Life In 19x19

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.

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.

some variations already in the file. but yes, I have researched it somewhat. I know the first few key moves but not what next. So I knew I was playing the right moves up to that point. Still, I've lost several times playing that joseki both against humans and AI. My only wins were the matches vs Tanguy, Lucas and now Geert. And even in those games, every time I got a local loss.

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

Out of interest, what kind of training do you do

L&D: goproblems.com, EGF academy. I've worked on 101weiqi's daily set pretty much every day.
Playing against KG 30-90 moves (i.e. until I get 10 points behind)
Analyse other PETC games with AI. I tend to go very slowly so have only gone through 1.5 so far.
Play go online

From my AI analysis of this game, KG's suggested sabaki with my weak group had several miraculous moves, based on the fact B's cutting groups were very heavy concerning the ko, especially those revolving around the K11 cut. There's a lot to learn from it. It already wanted to tenuki when I was scared of death every move from move 108. Of course I was also scared of death in the lower right ...
My play on the lower side was pretty shoddy too as the carpenter's square looks close to death. I regretted not playing M2 instead almost immediately.

"Surprisingly relaxing win". A quick win by annihilating my opp Matias Pankoke. It felt like my opp played very badly playing tight moves against my thick groups that were easy to refute. But it turns out that with AI analysis, I played pretty well too, including move 108 that the AI disagreed with saying it was worse by 2 points until 200k playouts after which it said it was the best by 0.7 points. I am pretty pleased to be told that move 72 was perfect locally as it wasn't my first instinct.

I added up the the 12 times out of 55 that my move wasn't KG's top move, summing the winning percentage and score discrepancy with the top move, and got:

WP 68.2 Score 7.7

This must be a personal record by far in terms of minimising mistakes. I'm sure that on a normal game of mine, my score discrepancy would be 50-400 points. Even my last game against this opponent (I am 3-0 up now), I was winning by 25 points in the end but was 80 points up at one point and missed many chances to save a group.



It seems we misset komi

In other news I am playing in a casual online league.
Ho Yeung Woo: Win: I started with a poor opening from me and aggressive play from my opp. It was a tough fight in the centre as he was so thick. However, when he submissively made life on the second line, I killed lots of cutting stones in the centre with my weak group. I was leading by 20, but my endgame was terrible and won by 5.5
Elian Grigoriu: Win: I researched a joseki so gained in the opening, both missed some big moves in a corner, played some perfect sabaki sequence against his 3-3 moyo, and perfect defense just backing off against his 3-3 invasion. I played softly when he attacked my sabaki group, letting him connect when apparently I should have counter-attacked already and tried to save everything. He tried to use his weak group to attack one of my groups and I killed one of them on a large scale. Leading by 80 points, I skillfully made life for my only other weak group 2, but perhaps due to lack of sleep, missed how he short my liberties, threatening to save cutting stones. I made a seond eye with the group he was attacking that was already in a one eye kills no eye situation. He killed my big group 2. I won by 7.5 points, losing another 10 points in endgame.
Matias Pankoke: Win: I gained a lot in the opening after an unreasonable cut and when he took away an eye of my wall in gote, but played too softly just connecting my stones so all his weak groups lived and I was only ahead by 10 points at move 40 or so. He continued to lose points in the corners in order to reduce my wall, including when I played a 3-3 invasion into a shimari where I only had ko for life, in order to use my thickness and to try to attack the shimari. We both played pretty solidly, I increased my lead to 20 points. He tenukied when I threatened that shimari group and I killed it in a way where my surrounding groups where unconditionally alive. He cut off a big group of mine in return, but the AI repeatedly said I could make life. For 20 moves I missed tesujis, and failed to live. The score bar would jump 40 points every move we played. I was ahead by around 25 at the end due to poor endgame from me and my dead group.
Lucas Neirynck: Win: I was leading the whole game almost after a weird joseki choice. There was only one move where I overplayed and suddenly he had a ko for the entire lower side and corner that I couldn't remove, even though I could tenuki and it would still be ko. He would have been 20 points ahead but missed it and my group was unconditionally alive. My highest lead was around 10 points, but it gradually disappeared somehow when I failed to manufacture big enough ko threats for a ko for my corner's life. I won by 2.5.
Valerii Krushelnitskyi: Loss: The game was close the whole way through, mostly within +/-5 points. I messed up a joseki in the first few moves but he messed up the follow up to the refutation. I underestimated a cutting point where he was very thick and missed a cut of his at a critical point. My defence of my own side territories was fairly flawed and in the end, missed a chance to grow my area by attacking his group. I failed to kill his reduction and lost by 5.5.

I used to be proud of my endgame, but the evidence lately is that my endgame has become relatively full of mistakes.

Nicely done Daniel

Re his 35 hane rather than jump, hane was also my instinct. Although I know of the clamp, it's not a natural move for me.

won my last two games in the casual league against Javier A-Savolainen and Amir Fragman by resign after 40 point margins again. Came 2nd on 6/7. Valerii got 7/7!

Well, I have been lucky enough so far to avoid coronavirus. Also lucky enough to start a new job project recently.

Ever since AI, I felt improving at Go seemed more pointless and I have that feeling again.

