ZBaduk - LeeLa Zero and KataGo from your webbrowser

[spook]

Here follow some screenshots of the new features.

1) The feature that most people will be interested in: charts for score predictions of KataGo.
Because it uses KataGo, the charts/button will only appear if you connect to a GPU server which offers KataGo.

There are also some slight cosmetic improvements to the button bar to show/hide charts,
I personally found the previous release not that intuitive in this regard.

2) Secondly, as mentioned in my previous message, it now has background colors for the sequence coordinates (in the table).
It just makes it easier to read them. (dark background = black's move ; white background = white's move).

3) There has also been a slight fix for the performance of some tables. They should be a bit more responsive.

sequence color codes.jpg (249.59 KiB) Viewed 15283 times

4) For the "new game" button there is a little warning pop-up added. (nothing fancy).

feature2.jpg (47.86 KiB) Viewed 15283 times

5) And becausee several people told me that if you play vs the bot, sometimes it freezes.
In this release there is a pop-up which appears when there are connectivity issues.
(If anything it should at least add some transparency about the status)
It should automatically try to reconnect a couple of times.
But there is also a "connect now" button, just in case.

reconnection status.jpg (57.63 KiB) Viewed 15283 times

[Maharani]

A much bigger issue I keep encountering is that in some situations, ZBaduk will stop playouts for certain moves and cannot be prodded to add further playouts. This happens under various circumstances, for example when focused position analysis is running and a past move in the tree is accidentally clicked. Once you return to the current move that you had been analyzing, ZBaduk will add no more playouts to the best moves (with some rare exceptions). It will (usually) run some slow playouts on moves that previously had a low amount of playouts (less than 1k I think).

A seemingly connected issue is that the playouts do not just get stuck, they are also disregarded for the next move. In this game, I had KataGo analyze move 33 for about a million playouts. After playing its suggested move, its analysis of move 34 started off with about 200,000 playouts right away, based on the sequences it read out during its analysis of move 33. After move 34, I had to stop analyzing for the day. When I returned to the game and played KataGo's suggestion at move 35, it started its analysis from scratch at 0 playouts. This seems regrettable to me.

If it is possible to fix these issues, I will purchase a one-year sponsorship right away.

[spook]

After move 34, I had to stop analyzing for the day. When I returned to the game and played KataGo's suggestion at move 35, it started its analysis from scratch at 0 playouts. This seems regrettable to me.

That is correct, and it is also a known limitation of all popular go engines right now. Bots use internal memory to store their calculation progress. If you move up/down the game tree Leela Zero and KataGo will still remember their progress for previous calculations and will be able to resume new calculations from where they left off earlier. But unfortunately:
- If you restart a bot, all progress is gone. And you have to restart calculations from scratch next time.
- After a long time of calculation, the limit of the memory can be reached. When that happens, it will start clean parts of its memory.
- The memory cannot be dumped/exported to a file right now.

ZBaduk's limitations are roughly the same. It has a pool of running leela zero and katago applications. And if you connect, it assigns a couple of those instances to your session (one per bot). So, each session gets its own instances (each with their own memory). In general, those instances are yours until you disconnect. Consequently, your progress will be gone after a reconnect. Of course ZBaduk does store statistics in your game record, which can be saved to the ZBaduk server. But those results cannot be resumed, as there is just no way to communicate this information to Leela Zero / KataGo.

Even though there have been experiments to load/save memory to files, and it hasn't been supported by leela zero and katago yet. So, right now, I think it is better to just wait and do nothing about this.

While ZBaduk cannot provide a solution. It does use a cache to store the results for the first 40 moves. This cache instantly offers millions of playouts without having to calculate anything.
But still, if you want to supersede those results, the only way, is to give the server time to calculate everything again, starting from 0. But at least it means that you do not have to calculate the first 40 moves again for each and every game.

LeelaZero's top move and all of KataGo's moves are also frozen (meaning all >1k moves).

Anyway, like most tools, ZBaduk will only replace results if the amount of playouts increases. So, if you let ZBaduk re-analyse a position, you won't see much changes at first. You will only start seeing changes once the existing statistics are superseded in playouts. (And because ZBaduk's cache only stores statistics for moves with >1k playouts, moves with <1k playouts will indirectly give away that the system is in fact calculating.)

[Maharani]

Fascinating. Thank you for the behind-the-scenes insight! And also for the full-featured trial, enjoying it a lot

[spook]

Just updated our website to the latest version of Angular.
Everything should render just a little bit faster now.

And secondly, the connection wizard is improved.
It allows users to select the engine (Leela vs KataGo) they want to use.
(and in the future I will add komi and handicap settings here as well).

2020-01-08_202756.jpg (59.01 KiB) Viewed 14978 times

And because, Leela Zero and Kata Go deserve a hyperlink to their github pages,
ZBaduk now has an about page as well.

[Maharani]

Even with the full-featured trial, my main gripe with ZBaduk is playouts ceasing during analysis. There seems to be an automatic loss of connection after (almost exactly) twenty minutes. At this point, not only do the *displayed* playouts stop completely, but it is also possible to tell that the *actual* playouts have stopped because the ownership display freezes (which is usually active even if the displayed playouts have stopped). Moreover, if at that point I click a move onto the board, analysis of it will not even start. However, the loss of connection is not indicated by the "Connect..." button turning red. The site still shows that I'm connected even if I'm not.

