Knotwilg wrote:Incidentally, I don't second your comparison with Japanese. Other languages substitute each other. Math, mathlish or complish are extensions of English, necessary to convey the subtleties of the domain. Your desire to acquire expertise on the endgame through common English maybe essentially a frustrating one. I'm reminded of poor old Galilei's writings, which didn't have algebra at their disposal yet. Today, 14 year olds with only a fraction of Galilei's brain are better at expressing his laws to their peers than he was to his, because they have all acquired the language (algebra) without too many quibbles (well, ok).
I once read some translations of what are now considered simple algebra problems from Arabic texts of the Middle Ages. They would start like this: "Heap, it's third, . . ." Mathlish makes it so much easier.
The Adkins Principle: At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
bernds wrote:
The way I see it - if Black plays there, he has two points, and if not, it's fifty-fifty whether Black gets a point or not. So that would make it a 1.5 point gote. One could also imagine a situation where nothing else is on the board, in which case it would be a 1 point sente (from White's perspective).
Yes, exactly correct!
Well, good. I was starting to doubt my own sanity, and possibly that of others.
But I only looked at terminal positions, and as far as I can tell so did you, and I explicitly asked for an example where that is not possible, since Bill claimed that in general you can't.
Please go back and answer the questions I posed about what you meant by certain phrases. If you do, I think that you will find that we are in agreement.
O Meien and others prefer to calculate the value of a single move, rather than the difference between a pair of moves (B first versus W first), so they divide your result by two.
Yeah, OK, I had gathered that the point values come out as half of what you'd expect. What I'm trying to figure out is - why the emphasis on position values?
Please go back and answer my questions and I think that will become clear to you.
What is being communicated when, for example, Bill says the value of A in the original position is zero? I'm assuming there has to be some deep insight because on the face of it it's just doesn't sound very helpful.
The not very deep insight is that if a position is symmetrical for both players, its average value is 0. If you doubt that, then flip the colors of the stones. Is it helpful? Well, it seemed to be news to daal.
Edit: Are you are still under the impression that I was talking about a play at A? If so, please reread what I wrote.
Last edited by Bill Spight on Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
The Adkins Principle: At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
Bill Spight wrote:if a position is symmetrical for both players, its average value is 0.
Maybe bernds was concerned with one side having 8 and the other side having 6 points; why would you get the average 0. Answer: choose a small locale in which the hane-connect endgame is counted; its average is 0; only afterwards add the extra points outside the locale. We do so because the hane-connect shape is always the same so we can recall its count 0. It does not matter whether the settled parts of the adjacent territory regions have different shapes in different occurrences of hane-connect.
John Fairbairn wrote:The reason I belabour this point is on behalf of people like daal and myself. O does not speak in mathlish. Mathlish is not just a dialect with different words. It's a different grammar, with a different way of ordering things. The people who mainly speak about boundary plays and counting here order things differently from daal, myself and O. The fact that people like yourself also understand O (and no doubt far better than I can) and also understand English does not mean you are not reverting to mathlish when you speak to us.
It seems to me that O does speak in mathlish. That is, he introduces technical terms and defines them. As is appropriate to his audience and the purpose of his book, he does not delve into the difficulties that Robert, moha, myself, and others do in our discussions here. It is not mathlish per se that makes these discussions difficult, it is their subject matter.
Here are a couple more of the ways of expressing himself that made O appealing to me. What he said is old hat to you. To me it was as if someone opened the curtains and let the daylight in.
{snip}
In cases where a reverse sente and a gote boundary play of apparently similar size are bound up together, the procedure is:
[1] Calculate the deficit as a number of points disregarding sente and gote in the case where you play the reverse sente;
[2] If it appears that you would recover that deficit with the next boundary play, play the reverse sente. If you would not recover it, make the gote play instead and so maintain your advantage.
Sounds like mathlish to me. How does he define deficit, what does he mean by disregarding sente and gote? And anyway, the general question of when to play gote vs. reverse sente is difficult.
It's quite rare in Japanese to have people writing mathematically about go. Here the mathematicians seem to predominate.
I think that there may be cultural reasons for that. Without a long history in the West, ordinary people are not drawn to go. Hippies were, for a while, until, as a friend pointed out, they actually had to think. For some reasons, mathematicians were, as far as I can tell. In my case, despite being fairly strong for a Western amateur, and having written a go newsletter way back when, I cannot claim any real go expertise. But in the mathematics of go, I am a world class expert.
PS As an example of English vs mathlish, take the following from earlier in the thread:
If the move is truly sente for W, the probability of W playing first becomes 100%, as does the probability of B answering, so the value of the starting position is 1, and the value of the move is 0 or meaningless. . . .
