Re: OT: Teaching Go (was Re: [computer-go] Re: Disputes under Japanese rules)
On Fri, 2008-09-19 at 22:37 -0700, Ross Werner wrote: Do you see any mechanical issues with these rules, or do they still seem ad-hoc? group is ill-defined. It can mean indivisibly connected stones or loosely connected ones. In the false eye case, for example, there are two indiviual groups involved, but one umbrella group under consideration. Your rules as stated are already more complicated than I'd want to expose a beginner too. Any ruleset that requires agreement with restoration is a non-starter when just play is the alternative. To be honest, I don't really want to get in a back and forth with you while you implement/design your rules. Trying to formalize Japanese rules with some subset of being (logical, complete, simple) is a well travelled path. Ikeda, Lasker-Maas, Jasiek, Spite, Japanese-1989, Kee -- these are just some of the names that roll of the top of my head. I only suggested that you implement your rules so you could see just how hard it is, but you'd also do well to study those that have gone before you. Then again, I'd recommend you not go down that path at all :) When two beginners play each other, in real life (not on a computer), there is definitely a drawback to having to remember the original position. However, I believe there are also slight drawbacks to beginners when using area scoring--and those drawbacks are present in every game played, whereas the drawbacks of position restoring are only present in cases of a dispute. For territory rules, there is a drawback in every game played -- the beginner is unsure when to end the game, yet the rules tell him up front that he needs to stop early. Experimentation and seeing things to the logical end are punished. -Jeff ___ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
Re: OT: Teaching Go (was Re: [computer-go] Re: Disputes under Japanese rules)
On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 19:41 -0700, Ross Werner wrote: I teach informal territory rules with virtual play out. However in practice, I should note, the difference between territory rules with *actual* (not virtual) playout and area rules with actual playout ends up being identical. The only exception is the ridiculous invasion scenario that started this thread--that's the only case that I have seen in which the virtualness of the playout matters. That's a gross simplification and untrue. Consider some dead stones with a false eye. The player who has dead stones will pass, thinking his stones are alive. The player forced to kill them will lose points by removing the false eyes. This is a genuine dispute. Now after the false eye is removed you have to roll it back, making it virtual. Consider typical nakade shapes. The beginner will only have a simple understanding of these, if any. Shapes that look alive will be dead, and vice versa. You demonstrated this yourself when I showed you one of my disputed games in our last discussion: http://computer-go.org/pipermail/computer-go/2006-March/005061.html We haven't even discussed ko yet. That's another can of worms. I recall the discussion, but I don't recall (and looking over the posted thread doesn't bring to mind) being convinced of its impracticality. Are you speaking only of the combative opponent, multiple-group-dispute scenario? If so, then I agree that playout-and-restore is impractical. But in all other scenarios (e.g. combative opponent single-group-dispute), I think virtual playout is a perfectly reasonable procedure. I have several problems with your rules: 1) They are ad hoc. I am certain that you could not specify them mechanically. I would love to see you try and program them. This is of practical importance, because tools like Igowin are extremely helpful to beginners, but if they can't use the dispute phase the tool leads to confusion. 2) Fuzzy concepts that aren't easily verified by the beginner are confusing, because they have no concept of what seems obvious to you as an experienced player. Again I'm talking about the vague descriptions of your rules. 3) If the dispute phase is impractical to use (requiring remembering the original position and restoring it -- or not, since you say sometimes you don't restore it), then the beginner is discouraged from using it. Compare this with just continuing play and scoring as normal when using area scoring rules. It is extremely helpful for a beginner to experiment and see the result, while confident he is playing by the rules. Pass stones are probably superior for things like tournament or online play, but I find that the logic of playout-and-restore is easier for beginners to understand when the inevitable question of why can't I play a single stone in your territory and insist that you capture it, gaining me four points? comes up. YMMV. That's probably fine to explain the one and simple scenario where a stone is plunked down in the middle of a clearly uninvadable territory. That's just enough for an experienced player to get a beginner to nod is head, yeah I can see that, and not nearly enough to let a beginner play on his own with other beginners with a true understanding of the rules. -Jeff ___ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
