Unbelievably, I won the London Open!

Here are my game records. I've only added a few comments and haven't checked with AI yet. My memory is not so good anymore so I have recorded the ko fights and endgame in the wrong order.

The 89 "probably better" vs Podpera was the one I was talking about (as I think centre access more important than one stone half-captured). But on further inspection even better is j6!

I went to the 3rd European Grand Prix Finale in Leksand, Sweden last week, having been told I qualified with my London Open result, despite never hearing about it before. I was excited to meet and play against European pros for the first time even if I expected to lose all my games.

However it seems my results were the talk of the tournament as no-one had heard of me before and it didn't seem to fit my 4d rating. Beating two European pros surely trumps winning the London Open! It is unbelievable I finished 4th/16 in a field of 6d-3p.

Game 2 is the only game that wasn't live-streamed, and I've added a few comments and variations overall.

Games 3 and 5 were reviewed on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/europeangofederation

I won the corona masters league B of 5d european players, but have lost all my league A games (EGF academy) so far. not so great.
I just played katago on my home PC, with 20 playouts per second and 10 seconds per move. I won a 5 stone handicap game where I was scared for the life and death of a big group of mine for most of the game, trying to make eyes while being chased into the centre, but analysis says I was leading by 30 points and eventually kg overplayed trying to kill after I made a ko for life and it ignored my ko threat and I killed a big surrounding group. Then I wanted to try an even game, below. lost by 18.5 points (I can win the last point ko) which isn't so bad.

This is somewhat surprising considering my long losing streak (20 games ish) to bots on kgs. but its probably because the game entered endgame very quickly with no fighting, and the low numbers of playouts. The majority of the margin was lost in the endgame. I'll probably try again more in future



it says leelazero, but I changed the engine to katago 1.4.5 40 block

About move 35, the solid extension at D8 after White attaches and draws back - this is the second time I've seen this move. Instead of this move, I know the solid connection at C9 and extending up at E9.

I think C9 doesn't give White a good move on the second line, but it's weaker towards the center. And E9 is strong in the center but leaves a cut at C9 or an attachment at B10.

But under which circumstances is D8 a good move? It still leaves the attachment at B10 and is also less strong towards the center. It does make a tighter connection to the wall below but was there a danger of White invading inbetween?

Thank you.

D8 was a move i've seen AI play, but in this case kg said it wasn't good and C9 or E9 were good. if E9, i know that black normally has to sacrifice if white cuts even with the big wall, even if the stones were one space closer to the wall, but it might be marginally different when the cutting point is at F4 rather than E4.

D8 was played by AI when black's wall was just with E4 extend and white keima F2. The key is to defend the central weakness with one move and not give the opponent ways to make shape while reducing black's area whether in the centre or side. It is more a move to make life cleanly.

presumably its overconcentrated in this game and hence a bit too gote. This maybe means both that it was more valuable for black to spend more moves to secure the territory and also that if white got moves to reduce (the centre vs C9 or the cut if E9) then black at least didn't have to worry about the safety of the group. In the game it felt noticeably worse than either C9 or E9 especially when I connected up to the upper left and when white clamped in the lower left, but perhaps that is just because KG played to counter it and make it look bad. D8 itself lost only a little from the analysis. In conclusion, I suspect that D8 looks good if black can get the B3 hane or something like that, or if the C12 group is weak.

I found it interesting how powerful G3 is against the white wall on the right, even though KG didn't suggest it in this position, it didn't lose points either. my direction in the upper right however was judged incorrect and I should have taken sente blocking on the other side to attack with the cut in the lower right, since I had already set it up with G3.

I won a 2 stone game, but the AI played so many bizarre moves that aren't at all suggested by KG or leelazero, so I wonder if I've somehow messed up the settings and it is a weak leelazero playing in disguise? Does anyone know how the lizzie AI works?

I don't know how Lizzie uses the AI, but I prefer playing AI using Sabaki. You can configure multiple engines (e.g., using different configuration files) and in its Engine Sidebar you can see the GTP dialogue. After starting an engine, you can set it as the Black player, White player or Analyzer. I just find it more transparent than Lizzie.

Another interesting option is to play against Golaxy on 19x19.com (not lifein19x19.com ). After registering you can play against one of 37 levels; the kyu levels are somewhat erratic but the dan levels look rather human-like (now that humans strive to play exactly like an AI anyway).