I confess I am not quite sure what is meant.
The Adkins Principle: At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
John Fairbairn wrote:Again mainly for the benefit of others but also to query your statement that O "does not define sente", he says
To give the definition of “privilege” here:
* If the next move would be bigger than the move just played, the move just played is a privilege [a move than can be played as of right].
Privilege is part of the definition of local sente. In terms of thermography, it is what colors the mast. Also in terms of thermography, we can see that the reply (the next move?) is bigger than the local temperature. But the local temperature is determined, not by the size of the move just played, but by the size of the reverse sente. That is the true relationship between the reverse sente and the privilege.
On its face this definition is somewhat harder to understand than the one O gives. (But at least he gives one! ) But if you start with the simple examples that he uses, it is not difficult to convey. The point is that a sente play by you gives your opponent the chance to make a larger local play than if you had passed or tenukied. That's the right comparison to make.
O Meien wrote:(3) The relationship between reverse sente and gote boundary plays
Why are boundary plays difficult? Being difficult also has the sense of “I can’t read it out.”
The answers to this question probably depends on each person, but I think one example must surely be: “Because of reverse sente.”
If boundary plays were simply sente or gote plays how easy would that be? When it came to be my turn, I would play the sente plays one after the other, then, based on figures I would calculate, I would automatically make the biggest play, and that would be that.
Note that O has switched to a different meaning of sente. And things are not as simple as he makes out. But a little hyperbole is acceptable. And O is right that the general question of whether to play a gote or reverse sente is difficult. For daal's question of when to play a gote or sente, I said that there was good news and bad news. I can show that for the prototypical examples of gote and reverse sente, there is bad news and more bad news. That is, it will very seldom be the case that you can with certainty decide which to play without considering the rest of the board. How much each play gains is only part of the picture. (You can use it as a heuristic, but O wants to do more than that.) Considering the temperature of the rest of the board, aside from those two plays, is a little better. After that, you need to read.
The Adkins Principle: At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
Just to be sure: when you write "privilege" in your previous message, you are using it like O - as a substitute word for "sente [move of a sente sequence of a local sente]"?
RobertJasiek wrote:Just to be sure: when you write "privilege" in your previous message, you are using it like O - as a substitute word for "sente [move of a sente sequence of a local sente]"?
By the privilege of a sente I mean that in an ideal, rich environment the player with sente will be able to play it (with sente) before the opponent will be able to play the reverse sente. (Correct play understood.)
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For those who may be unfamiliar with the terms. An environment is the rest of the board aside from plays which are in focus. An ideal environment is one in which the largest play is always correct. A rich environment contains many plays of various sizes such that, if it is important that a play of a certain size exist, it does.
For instance, privilege requires that there be a play that is smaller than the reply to a sente, but greater than the reverse sente.
OC, no go board has an ideal, rich environment, but as a rule real boards are good approximations. If not, nobody would ever have come up with the idea of privilege.
The Adkins Principle: At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
Bill Spight wrote:
Actually, O's method of calculating territory is the traditional one. He relies on a 50-50 split for gote and privilege for sente.
It just occurred to me: this method of calculating value of moves by averaging all possible outcomes, is in fact very similar to what MCTS is doing in computer-go.
Except that humans average over the outcome of moves in number of points (trying to come up to a value of the move measured in points), while MCTS averages out over win/loss ratio, trying to come up with win-rate.
1. As somebody said you cannot have numbers without calculating. You don't want to have to count. So this is out.
2. Its seems that what you are willing to settle on is some kind of general designation of Huge, Large, Big, Small, Nothing - or whatever.
So far so good? Ok.
Now, the values of Huge, Large, Big, etc will vary throughout the game. For example - a move which is Small in fuseki, might be Huge in yose. Right? So, it seems pretty useless to generically define how do we designate a move as Huge, Small, whatever.
It seems to me that what you are REALLY after is some kind of way to organize the candidate moves in a given position by approximate value - like this is the biggest (lets call it Huge), this is smaller (call it Big), etc.
So far so good? If not, please feel free to interrupt at any point.
The above can be distilled - for simplicity - to a situation in which you have two candidate moves and want to determine which is 'bigger'. If you have more, then the problem is either longer (you keep comparing pairs until you figure out a winner), or you compare triplets, quadruplets, or all of them. Either way, lets look at the simple case of comparing two moves.
The way I see it, there are several ways to do that:
1. Counting. You might take into account sente and other features, but it basically comes down to counting. You don't want to do that.
2. Brute force. You reconstruct the remaining game tree and see what leads to win and what does not. This is sometimes possible, but usually not, and even when it is, it is often harder and more complex that counting by using any of the simple(r) heuristics we usually use.
