I spent most of today painting my kitchen before trying to get one game in. As usual, my handicap melts away between moves 60 and 90. This was played against MFoG at 3 kyu, 5 handicap, 30 minutes each. I lost by 1.5 points. If anyone isn't too annoyed by my frequent requests for instruction, I would appreciate any criticism. In general, I'm pretty sure that I should have found some way to connect to the center, though. Edit: Maybe 110 at M9? (Oh, I forget who suggested it, but I really started playing igowin, and I can win with black without a handicap but not white, yet. So I know I need to work on reading positions, rather than reading Go books but I enjoy it so much! )

Hi William,

( Good news: a quick scan up to shows
most of your mistakes are in the basics: basic shapes,
basic tesujis. )

On you decided not to fix the C15 cut,
which means you must have a plan in place if W cuts,
which W did immediately on , which brings us to...

Please find a better move for .

Also, by not fixing the cut on ,
you also give W the option to clamp at B14 —
did you also have a plan in place for this clamp ?

Find the correct local move instead of .

Can you see that gives W two elephant eyes to choose ?

Where can W play on to make a toothpaste broken shape for you ?
See Toothpaste .

If you can find the toothpaste for ,
then what is the correct local move for ?

The counter-atari is not right (also a bad habit).
Can you find the correct local move for .

Hi Ed,

I really need to slow down!! I should have played c14, and if White connects at d15, d13 ladders White, arghhh. If White had played at b14 instead of c15, isn't c14 good for Black? Then again, if White responds with c13 I guess that I would lose all of the outside influence, so c12 was just bad. f18? Yeah, I allow elephant eye split way too often. Should I have tried a diagonal approach above or below? Or maybe jump out to p14? Thank you for your help!

Edit: o2? So, I should have played o2? On I didn't like extending to m3 because of p2, or connecting at p2. Would p2 really be better?

Some thoughts

Hi William,Correct on both: basic ladder, basic atari-threat.

Hi topazg,

A lot of good lessons for me in your comments, thank you! Your second White move 3 leads to just the sort of position I used to allow playing against 6-kyu at 4 stones. at n4 now looks obvious after showing it to me, thank you. I should have slowed down to read! I get in the bad habit of playing too fast because MFoG typically plays almost instantly. Your final comment: I have trouble leaving the edge. It seems one of my urgent flaws to work on. Thank you for your very helpful comments!

A few comments more.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hi Bill,

Thank you for more lessons! I just woke up and clicked through quickly, but I will look more carefully after my coffee is ready.

BTW, is it possible to download annotated games? I always get an error message. And trying to load the eidogo link in a new window is just blank.

Thank you again for all of the times you have endeavored to help me. Some day these lessons might even sink in!

eidogo's download button isn't working for me either, but if you quote Bill's post you can see the sgf embedded. Just copy and paste into a plain text file and rename to .sgf, should work fine.

Excellent! Thank you!! Now I can go back and download all of the comments I have received in order to look at them at my leisure.

Now that I have finished putting a second coat of paint in the kitchen (it's hard to cover smoke, even after scrubbing with ammonia), cleaned my gutters out, fixed the patio screen, trimmed my neighbor's tree (actually, no one living there, and it was hanging over my fence and strangling my dwarf apple tree), and mowed the grass, I think that my alpha overlord (see Paul Erdös for reference; come to think of it, although he called children epsilons, he called women bosses and men slaves) will allow me some peace to better study my game comments.

Congrats. Very productive.

Yeah, I can't wait to go back to teaching next month so I can get some rest.

The more I look at this game the more I dislike MFOG 12 3kyu as a teacher (I have no real experience with MFOG 12 except with its 1 dan level).

The problem here is that it is far from easy to weaken a MCTS based program without making it erratic or completely dropping an modification (like whatever is done for ladders). So either erratic or a systematic (blind spot) weakness.

I had an exchange with Fotland suggesting an alternative, think of it as "slider" where levels between top MCTS level and some AI level (the AI can play at about 6 kyu) be a probability applied at each move which evaluator to use (sometimes use the MCTS evaluator and sometimes the AI's). He replied that this would likely be less erratic and more human like but would be very hard to calibrate (the "slider" as probability went 0 -> 1 unlikely to be linear).

You might need to be taking 8 stones against the top level and try to work your way down from there.

PS: Even the top level sometimes behaves unlike a human but that might be because we humans aren't entirely rational players. I can generally tell close to the end of a game against MFOG 12 whether I am certain to lose by a few points or have the game in the bag by how the program plays.

Hi Mike,

Well I haven't played MFoG since that game, but I think that I am close to bumping it up to 1-dan and taking 9 stones. Especially if you think that its play will be more consistent. (Of course, I expect it to consistently beat me!)

On the other hand, I may create a new KGS account and lie about my level (say 8-9 kyu) in order to get some games in against humans. (At my rank of 20 kyu there never seems to be any high DDKs, or even low DDKs, online when I try for a game.)

Actually, I would love to play some unrated games or teaching games against some stronger players. (I say unrated so that they wouldn't worry about losing rating points by giving me too many handicap stones. I'm sure playing against MFoG has given me an inflated sense of my strength, but I just use it to measure my progress without worrying about exactly what level I may have reached. If you ask me, I still think that I am a DDK!)

Have you tried asking in the L19 room? I will play you a teaching game

I've never been in the L19 room! I would love a teaching game!! I'm available any day from 08:00-15:00 CDT (13:00-20:00 GMT) for a game. If you or anyone else (including other DDKs!) want to meet for a game, just pm me to set up a day and time so that I can arrange for my wife to go shopping.

Edit: BTW, I don't know exactly how teaching games work, but I have a Skype account if it would be helpful.

If you lose this game, it looks like it would be on the left-hand side. Here you are playing out miai on the bottom. Basically this is a premature decision. Fix up the left now, because there may not be a chance later.

Here it is, trouble.

You outnumbered White 3 to 1 on the lower side, but didn't gain sente. How did that go? is trying to get both sides of the miai but this goes at O2, making the White stones look like aji keshi. now has to be at P2, take sente and play around D9. needs to connect the ko and fight towards , but the position is already troublesome because you got spread too thin,

Hi Charles,

Thank you for pointing out some of my mistakes. Perhaps it is time for me to go back and reread Shape Up! After learning the rules from Teach Yourself Go, I raced through Shape Up! and obviously didn't absorb everything that I could have from a more thorough study.

I shall ever endeavor to improve, though the results be ever so meager.

Another possibility (at least worth trying)

Unlike may of these programs, even the "consumer version" of MFOG includes "time management". So for the MCTS levels of play, the absolute strength isn't what is marked (1 dan or 3 kyu) but varies with the amount of time and the hardware.

See what happens if you continue to use the 3 kyu level change the time control so the program has 60 minutes instead of 30. The point is that although likely to be only slightly stronger that increase might be from a largish reduction in erratic moves.