Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Learn to play Go

online-go.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 159 posts

Re: Learn to play Go

#101

Post by jhbadger »

vintermann wrote: post #37
szopa wrote: post #31

I first learned to play Go back in university, but never got very good (it was competing with learning how to program). Many years later, shortly after the war in Ukraine started, I was looking for an activity to share with my 8-year-old son. Life was chaotic then: everyone was anxious, we were hosting a refugee lady, and I could see the stress taking a toll on him. I wanted something where it would be clear we shoul…

That anime is one of my favorites. The main characters are pretty anime-ish, all anime protagonists from that time look more or less the same, but the older adults (apparently Go is a bit of an old person's game in Japan) are drawn in a more naturalistic style with a lot of character. > in Go there’s this unspoken understanding that if you drive people away, you’ll have no one left to play with. Definitively not in o…

>apparently Go is a bit of an old person's game in Japan

Yes. Part of the reason Yumi Hotta's manga (which the anime was based on) was written was to get younger people into the game, and it is credited in part for reviving the popularity of the game in Japan. Traditional board games like Go and Shogi have faced a lot of competition from video games over the past few decades.

Re: Learn to play Go

#102

Post by [deleted] »

Zacharias030 wrote: post #12
dragontamer wrote: post #7

Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…

I don’t share that sentiment. Yes, at some point when people are somewhat able to take a decent lead home the fuseki becomes important. Before that, beginners really need to understand how to „move“ their stones, how to defend and connect their groups and how to cut and capture. If you see a strong player win against a weak player with a large handicap it always goes down the same way: the strong player places stones…

[deleted]

Re: Learn to play Go

#103

Post by dragontamer »

Zacharias030 wrote: post #12
dragontamer wrote: post #7

Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…

I don’t share that sentiment. Yes, at some point when people are somewhat able to take a decent lead home the fuseki becomes important. Before that, beginners really need to understand how to „move“ their stones, how to defend and connect their groups and how to cut and capture. If you see a strong player win against a weak player with a large handicap it always goes down the same way: the strong player places stones…

> Before that, beginners really need to understand how to „move“ their stones, how to defend and connect their groups and how to cut and capture

Agreed. Now check the tutorial series.

There's no movement. There's no connecting of groups. It is ENTIRELY cutting and capture, and life-and-death puzzles.

-----------

https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/2

Look at this puzzle. WTF is this?

The "stretch" ("correct move" according to this tutorial) seems wholly inappropriate compared to 1-point jump, horse-move, diagonal move .... or hell just running in the other direction (to the right, escaping towards the center).

To know the appropriate move requires knowing what is going on around the whole board (and not just what's going on locally).

----------

https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/6

Or this one is perhaps more egregious. This is simply the wrong direction of play entirely. 20+ point mistake to play the "correct" move here. The correct move is a 2-point jump (or greater) along the 3rd or 4th row northbound.

Re: Learn to play Go

#104

Post by jhbadger »

dragontamer wrote: post #92
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching the human programmers become dumbfounded as AlphaGo invented novel Go-playing strategies... is what I remember most from having watched this a few years ago (right before GPT3.5/ChatGPT debuted). The algorithm makes [victorious] wildcard moves which no human player would even contemplate [stupid moves become masterplays]. When 9D-master Sudol attributes human qualities to the beauty of his AI opponent's crea…

Nah. I think with the rise of KataGo, its becoming clear that AlphaGo's "dumbfounded" strategies were instead incredibly strong tactical play with hilarious levels of blindness with regards to ladders. It feels like modern AIs (like KataGo, which are hundreds of times better than AlphaGo) are getting closer to what humans consider appropriate strategic play. Go players must be humble because if the opponent is strong…

>I do wonder how Lee Sodul will react if we told him that the superhuman AI he played could not see ladders... and had other such key weaknesses.

I wonder what Kasparov thinks of the fact that he was beaten by such a primitive chess program as Deep Blue's!

Re: Learn to play Go

#105

Post by noman-land »

beej71 wrote: post #99

I was introduced to this game over 30 years ago. And since then I've been studying and playing on and off. And today I can safely say... I'm still horrible at it. :) But, damn, this is a beautiful game. It's fun and there's no upper limit to the challenge. The way the game ends (by agreement that there are no further moves of benefit to either player) is amazing, as are the handicap rules (which make it so players of…

Honestly my first thought was wanting to see the board and stones.

Re: Learn to play Go

#106

Post by dragontamer »

jhbadger wrote: post #104
dragontamer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. I think with the rise of KataGo, its becoming clear that AlphaGo's "dumbfounded" strategies were instead incredibly strong tactical play with hilarious levels of blindness with regards to ladders. It feels like modern AIs (like KataGo, which are hundreds of times better than AlphaGo) are getting closer to what humans consider appropriate strategic play. Go players must be humble because if the opponent is strong…

>I do wonder how Lee Sodul will react if we told him that the superhuman AI he played could not see ladders... and had other such key weaknesses. I wonder what Kasparov thinks of the fact that he was beaten by such a primitive chess program as Deep Blue's!