3. Experience. You eyeball the options, draw on your experience, and make an educated guess. The stronger you are, the better your estimate. But without counting, this will only get you so far and no further. I find myself doing that a lot, but then I also find myself having to count and calculate more often than I'd like to admit. Guess I am not very experienced. But its fun. Just have to be OK with losing a lot.
4. WAG. You flip a mental coin and hope for the best. This is easy, right? But this will get you nowhere. Might as well try some other game. WoW is pretty cool, heh.
So where does it leave us? Well... we probably should just accept the fact that Go is a game in which counting and calculating is crucial. One can actually call it a pure counting game. You can substitute some of that by experience, but this way you put a narrow cap on your progress if you try doing it exclusively.
I guess what I am trying to say here is that there is no free lunch, no magic wand. If you want to be able to say "this move is worth 5 or BIG and that is worth 3 or SMALL" then you will have to count. The more you are OK with approximation, the more sloppy your counting can be. But you will really quickly find yourself in a situation where your statement will be "this move is 5+/-3 and that move is 3+/-5" which really tells you nothing, might just do the WAG thingie.
So play a lot, get more experience, but also learn to count as well and as exact as you possibly can. This is really what this game is all about.
- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!
Here is the simplest sente or reverse-sente situation I can think of. Let's see if we can agree on how this is evaluated. No mathlish involved (I hope).
W to play (reverse-sente) can create a final position worth 0 points. It is then B turn to play, somewhere else on the board.
B to play (sente) can create a final position worth 2 points after W replies. It is then B turn to play again, somewhere else on the board.
(The B move, which we are calling sente, leaves a follow-up move worth 100 additional points. This is so much larger than anything else on the board that W will certainly respond locally to prevent it. This justifies treating the B move as sente.)
Questions:
1) What is the value (count) of the initial position (I believe the answer is 2)
2) What is the value of the W reverse-sente move? (I suspect the answer is 2)
3) What is the value of the B sente move? (I know Bill's answer is 0)
Bill or Robert, are these indeed the values you would calculate?
John, would O Meien also calculate these same values?
mitsun wrote:Here is the simplest sente or reverse-sente situation I can think of. Let's see if we can agree on how this is evaluated. No mathlish involved (I hope).
W to play (reverse-sente) can create a final position worth 0 points. It is then B turn to play, somewhere else on the board.
B to play (sente) can create a final position worth 2 points after W replies. It is then B turn to play again, somewhere else on the board.
(The B move, which we are calling sente, leaves a follow-up move worth 100 additional points. This is so much larger than anything else on the board that W will certainly respond locally to prevent it. This justifies treating the B move as sente.)
Questions:
1) What is the value (count) of the initial position (I believe the answer is 2)
2) What is the value of the W reverse-sente move? (I suspect the answer is 2)
3) What is the value of the B sente move? (I know Bill's answer is 0)
Bill or Robert, are these indeed the values you would calculate?
John, would O Meien also calculate these same values?
1) What is the value (count) of the initial position? 2 pts. (for Black)
2) What is the value of the W reverse-sente move? 2 pts.
3) What is the value of the B sente move? Assuming that White's reply gains 100 pts., 100 pts.
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N. B. It is the disparity between the White and Black moves that allows you to tell that the position is not gote. If it were, the Black move would gain 51 pts., but the White reply would gain 100 pts. That does not make sense. (Unless Black has a large enough reply to White's reply. Which she does not in this case.)
The Adkins Principle: At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
It seems to me that what you are REALLY after is some kind of way to organize the candidate moves in a given position by approximate value - like this is the biggest (lets call it Huge), this is smaller (call it Big), etc.
It wasn't your main point, but this part of your post stuck out as very fascinating to me.
We have established various methods for getting somewhat precise values of moves, even to fractions of a point. There are lots of articles on SL on this, and some experts here on L19. Because of these precise methods to determine the values of various moves, it's possible to establish an ordering of endgame moves. Yada yada yada.
Sometimes these calculations can be pretty complex.
My hypothesis, then, is that there exist methods to simplify the math behind calculating precise move values, at the cost of losing the precision we have with current counting methods.
But perhaps it's possible to lose accuracy, while maintaining the ability to compare the RELATIVE (not precise) value of moves, which is what we really care about anyway.
Maybe it's not possible, but my hunch is that it should be.
For some reasons, mathematicians were, as far as I can tell. In my case, despite being fairly strong for a Western amateur, and having written a go newsletter way back when, I cannot claim any real go expertise. But in the mathematics of go, I am a world class expert. 
) But if you start with the simple examples that he uses, it is not difficult to convey. The point is that a sente play by you gives your opponent the chance to make a larger local play than if you had passed or tenukied. That's the right comparison to make. 
