Eh? I played 100s of bot games when I was a beginner, and I credit MFOGO and Gnugo with getting me from 20k to 10k in a few months. Not the only way, sure, but it was a way that worked for me.

You will learn plenty from bots, albeit mostly tactical stuff, but that's OK. Tactics are important, perhaps more important than anything else (a debate for a different topic tho).

Bots are a tool for improvement, rather than a teacher. They cannot explain ideas to you, but if you played 100 games against a strong bot, I suspect that most people would end up stronger than they were before.

_________________
Regards,

Peter

If only we can wait long enough...

I think some chess programs, even a decade ago,
already provided "simple" instructions, tips, or ideas, as an option.

As Stephen Hawking recently said, there is no physical law
that forbids any particular arrangements of atoms such that
the resulting structure is vastly superior to the human brain.
Some day, a bot may be able to give the top pros 2, 3, or even 6
or more stones. They may also be able to teach Go better than
any humans.

Obviously, we're not quite there yet.

All engines will "suggest" a move, but all they are doing is what they normally do: calculate a strong move. There is no explanation of the position, or why it is a good move.

Some of the best commercial chess applications had some form of tips and instruction, but this seemed to be designed into the interface by the programmers, rather than come from the engine directly. Although, you might say that this is not an important distinction.

_________________
Regards,

Peter

Mostly very surprised. You gave an answer that was, IMO, very extreme. No shades of grey, the world is black and white, there is no notion of undo in go. I did not think you were the type to hold a world view as black and white as you had written it, so I posited a simple example of a situation in which, in my opinion, it is very obvious that the notion of undo is very real, and very reasonable. An opportunity for you to clarify whether you feel the world is really as black and white as you had posited, or not.

Now as to the original question, I think it would be good if bot writers wrote their bots in such a way that it would always accept a single undo for any and every move.

Assuming that you're referring to KGS bots here, should I conclude from that that you also believe every (rated) KGS game should also allow a single undo per move? i.e. for human-human games too?

if you're playing for rating points, then that's a completely different situation. That's like playing a tournament game, and there are no undos in a tournament.

It is everyone's own choice, and I do not think it is wrong for people to deny undos, but personally I generally see little reason to ever deny an undo. I think it is a friendly approach to the issue, and in the case of bots I think it is a good idea to make bots as friendly as possible. I do think it is reasonable to have a sort of time limit, e.g. you must request the undo within 10-20 seconds or some such limit, so you're not wasting the bot's time (other people may want to play it too).

And yet, KGS (and most other online Go servers) allow undos for rated games (albeit at the opponent's discretion).

I'm not opposed to your friendly attitude, but I still don't see how you can apply one rule for bots and another for humans, since they are (at least currently) involved in the same rating system. If bots have a KGS rating, and allow undo for every move, then I would expect some players to abuse it.

There was a client that would bring up a window in a random location when a game started, and sometimes when I tried to move or resize the window I would accidentally play instead. So I had quite a few games starting on the 7-8 point or 10-3 point or whatever. I didn't ask for undo on those, though my opponent offered more than once.

Bot undo seems like an okay idea, though, perhaps restricted to unrated games...

Well I'm not applying a different rule. Every bot creator has a choice. But bots are by their nature inflexible. If they never allow undo, they act differently from many human players, if they always allow undo, they also act differently from human players. I would prefer bots to err on the side of caution, and I think allowing undo is that side.

And if you have a 10 second time limit, the possibility for abuse is quite limited, I would say almost non-existent.

Exactly. A bot won't teach anything on its own. Learning from playing a bot? As a real beginner there's a lot to be learnt, and you can do it with bots, people or whatever. But at the OP's level (KGS 9k) most tactical basics are already learnt, and playing bots may just get you many weird openings and middle game situations. Far better to play humans as often as you can.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

What if Merlijn Kuin asked to undo his blunder? Btw nice win.

Thanks!

In live games, undos are a bit different. You place a stone, then press the clock, and there is no concept of a misclick. Had he placed the stone and taken it back immediately, i.e within 2 seconds and without pressing the clock, I would not have complained. But I think that most players, especially ones with that much experience, wouldn't even consider taking it back. At most you'll see someone move his hand towards and intersection and then back without letting go of the stone. Certainly I myself would never take back a stone after having placed it.