Re: OT: Teaching Go (was Re: [computer-go] Re: Disputes under Japanese rules)
Jeff Nowakowski wrote: On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 19:41 -0700, Ross Werner wrote: The only exception is the ridiculous invasion scenario that started this thread--that's the only case that I have seen in which the virtualness of the playout matters. That's a gross simplification and untrue. Consider some dead stones with a false eye. The player who has dead stones will pass, thinking his stones are alive. The player forced to kill them will lose points by removing the false eyes. This is a genuine dispute. Now after the false eye is removed you have to roll it back, making it virtual. This is a good point, and a scenario I hadn't considered. I retract my previous statement. There are some cases where the virtualness doesn't matter, and there are some cases where it does matter. The PaperTiger-Ronnin example is a good one. Consider typical nakade shapes. The beginner will only have a simple understanding of these, if any. Shapes that look alive will be dead, and vice versa. You demonstrated this yourself when I showed you one of my disputed games in our last discussion: I'm happy to see that my Go playing skills have improved since then. :-) Hopefully this discussion will be more fruitful for me this time around, not being 20k any more. (Or perhaps, not being a beginner, I will make unwarranted assumptions that I would not have made years ago.) We haven't even discussed ko yet. That's another can of worms. Indeed, and a nasty one at that. I have several problems with your rules: 1) They are ad hoc. I am certain that you could not specify them mechanically. I would love to see you try and program them. This is an intriguing challenge, and one I would like to take up. Do you mind if I attack the single disputed group case first? I believe I can generalize to multiple disputed groups programmatically, but I am not certain of the results. Here is my first attempt: 1) Assume that after two passes, there is a single group of disputed status. 2) Play continues, in a virtual playout, until two consecutive passes occur. 3) At this point, if the group has been captured, play is rewound to the original state after #1, and the disputed group is marked dead. If other groups on the board have been killed or otherwise changed, that does not affect the game. 4) If the group has not been successfully captured after two consecutive passes, play is rewound to the original state after #1, and the disputed group is marked alive. Again, changes to other groups on the board do not have any affect. Do you see any mechanical issues with these rules, or do they still seem ad-hoc? (If you're still interested in seeing an actual program with this implemented, I'm happy to do so--I just want to make sure there aren't any glaring holes in my logic that are obvious before I start.) 2) Fuzzy concepts that aren't easily verified by the beginner are confusing, because they have no concept of what seems obvious to you as an experienced player. Again I'm talking about the vague descriptions of your rules. I agree that fuzzy concepts that aren't easily verified by beginners are confusing; if I cannot clearly state a mechanical process for resolving disputes in territory scoring, that definitely makes it inferior to area scoring. 3) If the dispute phase is impractical to use (requiring remembering the original position and restoring it -- or not, since you say sometimes you don't restore it), then the beginner is discouraged from using it. Compare this with just continuing play and scoring as normal when using area scoring rules. When two beginners play each other, in real life (not on a computer), there is definitely a drawback to having to remember the original position. However, I believe there are also slight drawbacks to beginners when using area scoring--and those drawbacks are present in every game played, whereas the drawbacks of position restoring are only present in cases of a dispute. It is, I suppose, a question of tradeoffs--which is a better general-purpose ruleset? I prefer one, but I can entirely see how you might prefer another, due to its simplicity in this area. All I hope to do, however, is to convince that territory scoring is not hopelessly without a way to resolve questions of this sort. It may be less elegant than other rulesets, but it is not completely impractical. That's probably fine to explain the one and simple scenario where a stone is plunked down in the middle of a clearly uninvadable territory. That's just enough for an experienced player to get a beginner to nod is head, yeah I can see that, and not nearly enough to let a beginner play on his own with other beginners with a true understanding of the rules. I definitely want a ruleset where two beginners can play on their own without having to appeal to a stronger player to adjudicate. If virtual playout does not suffice for this, I may be convinced to prefer explaining pass
