3 ways to learn from the dark magician
Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:30 pm
Alphago is top dog - Ke Jie is almost obsequious towards her opinion in his post-match reviews with Fan Hui, frequently referring to himself as "mortal". Ke Jie is the best a man can get, but he clearly sees that he can learn from Alfie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIu9P9wEIsc
So can we.
But Alfie is, as yet, almost mute - her many convolutions (more than 12 layers now, we are told) do see something, but it will be a long time (if ever) before anyone comes up with a way to "translate" what convolutions "see" into language that makes sense to people.
So she is a dark magician, unable to communicate more than the wink of win%. However, that alone is still instructive, in that it provides a clue. When Ke Jie makes a move that Alfie reckons reduces his wink, Ke Jie recognises that there's something weak about it, even if Alfie can't tell him what that weakness is, beyond showing as many variations as he can digest. So, armed with the clue, during his discussions with Fan Hui, Ke Jie embarks on his own projections, but even there, he often found that Alfie disagrees with him on the very next move of the lookahead tree, so the mystery only deepened.
There are at least three ways mere mortals can learn something from the dark master - one is to do what Ke Jie and Fan Hui did, and ask Alfie for her variations. Definitely a worthwhile exercise, but very much a Sisyphean struggle up a slippery slope, for more often than not, each step only opens up another dark forest of mysteries and you (as did they) end up sliding further down the slope of understanding than when you (they) started. It's a miracle Ke Jie's hands are still attached to his arms, he threw them up in the air so often!
If the world champion is still confused by Alfie, what chance do even more mortal weakheads like us have??
Well, one thing we can do is what i've noticed many of my own opps doing - try out a few experiments of our own, doing things like shoulder hit + tenuki, early 3-3 invasions and double jumps on the 4th line, all things that anyone can do, even if unlike her darkness they can't project the implications of such ploys over the next 200 moves.
A 3rd way to learn from Alfie is to ask "See what i mean", described in:
https://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/icgo
If Swim predicts an Alfie move, it can explain why that move is good, in a simple pictorial language that any kyu can understand. For example, see:
1. the discussion starting at 10:24 in "Demis and Noam" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RSiORA ... a3Hl1X_v-S
2. Swim's prediction and explanation of "Jue Yi's New Move", at 14:47 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSVi8n4 ... a3Hl1X_v-S and its prediction and explanation of a move very similar in spirit to Alfie's at 19:47 in the same video.
When Swim doesn't predict Alfie's move, it can draw 'before' and 'after' pictures for you to see and compare for yourself - pictures of colour and shadow maps, moyos and paths, to form your own impression of the local and global effects of Alfie's move, without having to read out possible continuations. An example of this is reported in
"Swimming with Alphago" https://ssrn.com/abstract=2934932
Swim is still only a paper tiger, so you would have to draw the pictures yourself, following its algorithms. To help you do this, pnprog has programmed the first of them - its colour map - which you can use as your starting point.
https://github.com/pnprog/gomap
PS of course, unless you are Fan Hui. you can't ask Alfie. But you could ask Leela et al.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIu9P9wEIsc
So can we.
But Alfie is, as yet, almost mute - her many convolutions (more than 12 layers now, we are told) do see something, but it will be a long time (if ever) before anyone comes up with a way to "translate" what convolutions "see" into language that makes sense to people.
So she is a dark magician, unable to communicate more than the wink of win%. However, that alone is still instructive, in that it provides a clue. When Ke Jie makes a move that Alfie reckons reduces his wink, Ke Jie recognises that there's something weak about it, even if Alfie can't tell him what that weakness is, beyond showing as many variations as he can digest. So, armed with the clue, during his discussions with Fan Hui, Ke Jie embarks on his own projections, but even there, he often found that Alfie disagrees with him on the very next move of the lookahead tree, so the mystery only deepened.
There are at least three ways mere mortals can learn something from the dark master - one is to do what Ke Jie and Fan Hui did, and ask Alfie for her variations. Definitely a worthwhile exercise, but very much a Sisyphean struggle up a slippery slope, for more often than not, each step only opens up another dark forest of mysteries and you (as did they) end up sliding further down the slope of understanding than when you (they) started. It's a miracle Ke Jie's hands are still attached to his arms, he threw them up in the air so often!
If the world champion is still confused by Alfie, what chance do even more mortal weakheads like us have??
Well, one thing we can do is what i've noticed many of my own opps doing - try out a few experiments of our own, doing things like shoulder hit + tenuki, early 3-3 invasions and double jumps on the 4th line, all things that anyone can do, even if unlike her darkness they can't project the implications of such ploys over the next 200 moves.
A 3rd way to learn from Alfie is to ask "See what i mean", described in:
https://sites.google.com/site/djhbrown2/icgo
If Swim predicts an Alfie move, it can explain why that move is good, in a simple pictorial language that any kyu can understand. For example, see:
1. the discussion starting at 10:24 in "Demis and Noam" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RSiORA ... a3Hl1X_v-S
2. Swim's prediction and explanation of "Jue Yi's New Move", at 14:47 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSVi8n4 ... a3Hl1X_v-S and its prediction and explanation of a move very similar in spirit to Alfie's at 19:47 in the same video.
When Swim doesn't predict Alfie's move, it can draw 'before' and 'after' pictures for you to see and compare for yourself - pictures of colour and shadow maps, moyos and paths, to form your own impression of the local and global effects of Alfie's move, without having to read out possible continuations. An example of this is reported in
"Swimming with Alphago" https://ssrn.com/abstract=2934932
Swim is still only a paper tiger, so you would have to draw the pictures yourself, following its algorithms. To help you do this, pnprog has programmed the first of them - its colour map - which you can use as your starting point.
https://github.com/pnprog/gomap
PS of course, unless you are Fan Hui. you can't ask Alfie. But you could ask Leela et al.