I have found that programs get confused when you do things like making approach moves and not responding to the programs reply in the corner, or putting in stone in the middle of the programs extension and then ignoring its reply. Also, sacrificing small numbers of stones seems to work.

The programs seem to get confused by stones they are not sure are live or not.

Are there weaknesses of programs? Do they still work against the versions that are beating professionals?

Yes, programs have weaknesses. See Beat Elf https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16641 . Elf is one of today's top programs that beats pros.

However, the weaknesses you mention are unlikely to confuse today's top programs. In their training they have played against opponents that do those things. That is, against weak versions of themselves.

As for local life and death situations, even top bots can err, because they read the whole board. Given enough time they can solve all local life and death situations, but, depending on other options on the board that they explore, in any sufficiently complicated or unusual case they can err. There are also whole board positions where they will leave a local position undecided, because they deem it more important to play elsewhere. That doe not mean that they have made a mistake.

If you are running into all of these weaknesses, you have a program that is weak, given the conditions that Uberdude has mentioned.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

With which bots did you observe these weaknesses? Even games or handicap games? How many stones handicap, and how many playouts per move?

Bots can have weaknesses yes, but its important to also know in what kind of environment the weaknesses appear.

In a lost game, or high handicap game, the bot might just ignore and/or play random moves if it feels that there is no way to win.

For example, if the bot is loosing by 20 points, it might suicide its own group, making it loose by even more. This is because suiciding and counting are both just as sure losses in the eyes of the bot.

Not on the really strong configurations. Against regular leela and leelaz on my laptop at like 500 playouts/move at a 4 stone handicap. I would assume the programs / configurations beating top pros don't make obvious mistakes like that. However, I was wondering if plays like that might still give an advantage in causing the program to pay suboptimally. What I noticed was not usually blatant mistakes but that it would not play as well if it was confused about whether stones were live.

Regular leela has weaknesses like not understanding seki, and thinking it has territory.

I think the biggest weakness of Leela Zero wasn't mentioned: ladders, particularly at low playouts and the older networks.

Is your purpose to beat the program or to learn from it?

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

You should not make any assumptions on strengths or weaknesses when running at 4 handicap stones, the program simply is not designed to play at such handicap.
Also remember that the program is using Tromp-Taylor rules (similar to Chinese), not Japanese.

Handicap play is something that some other programs are currently trying to solve, but i do not think its currently easy to download any of them.

You may enjoy taking handicap stones from Deep Leela at https://www.deepleela.com . It is Leela 11, which is weaker than Leela Zero, but was trained on human play, so it plays handicap games in a more human manner.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Is there a way to configure deepleela not to show suggested moves for its opponent?

I would think the handicap issue would be important as a lot of people would like to play / train against a strong program, but not that many are 4D+ Japanese / US scale.

I don't know. Maybe someone here does, or you could ask.



Me, too.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

How does the programs confusion manifest itself?

_________________
Sorin - 361points.com

No not defending is not effective against programs.

Effective in your sense is playing them on obsolete hardware.

It is like binding the legs of a world class runner and then cheer because you are walking faster than the athlete.

You can not make rational conclusions if you set unrational constraints.