Re: OT: Teaching Go (was Re: [computer-go] Re: Disputes under Japanese rules)
At 09:14 PM 9/17/2008, you wrote: ... . I want to be able to give a tiny set of rules and then let players loose to discover things on their own. i have had good luck with just explaining capure by surrounding and starting with 9 handicap stones on a 9x9 board (you can't win and that's a good thing). remove one handicap stone each time they win. you can explain things as they show up in the games (two eyes, ko, seki, etc). you can play many games in an hour, usually getting the handicap down to 3 or 4. this works surprisingly well. thanks --- vice-chair http://ocjug.org/ ___ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
Re: OT: Teaching Go (was Re: [computer-go] Re: Disputes under Japanese rules)
On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 21:39 -0700, Ross Werner wrote: And, of course, once a beginner understands life and death in this manner, playing out disputed groups is the most natural way to determine the life-or-death status of a group. (And, I submit, the best way no matter what ruleset you're using.) The ruleset has to specify a way to resolve disputes. You can't just play it out using any ruleset. So are you teaching informal territory rules with an ad hoc virtual play out, or are you using AGA rules with pass stones? -Jeff ___ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
Re: OT: Teaching Go (was Re: [computer-go] Re: Disputes under Japanese rules)
A few responses; my apologies in advance for the length. Jeff Nowakowski wrote: On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 21:39 -0700, Ross Werner wrote: And, of course, once a beginner understands life and death in this manner, playing out disputed groups is the most natural way to determine the life-or-death status of a group. (And, I submit, the best way no matter what ruleset you're using.) The ruleset has to specify a way to resolve disputes. You can't just play it out using any ruleset. So are you teaching informal territory rules with an ad hoc virtual play out, or are you using AGA rules with pass stones? I teach informal territory rules with virtual play out. However in practice, I should note, the difference between territory rules with *actual* (not virtual) playout and area rules with actual playout ends up being identical. The only exception is the ridiculous invasion scenario that started this thread--that's the only case that I have seen in which the virtualness of the playout matters. Don Dailey wrote: 1. What if you still disagree and claim that you simply mis-played the play-out? ... The goal here is not to see who is better, but to find the truth. With my version of informal territory rules with virtual playout, the mis-played play-out stands, just as it would in a non-virtual area-scoring play-out. The purpose is not to find out the truth, in my opinion--the purpose is to finish an unfinished game, just like it is in area-scoring play-out. The only purpose of pass stones or the virtual-ness of the play-out is if one player passes multiple times, to preserve the correct score in the ridiculous invasion scenario. 2. Before the play-out phase, do you calculate both possible scores then go by the one that the play-outs indicate was correct? Or do you try to reconstruct the original position? When teaching beginners, I reconstruct the original position after the play-out, if one player passed multiple times during the play-out. (It is always trivial in these cases.) If there were no extra passes, the score is the same either way, so it doesn't matter which you do. What if several groups are in question or there are subtle interactions? The multiple-group dispute case is the only case where this gets tricky. If this were a thread about the best way to resolve disputes generally, assuming a combative opponent (such as someone who disputes all stones, regardless of whether this is an annoying human player or a naive computer player), then I would not suggest territory scoring as the best approach. However, this is a thread about teaching beginners, and in those cases, it seems to me that it is always true that either (a) only a single group is disputed, or (b) both players make an equal number of passes. Jeff Nowakowski wrote: David Fotland talks about an informal procedure where you play it out and then restore, but this is not practical and also doesn't really work, which I've debated on this list before I recall the discussion, but I don't recall (and looking over the posted thread doesn't bring to mind) being convinced of its impracticality. Are you speaking only of the combative opponent, multiple-group-dispute scenario? If so, then I agree that playout-and-restore is impractical. But in all other scenarios (e.g. combative opponent single-group-dispute), I think virtual playout is a perfectly reasonable procedure. Pass stones are probably superior for things like tournament or online play, but I find that the logic of playout-and-restore is easier for beginners to understand when the inevitable question of why can't I play a single stone in your territory and insist that you capture it, gaining me four points? comes up. YMMV. ~ Ross ___ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