My training pre 5d (2013 Nov to 2017 ish):

Lots of KGS games every day, several Go clubs weekly. I started with Nick Sibicky, later Dwyrin and then many hours of Chinese pro videos (tywq, weiqitv) every week (or even day), lots of NHK and KBS cup too without understanding the language. bought no books but did skim 1 or 2 I think,

I'm not sure I thought of it as training, but more an addiction. I think I liked to record my games and theorise (nonsense) about what I was doing wrong. If I had a theory question, I read Sensei's library. I think I was relatively good at endgame and reading on the board with patience to calculate more, but weak at instinct and didn't have enough tsumego experience. I think I had some preliminary ideas to CGT without having heard of it, but was particularly curious about things that sound like they make sense but we can't prove like "play on wider direction etc." . Perhaps it was jarring to my experience of mathematical proof.

2017-2019 stalling at 5d:

pretty much as above + AI reviews + watch lots of AI games, but less and less of everything. KGS, Pandanet games tending to zero, leaving only games at (very few) tournaments.

Helped organise ICGT 2018, though looking back, I'm not sure I managed to contribute much. It was completely outside my normal experience and hence pretty interesting though. Passed (but terribly) in my degree. Some new (Taiwanese?) channels appeared on youtube in Chinese (e.g. GoGo) that I followed. Tried to program a small neural net to play tictactoe and failed. Tried to analyse neurons in leelazero and got too many bugs. Got an IT job.

confidence boosting to reach this Go level. But unsure why the stall occurred when I was training like I used to. (perhaps because I was ??)

2019 Dec - Now:

Nothing much in terms of training other than very heavy AI reviews after each game (like the whole next day), but somehow reached 6(-7d?) in strength though not officially. And keeping a scarily high winrate on PETC. Dangerously ego boosting. I have noticed the potential pun on the name of this thread.

Stopped following youtube channels almost completely now.
I still feel a bit weak at tsumego, but have included it in my routine more recently. My endgame has gone down the drain compared to my new skills in large scale fighting, especially in punishing my opponent's mistakes. But it remains hard to verbalise any of this instinct. I wrote a couple of "papers", available on LGC, but I feel they are pretty poor quality compared to what I could do, lacking in research, and containing flaws in thinking.

--

I wasn't so sure of my direction. I dreamed of pro a little at one point, but I think it doesn't make sense now. But I think I would like to do some writing about Go. I'm not sure mentioning my goals here is so helpful, but it worked well enough last time (2017 British Champion ).

TBH, I wrote around 40 pages of explaining maths theory of Go (+some new research) + 60 pages of mess around 1.5 years ago. But I haven't really got round to organising it into presentable form, nor clarifying the mess, nor verbalising new ideas. I have no excuse for not making full use of quiet time over the past year. Still, I find as I read more papers that my latest thoughts are often on the right lines towards the results in those papers. Perhaps I can still make progress. Hopefully my maths ability hasn't completely gone down the drain or else I will be an embarrassment to my username.

So my goals in Go for the next year(s) in priority order:

1. Presentable book style of what I have written so far + extensions. Not sure about publishing. I'm not sure there will be much audience for such topics anyway, but I still think it's worth organising current knowledge into a coherent course sequence of material. I had never heard of most of it before I started investigating.
2. Do more research into existing mathematical research in Go. I have used only free resources so far, so I may consider buying some classics, such as Mathematical Go.
3. Do some Go research of my own if I can.
4. British Champion once more

Won British championship. The long time settings are quite comfortable. My total point loss was around 60 points.



(20220204: self-inflicted cross-cut, lazy stretching, arm exercise.)

No comment on 79? That gave Bruno a big chance. Or did you think you could survive the ko even if objectively bad because you expected to outfight him and rather that than simple trade? Because he played d6 the ko became heavier for him with e4 corner trashing as another bonus for you,

About left side cover, that happened in similar position next day in Nongshim cup https://www.go4go.net/go/games/sgfview/100268

Balance between assumption inertia and time recalculating.

I probably assumed W had two ko threats on the right, thought I could respond to both and be fine, and so didn't recalculate after W's bad move 74.

I did notice the possibility of ending the ko quickly in the post-game review, though I didn't yet realise that ending the ko was much better (that requires more precise calculation of values).

I'm guessing you have Lee Sedol's move 78 (divine move) in the back of your mind. In Sino-Korean that's pronounced chil pal.

79 would be chil gu.

Should I point out a number of disturbing coincidences in my go life at the moment? (rhetorical)
One of the many is the round numbers in my rating points: 5, 5, 2500, 20.

Are these caused by subconscious calculations, environment, intentional pranks or something else entirely?

(edit:20220101. omg, even this post has weird references that I didn't notice then. Reading has weird effects on the brain. I must have been thinking of disturbing kos (a James Davies translation of an Ing rules term that I've seen in Jasiek's papers), just as my wordpress suggests I was thinking about goths.)

well, I have written some things I am pleased with on my wordpress, and haven't yet noticed glaring errors, so I don't feel like a complete fail of a mathmo.

otherwise, just an update:

However the paper on loss-making ko threats that I was preparing is at 40pages and I'm not yet organised enough to handle the mess, especially with work too. I realise my solution + algorithm is only partial (or else I would have already self-published it), but probably worth publishing anyway, but I haven't even gotten round to writing up proofs of the most key statements yet. I would also like to investigate the cases it can't handle a bit more, and apply Tavernier's original simpler model to attack approach + multi-stage kos, but perhaps that should be another paper.

I have found one of Bill's papers that uses a simplified Neutral Threat Environment to give counts of approach kos, and the appearance of Fibonacci numbers is amazing, though I don't fully understand the calculations.

Random thoughts on bridge Some superstition Basic thought experiments for children, Brian Cox style: