I've never played, but I'd be happy if someone could point me to the best place to learn.
Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
31–40 of 99 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
#32I learned how to play in Taiwan and it's become my favorite board game. I'm not very good though. Do you have any suggestions for improving?
I'm in Taipei at the moment -- don't suppose you have any suggestions for a Go club to go to?
Re: Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
#33I was entranced with go via "Hikaru No Go", a Japanese anime about a boy who discovers the game through a spirit seeking the elusive 'hand of God'. I am currently at 9 kyu but am trying to better my game. Unfortunately there aren't too many Go players where I am, and this makes Go as a point of social focus difficult, as it often is in chess over here.
Same here -- watching all of Hikaru no Go motivated me enough to get to 1-dan. Great anime.
Re: Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had a design in the works for a few years that is a completely network-based Go AI. The idea is nothing new. It involves multiple computers, each assigned one problem from a board position. One computer might be responsible for calculating ladders, one solves tsumego problems, one to look at influence, one to apply joseki, another for yose, and so forth. Each of submits their top ten moves, in the allotted time,…
Wow. I really dig this idea of sharded / modular network problem solvers. It would be interesting to take it a step further and let the solvers themselves negotiate their own distribution over time, CPU use, etc. - e.g. replicate all the active solvers on all the clients but allocate chunks of variable size to each depending on which evolves to be the "dominant" solver on any given CPU. You'd need an algorithm to sto…
Architecture in a nutshell:
A list of 10 moves from 30 different machines, even using a heavy-weight protocol like SOAP, would be nearly instantaneous. I would favour a light-weight format such as JSON, though. For other applications, I agree, network bandwidth would be a possible bottleneck.
My initial idea was to have each engine return ten moves, in sequence, with the first move being most important. The moves need not be delivered simultaneously. The Master selects the lowest scoring move that was picked by multiple engines. Other ideas include weighting (the fuseki engine's input is not very important in chuban or yose), and imperative moves (death engine forces a play to save a 30 point group).
The Master would send requests for moves by submitting a board position and whose turn to play.
What I really like about the idea, though, is that anyone could develop an engine (in any language) that adheres to the protocol, and add it to the AI network. At any time.
P.S.
Re: Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
#35I learned how to play in Taiwan and it's become my favorite board game. I'm not very good though. Do you have any suggestions for improving?
I'm in Taipei at the moment -- don't suppose you have any suggestions for a Go club to go to?
See ludwig's comment:
Re: Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
#36there's a go club in soma. we're meeting at twitter every wednesday at 8am but have been thinking of moving a more accessible time and location and call it @somagoclub. anyone interested? (soma, san francisco)
Re: Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
#37By the way Go is one of the most challenging games for AI:
Re: Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. I really dig this idea of sharded / modular network problem solvers. It would be interesting to take it a step further and let the solvers themselves negotiate their own distribution over time, CPU use, etc. - e.g. replicate all the active solvers on all the clients but allocate chunks of variable size to each depending on which evolves to be the "dominant" solver on any given CPU. You'd need an algorithm to sto…
Architecture in a nutshell: http://i.imgur.com/IZ52u.png A list of 10 moves from 30 different machines, even using a heavy-weight protocol like SOAP, would be nearly instantaneous. I would favour a light-weight format such as JSON, though. For other applications, I agree, network bandwidth would be a possible bottleneck. My initial idea was to have each engine return ten moves, in sequence, with the first move being…
Cool stuff. Do you already have an API for people to write their own solvers -- something that passes a board state and an interface to return ranked choices?
How do you stop people on the network from overranking their own AI's choices (assuming this were an open project)?
Re: Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
#39I used to be 2-4k but had trouble holding 5k* on igs a few years ago. If I started playing now I would probably struggle holding 8k.
Life, my daughter, 2 personal projects and work got in the way.
I miss the social aspect of Go, I find the internet incarnations are too sterile. I love having a tea and a chat while playing, I spend enough time staring at the screen.
Would probably play again if I found the right group.
Pushing the upper kyus would require way too much work than I am willing to commit at the moment to the game.
Love Go, it is truly eye opening.
Talking about smoke, my Go teacher "Mr No" used to smoke 200 cigarettes a day in Go clubs in Korea.
Re: Ask HN: Who Plays Go?
#40I've never played, but I'd be happy if someone could point me to the best place to learn.
If you want to learn, the easiest way to start would be on a 9 by 9 board using a program like gnu-go.
Computers are awfully predictable and have a hard time even on a 9 by 9 board.
Next up, I would look at checking out a local Go club, maybe read a book or two, maybe check out igs/kgs.