I've just tried out sabaki, but it doesn't seem to allow me to play against AI. When i do F5 as in the tutorial, it is always engine vs engine even when I set the players. furthermore when I ask the engine to make a move, it can play on where a stone has already been played or other bizarre moves, and most of the time plays the move in the position two moves before the current leading to many new branches of a game ...

so I thought I would use lizzie still, with suggestions turned off, but using analysis mode so that I am sure it is katago. I gave kg 10-30 seconds at 20 playouts/seconds

so vs katago 1.4.5 40s509 (40 block) for real this time. I lost by 11.5 in a 2 stone game. It felt worse than that, but I guess I lived with my main groups. I didn't do a good job in the opening, which felt like my main problem this game. my supposed attack ending up leaving all my groups weak

also, I finally won a league A game, killing a big group in my opponents area, when they had played too many (4 ish) 2nd line moves to reduce my moyo.

After setting up the engines (see hidden screenshot 1), I open the Engine Sidebar (from the Engines menu).

I create a new game with the desired number of handicap stones. (I don't change the player settings.)

At the top left of the Engine Sidebar there is a circle with a triangle. Clicking it lets you start the engine of your choice (screenshot 2). The engine appears underneath the circled icon.

I then right-click the engine line. In the context menu, I choose "Set as White Player" (screenshot 3), then "Generate Move". It makes a move and when you respond, it should automatically continue to make moves.

When I'm finished, I choose "Detach" from the same memu.

To analyze a position (Lizzie-style, with the blue move, green moves, percentages etc,) you can choose "Set as Analyzer" from the context menu.

This fine-grained control is also useful if you want to play against the AI from a given position. Just go to that position, choose "Set as White Player", "Generate Move" and have it play against you from that position.

Glad to learn you are in the EGF academy.

back in PETC
won my first game comfortably, added my short AI-less review, and also AI review which mostly supported some of my opinions on the mistakes we both made.

So far, I've only added (lots of) kg's variations in the opening at around 1k playouts



edit (20201121): updated sgf with variations at 100k playouts. I found bteuber's google cloud shell code to run leelaz on cloud gpu. It works very nicely and I even added my own code to make it work with the latest katago (on my github dhu163). It costs around £0.70 per hour.

the most solid game I've had so far. I didn't attack while's weak centre group so well and made a mistake early on, but overall it felt like I had a solid control of the game the whole way though.

I thought I gained in endgame, but apparently I lost points ...

edit(20 Dec: in trying to understand how I lost 10 points in the endgame, I added lots of AI variations. It seems obvious in hindsight.).

A complete mess of a game. From the AI a good proportion of the first 100 moves lose 5 points or more. Partially this is because it was a complicated fight over big areas and groups, but also poor play from both sides.
I started with a joseki I was familiar with and my opponent fell into my trap and I was 4 points ahead at move 47. I proceeded to play completely the wrong refutation and got 4 points behind from move 48. I thought B's shape was so bad on the right I was shocked he didn't defend but when I attacked I got into trouble, missing a shape point at the middle of 3 stones to defend my shape to allow capturing his cutting stones and I thought I had a winning chance. My tight kosumi in the game simply got captured, I couldn't capture the cutting stones and my outside was low on liberties. Despite taking over his lower right 4-4, it was a mess.
I felt behind the whole game from this point but apparently it wasn't so bad and I was ahead a good deal for most of the game until the very end when I shouldn't have tried to kill everything in his lower right. I was ahead by 24 points at the end since my opponent totally misplayed the 1000 year ko wasting ko threats and giving me more threats. Note this AI analysis does contradict much of my post game comments on the britgo website.

I was surprised you didn't cut outside for 34 or later as I thought that was the joseki, but presumed it was some newer variation than my knowledge that you had researched.

>I trained hard for this game, expecting Rob Van Zeist....

Out of interest, what kind of training do you do (if you don't mind giving away your pre-match secrets?).

I watched this game live and it looked really chaotic, and White in particular looked incredibly busy trying to patch up/defend whilst trying to take points. As a spectator, I enjoyed the way you did a good job of keeping it all the plates spinning, seeing the game through to the endgame, and unleashing your longstanding devastating aji.