Ladders are a thing so easy that its literally in this beginner series of tutorials. Its a thing that 30kyu beginners learn and master.

Its very strange to me that AlphaGo / AlphaZero was unable to ever learn ladders. It shows that the way humans learn and AIs learn is quite different (or at least, MCTS + Neural Net machines learn differently).

Yes, Go is a strategic game of patterns and perhaps we humans overemphasized the ladder. Nonetheless, its a concept that humans can see and calculate with reasonable speeds that the (earlier) AI was unable to do (and now we've built stronger AIs that can prove this weakness).

---------

This 100% makes the 2016-era discussions about the "strategic brilliance" of AlphaGo come up into question. Now that KataGo is superior (ie: MCTS+NeuralNets + dedicated Ladder Solver), we need to double-check all those "strategically brilliant" moves with the newer AI and see if a ladder messed with them.

Etc. etc.

The things AlphaGo sees aren't necessarily useful to us humans, nor are they useful to modern AI-levels of Go. They're just... that. Trapped in 2016. There should not be any great mystery assigned to the 2016 era game, aside from it being a pivotal moment for AIs.

The game itself is now suspect, now that we know all of AlphaGo's flaws. As Go players, we have better things to study.

Re: Learn to play Go

#107

Post by szopa »

aapoalas wrote: post #96
okkdev wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hikaru no Go manga is super good too. Aged very well as well. Manga/Anime from that time usually has some problematic stereotypes/scenes.

Heh, HnG definitely does think all Koreans have slits for eyes.

Apparently in manga and anime regular characters are often drawn as if they were European-ish (so, some of them are going to have blue eyes or blond hair, not common in Japan). This convention is in part historical (matching American comic books that inspired manga), and in part to make the characters more characteristic and easier to distinguish from each other. But in HnG this applies only to Japanese characters – people from abroad are drawn in a more naturalistic and stereotypical way. Koreans and Chinese will look actually like Asians, and Americans and Europeans will be an even more exaggerated version of themselves. I guess it’s a very different sensitivity than what’s common in the US right now.

Re: Learn to play Go

#108

Post by amcoy37 »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #100
nearting wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but without an account, at least on mobile, you can't change any settings besides light/dark mode and language, which is pretty annoying.

honestly i find it confusing. it tells me to make a move, but i don't know if i'm playing black or white. sometimes when i click on a point, it puts the opposite color on a different point.

The opposite color appearing on a different point is the computer playing the response to your move.

Re: Learn to play Go

#109

Post by dragontamer »

tasuki wrote: post #61
dragontamer wrote: post #7

Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…

> Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. Nah, they aren't the most important (you can do without), not are the usual ones particularly difficult to learn. Source: I'm a European 4 Dan. (To expand on this: if you're a beginner, joseki don't matter. When you become a strong player (several of my friends are professional players), joseki i…

Could you look at a few examples from the example tutorials under discussion?

https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/6

https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/9

I'm saying that this "correct move" is a middle-game error. Maybe its my 9kyu brain being bad here, but there's nothing about this tutorial (and many others like it in this tutorial series) that strikes me as a strategic error.

And I certainly think that nobi is a bad concept to teach if the tutorial hasn't covered diagonal moves, horse moves, 1-point jump and the like. Its not that "nobi" or "stretch" is a bad thing to teach, but its just one option in a sea of valid middle-game options.

------------

If the tutorial is going into things like this, it really should be going into at least the basic 3-4 Joseki and why various moves are considered good.

Re: Learn to play Go

#110

Post by szopa »

tasuki wrote: post #51
szopa wrote: post #31

I first learned to play Go back in university, but never got very good (it was competing with learning how to program). Many years later, shortly after the war in Ukraine started, I was looking for an activity to share with my 8-year-old son. Life was chaotic then: everyone was anxious, we were hosting a refugee lady, and I could see the stress taking a toll on him. I wanted something where it would be clear we shoul…

> [...] spend our vacations at Go summer camp. The camp is actually a magical event. I look forward to it the whole year. I've been going there for the past 20 years and been the main organizer the last 10 years. The magic happens by itself though.

Thank you for herding all the cats! :)

Some other interesting aspects of the camp:

The event’s currency are Łosie, which you get by taking part in classes and winning tournament games. By the end of each week there’s an auction where you bid for prizes. You can use your Łosie from previous years, but Tasuki implements an inflationary monetary policy to keep old-timers from becoming too rich (every year Łosie rewards get doubled).

Some people have been coming from abroad for many years, and at some point just figured out it makes sense to learn Polish (not the easiest of languages).

Post reply on HN