I realize that analyzing a position for over twenty minutes (which averages (in my case?) about 300,000 to 400,000 playouts per bot) is not something most users are likely to need, but if this is a simple fix, I would welcome it greatly.

[spook]

Even with the full-featured trial, my main gripe with ZBaduk is playouts ceasing during analysis. There seems to be an automatic loss of connection after (almost exactly) twenty minutes.

Timeouts are a bit complex.
But you are correct, that not-changing-positions for 20 minutes results in a disconnect.
And I do think you make a valid point.

And I will increase this limit straightaway. 1 hour sounds way more reasonable.
that should allow users to get about 1 million readouts per bot.
(and please note, if you change position in between, you won't be disconnected at all of course).

UPDATE:
done

[Maharani]

Sweet!! Thank you so much

EDIT - Doesn't seem to have gone into effect for me yet, it still stops reading after twenty minutes...

(and please note, if you change position in between, you won't be disconnected at all of course).

Changing positions resets the (actual, not displayed) playouts for all moves, so it basically has the same effect *as if* you disconnected.

[spook]

You are correct, I overlooked something. (a second setting, which is used by the server.)
I have prepared a fix, and will install it this evening.

For other readers:
I did actually just install a minor bugfix for the front-end,
which fixes a bug which has to do with "pass" moves.

[tenarofatuan]

Hi there, I saw above that ZBaduk is looking for sponsors. Is there somewhere where folks can donate in a small way, such as a kofi or patreon?

[zermelo]

ZBaduk is great! The issue I'm having is that I cannot analyze handicap games. The handicap stones do not show in the UI. Ive tried it with files from OGS or KGS that work fine with Lizzie and LeelaZero.

[Cassandra]

*snip* The handicap stones do not show in the UI. *snip*

You might use a text editor to edit the SGF-file.

Handicap stones are coded with "AB" (= "add Black"), this will display in one of the first lines of the file.

E.g. four handicap stones are:
AB[pd][dp][dd][pp]

"[xy]" is the coding of one point on the board.

Replace "AB" with ";B" (= play a Black move) before each coordinate.
Additionally add three White moves as ";W[tt]" (= White passes).

;B[pd];W[tt];B[dp];W[tt];B[dd];W[tt];B[pp]

Save the file and start analysing the game. White's first move is #8 now, instead of #1.

[spook]

I didn't want to make it official yet.
But you can expect handicap features in a couple of days (maybe a week) from now.

Cassandra's workaround is correct, you could manipulate the SGF file.
Or for manual entry, you can use the pass button.
However, the winrate chart will look a little strange for the first moves of the game.
And they effectively be displayed as moves in the tree.

So, the only good solution is an update of ZBaduk.
It's coming!

[Maharani]

First off, let me say thank you again for increasing the disconnect time from 20 minutes to 60 minutes. This greatly increased my enjoyment of ZBaduk, and I look forward to enjoying my year-long sponsorship. So when I keep coming back with suggestions, please know that it's because I love ZBaduk, not because I'm trying to be annoying

My current biggest pet-peeve is that the shades of white used to display projected ownership are nearly indistinguishable from each other. On a brightly lit screen, I can easily make out at least seven different shades of black, but only three shades of white at best (and even the brightest looks pretty shy). I would love if the brightness of projected white ownership could be increased

Secondly, I think this thread title and maybe your signature deserve an inclusion of KataGo?

[spook]

Hi there, I saw above that ZBaduk is looking for sponsors. Is there somewhere where folks can donate in a small way, such as a kofi or patreon?

Right now, there are 4 ways to support or sponsor ZBaduk:

1. payed memberships
2. tell people about it: twitter, facebook, youtube, ... always appreciated !
3. if you are a company or like to sponsor/support ZBaduk in a bigger way, please contact me.
4. I tried a T-shirt sale some time ago, (not a big succes).

Because paypal is blocked in some countries, some people have e-mailed me looking for other payment options.
That's one of the reasons why I have been thinking about a "kickstarter project".
It would of course be an attempt to attract a bigger audience, but it would also allow other payment systems.
More people = more servers = all kind of advantages.
But it's a lot of work to set it up. (recording videos, set-up of rewards, ...)

Patreon sounds interesting. But I don't know much about it neither.
I can imagine that it's probably just as much work.

---

The handicap feature is done.
You can expect the update in a couple of hours.
Here's a preview.

handicap.jpg (266.8 KiB) Viewed 18998 times

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So when I keep coming back with suggestions, please know that it's because I love ZBaduk, not because I'm trying to be annoying

In all honesty, I appreciate your feedback a lot!

I would love if the brightness of projected white ownership could be increased

I have been experimenting with this, but I haven't found a satisfying solution yet.
I'll keep you posted.

Secondly, I think this thread title and maybe your signature deserve an inclusion of KataGo?

I don't know how to rename the thread. Perhaps some admin can do this?
But you do have a point, and I have updated my signature straight away.