OT: Teaching Go (was Re: [computer-go] Re: Disputes under Japanese rules)
I'm inclined to agree, but it bothers me to have to explain life and death before scoring. Life and death therefore become part of the rules rather than an emergent consequences of the rules . I want to be able to give a tiny set of rules and then let players loose to discover things on their own. I would probably simply use AGA rules, but just about all English introductory books (e.g., Learn to Play Go by Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-huyn) use the Japanese rules. Peter Drake http://www.lclark.edu/~drake/ On Sep 16, 2008, at 7:25 PM, Ross Werner wrote: Also, I think when teaching beginners Go, the trust me, you lost here even though you cannot understand it approach is a gigantic mistake no matter which ruleset you are using. Play it out, and show the beginner exactly why those disputed stones are dead (or alive). This is possible no matter what kind of scoring you use. If you're using territory scoring, you will get the exact same (relative) score unless one player passes multiple times, which shouldn't happen in a play-out with a beginner who doesn't understand what is going on. ___ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
Re: OT: Teaching Go (was Re: [computer-go] Re: Disputes under Japanese rules)
Peter Drake wrote: I'm inclined to agree, but it bothers me to have to explain life and death before scoring. Life and death therefore become part of the rules rather than an emergent consequences of the rules . I want to be able to give a tiny set of rules and then let players loose to discover things on their own. (I guess now that the thread is marked OT, I can feel less guilty about continuing it ...) I agree. I typically explain life and death to beginners at the very beginning, in this way: 1) I place single stones on the board; one in the middle, on on the edge, and one in the corner. Taking as many moves as you like, capture my stones. Often I'll do this before explaining anything at all other than a basic overview of the game. If they use more than the required number of stones (e.g. two for the corner stone) to capture, I'll explain. 2) I place groups of stones on the board, again in the middle, edge, and corner. Each group has exactly one eye. Again, taking as many moves as you like, capture my stones. I let them put stones on the board to capture, making sure that they place the one in the eye last (and again explaining further if there is any confusion). 3) Finally, I place groups of stones on the board, middle, edge, and corner, giving each group two eyes. Taking as many moves as you like, capture my stones. Typically, after they've surrounded the outside, they realize they can't capture my stones no matter how many moves they make in a row. This both quickly shows a number of important Go concepts (including life and death), as well as shows that the idea of life and death is an emergent consequence of the rules, not a rule itself. It also helps explain why certain shapes (such as groups with shared eyes, or false eyes) are alive or dead, without having to come up with complicated explanations of what the definition of an eye is. In fact, I started teaching Go this way when an interested beginner asked me how you know whether a group of stones is alive. At first, I started to talk about two eyes, but then I thought of all the edge cases involved (such as four lines of stones along the edges of the board, with the corners empty ... can you really say those stones have two eyes?). Then I thought about Benson's algorithm, but realized that was way overkill for talking to a beginner. Then I realized the simplest explanation--given as many moves in row as you want, can you capture the stones? If not, the stones are unconditionally alive. Of course, there are other groups we call alive that are not *unconditionally* alive, but that's merely a shortcut in terminology that means, No matter what our opponent plays, we can respond to make the group unconditionally alive. But this concept can still, in my opinion, be more clearly taught when the concept of unconditionally alive is well-understood. And, of course, once a beginner understands life and death in this manner, playing out disputed groups is the most natural way to determine the life-or-death status of a group. (And, I submit, the best way no matter what ruleset you're using.) ~ Ross ___ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
