleasure to try my wits against others, but having recently decided to participate in some ranked tournaments, I can feel the pressure mounting again and it's not great.

On a positive side, I've developed a great appreciation for sportsmanship, dedication to craft and general strive for improvement. In my view, utilizing any sort of artificial assistance to increase the likelihood of winning should not be condoned. It's not hard to be a stickler with a problem like this at hand ('what about coffee!?'), but fairness in competition is something to strive for I think.

Cheating online, without cameras, is not exactly a trivial matter, but more of a time consuming exercise in planning rather than some sort of an ultimate heist for glory. As long as the investigatory process is based on statistics, all one has to do is outnumber the committee.

I just read this interesting report from the Chess world: https://www.chess.com/news/view/life-ti ... r-cheating

I found surprising how persistent the cheater was.

Also, interesting that he was caught on camera, there is a video in the article.

Banned for life.

_________________
Sorin - 361points.com

Oddly enough, I am most indifferent to getting the correct answer in a go puzzle*. It's little different to sudoku with added go nutrients.

The two main points I really care about is:

1-Whether I tried to the best of my ability, i.e. trained to failure for progressive overload.
2-The kind of problem: more creative, or everyday? The journey of the problem really holds the pleasure as delves into the mind of the composer as they would with a piece of music.

*Is the connotation of 'problem' really OK?

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Maybe it's a matter of caring. To me, solving a go problem/puzzle is very different than sudoku. In the latter case, I've invested little study, so I don't care if I don't do well at a sudoku problem.

To give another example, someone recently taught me a game called "Pente" on the go board. I played against them, and tried hard to win. I feel I played decently (I caught 4 of their pieces, and you need 5 to win), but I still lost. I didn't feel that bad. Pente is not a game where I've invested time in my life to study. It's not something I associate an identity with.

Go, in contrast, is a game where I've invested study time. It's a game that I identify with. So if I play a game and lose, it means a lot to me. It's not that pleasant. I feel that I've lost in a game related to my identity. Some of the time I spent studying the game gets put into question.

With sudoku, pente, even chess - I can try hard to play the game. It's fun. But if I lose, I don't feel as bad.

_________________
be immersed