( Emphasis added. )

Hi Herman,

Thanks for the clarification.

I also clarify: that's not what I said, nor what I meant.

I said "in my mentality." I added the carrot chopping and car accident as examples. But it was still misunderstood. I did not say there is no such thing as undo in Go, under any circumstances whatsoever -- this is the extreme position you misunderstood I hold. I don't. As I said, I suspect most people (in this post so far) share similar, if not identical attitudes toward undos and other Go etiquettes.

Another analogy: if I'm holding a baby, there is no notion of dropping the baby in my mentality. It means, for myself, I think it's very important that I don't drop the baby. But hey, there are people who don't share this view⁽¹⁾ -- what can I do ? If it's this baby dropping example, would you be as surprised ? Would you immediately think, wow, that is so extreme! So black and white! No baby dropping -- such an extreme world view -- so fascist!?

Now, we can even come up with extreme Scruples-ish thought experiments (already brought up) such as: what if dropping a baby from the top of a building could save a million lives ? That's not this discussion. At all.Exactly. I don't think that's an extreme world view -- I think that's good.

BTW, I heard only the Sith thinks in such absolutes.

Warning: these are very tragic:

OK, good point, it's almost certainly true that the bots inflexible attitude contributes positively to their ranks.



I usually realize my mistakes within a split second of placing the stone. They're not misclicks, it just becomes apparent after the stone is actually on the board that it's in the wrong place. Allowing me to correct these pretty rare errors is a probably a pretty minor form of abuse, however.

So, you've convinced me to some extent, but I still think some form of abuse may exist in this permissive model of yours, e.g. for ranked blitz games.

I also think it should be possible to achieve a hybrid solution, e.g. to permit, say, five undos within ten seconds per game.

Exactly. A bot won't teach anything on its own. Learning from playing a bot? As a real beginner there's a lot to be learnt, and you can do it with bots, people or whatever. But at the OP's level (KGS 9k) most tactical basics are already learnt, and playing bots may just get you many weird openings and middle game situations. Far better to play humans as often as you can.[/quote]

I want to comment on both
"cannot explain" ----- this might be true of most of MCTS based programs but not true of one that used a "go principles" based AI to create a set of candidate moves and then used MCTS as the evaluator to select the best (because it could inform you of the go principles why that move was in the set to be considered). There is a program that does this. And of course the programs we had before MCTS based on AI's, they could tell you "why". Go playing neural nets, when we have them, won't be able to explain.

Weird moves? Have you tried playing against any of the strong programs? If you were presented with the game records of twenty games, ten of then being human vs human and ten human vs machine, how successful do yo think you would be in identifying which were which?

I want to comment on both
"cannot explain" ----- this might be true of most of MCTS based programs but not true of one that used a "go principles" based AI to create a set of candidate moves and then used MCTS as the evaluator to select the best (because it could inform you of the go principles why that move was in the set to be considered). There is a program that does this. And of course the programs we had before MCTS based on AI's, they could tell you "why". Go playing neural nets, when we have them, won't be able to explain.

Weird moves? Have you tried playing against any of the strong programs? If you were presented with the game records of twenty games, ten of then being human vs human and ten human vs machine, how successful do yo think you would be in identifying which were which?[/quote]

Yes, I have played some of the mc programs and seen games from them, too. Playing at "low kyu" settings they definitely play weird moves, specially in middle game situations. And I'm pretty sure the MC-endgame filling would be apparent in most of the bot-human games. It is at their full strength that they seem more human-like, and probably I couldn't tell a KGS 5d from a similarly strong bot, at least until dame filling started.

What is this "principle based" program you talk about?

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

a) It is close to impossible to get a MCTS based program to play weaker than 2-3 kyu without having it become erratic. This is especially true of those not having a "go based AI" select the set of potential moves from which the MCTS based evaluator selects one.

b) Because Fotland already had an AI capable of playing at about 6 kyu when MCTS came out, that's the route he followed. ManyFaces has an AI create a set of plausible moves and then the MCTS part selects from among them. So the "why" function can give you go reasons for the move (the reasons that got in considered).