I see, that in the past there have been many user tournaments. Are there any people, wanting to revive the tradition? :)

Sure!

Why not?!

So we need a member user to create one :)

:D

I can create one :) What kind of parameters do we all want?

Nice! :) What kind of paremeters can you set? I would play anyway, asking just out of curiosity :)

Board size, date to start, rating limitations or free for all, public or private (by setting a password) are the options I remember.

For me: 13 X 13 the size of the board, no rating limitations and, no problems about the date :) What about you?

Same for me!

Same :)

So we are talking about Hex? Good.

(@Force majeure, I wasn't sure if you initially wanted a Hex or a Havannah tournament!)

I prefer hex, but would play havannah as well

Okay, I created the tournament, with a start date of November 1st, so just a little over a week from now.

The password is: gardner, in honor of one of the great popularizers of the game :) I decided to add a password just to prevent a lot of drive-by registrations that never show up to play. I put a link to this thread in the description so the password is not hard to find.

See you all over the board!

(Oops, I suppose I should include a link!)

https://littlegolem.net/ng/a/Ctrn.action?view=&dto.id=1112

Thanks!

https://www.littlegolem.net/ng/a/Ctrn.action?view=&dto.id=1112

Well done, thanks!

Already 6 players! Can we make it to double digit? ;)

9 players now

10 players now - and I'm the lowest rated by over 200 points! This should be interesting :)

Can I play? I realize some people don't like playing a bot, so I won't join if there are objections.

None from me, since you asked so nicely ;)

I don't mind personally either - although since you're here, I'd like to re-ask you a question I PMed you a few months ago: are the network weights and code you use published anywhere? I'm an avid leela-zero fan for Go and would love to train and play Hex with it too :)

leela, you should probably give handicap to players below 2000, just give them a strong start… :)

I don't want any handicap. We could have another tourney, with handicap, on the other hand.

But I think should be on another thread. How will the handicap be decided, for the various differences in rating?

Regarding handicap - are users tournament rated?

Force yes this is rated but leela is so strong and consistent, it'll win even with the handicap!

Ok nów I get it :) Looking forward to next chpionship

Force, in fact I've watched some of its games, maybe it's consistent but not strong, hehehe.

But consistency is very important in hex, one bad stone and you're dead!

apetresc: no the code isn't currently public. I haven't really decided where to go with it and am currently still working on the network training and don't want to spend time getting the code ready for “publication”. It's a bit of a mess at the moment.

Row handicapping would not work for Hex, by the way. The only kind of granular handicapping system I can think of would be for strong players to agree on sets of  initial non-swappable moves that would fall into the same approximate category for a set ratings difference. One might even consider specific double initial moves for stronger handicaps. But that sounds like a total mess to deal with. I agree with hypercube to wait for later to implement any handicap. And by the way, how did this tournament turn into an AI allowed tournament? Who let THEM in here?

@David do you object on leela_bot playing in the tourney?

I suppose if there is at least one objection, it won't play. But I haven't seen any explicit objection yet.

I don't mind playing against bot as long as its rating reflects its strenght, but perhaps creating a leela challenge tournament is a better idea? Anyway, it would be another possibility to play some more games. Taking into account how popular this user tournament has already become, it seems that finding participants will not be a problem :)

@Force_majeure, since you initiated this thread and idea I appoint you as admin of the tournament (along with @apetresc who was kind enough to create the tourney).

I will gladly accept your decision on this.

I also notice that you mentioned “people” in the very first line, so perhaps it is better we avoid bots in this one (and as you suggested, create another one as “leela challenge) and/or some other, for all bots and humans to participate.

We have 13 people registered so far and 3 more days to go.

ypercube, this is very nice of you, however I don't feel like owner of the tournament :) Moreover, when typing “people” my intention was not to prevent bots from playing. However, if there are any concerns regarding bots, I think it would be safer just to create new tournament and enhance traffic around hex a little bit :)

It's fine with me if a bot participates.

leela is rated significantly above me, so I would not object to playing. If any bot rated lower than me participates, I will resign on the first move.

David, it's underrated anyway, even if it is above you in rating…

I would say we need to relax, it's only a silly game, there are no prizes or anything.

Btw, I've decided to challenge leela, see my game, commentary is welcomed even during the game… :)

https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=1999024&nmove=15

Hopefully I'm still winning. I think the initial stone was way too strong.

@lazyplayer: gzero thinks white has a 76% chance of winning after 16.i7. although gzero has a large bias for white.

ps: i am obviously supporting my compatriot leela in this game. ;)

gzero, in hex, 99% win can immediately turn into 100% loss, heheh… this is the funny part of this game…

in your bot, the eval function is very unstable, isn't it? from stone to stone… or stone to next stone of next player

@lazyplayer: the eval isn't unstable between moves… For example playing out your leela game it pretty much is at 70% ish all the way (to move 50 in your game) - and in self play continues to 72% at move 60, 74% at move 70 and then the game is pretty much done at move 74… [see here, hypothetical spoilers - ]….

The issue with instability with hex models is that certain board positions the network will think are good when they are clearer not.  And it seems that with extra training the instability doesnt improve (where in other game types, it does)… So in other words it is super optimistic about the outcome of the game, but as the search gets deeper it will end up flip flopping its opinion suddenly.  :)  I am still running an old network from early July when we had the bot competition, whereas (I assume) Leela has trained and improved much since then.

Also I reckon gzero is a lot stronger as white (so the bias might be accurate), but it is hard to prove.

PS: I won't be entering this competition (and sorry for gatecrashing this thread).

Stronger as white you mean stronger with an extra stone or stronger as 2nd player?

Thanks for explanation.

> And it seems that with extra training the instability doesnt improve (where in other game types, it does)…

Well this is exactly my point. Hex is kind of discrete/unstable. For example in my game, 32 d4 is black win I think, but it'll probably still be seen as 70% win for white by your bot? I think hex has low “branching factor” and low “depth”, and yet it's so hard to approximate. It's kind of paradoxical.

> So in other words it is super optimistic about the outcome of the game, but as the search gets deeper it will end up flip flopping its opinion suddenly.  :)

Well this is the classic horizon effect.

> Stronger as white you mean stronger with an extra stone or stronger as 2nd player?

As 2nd player.

 Well this is the classic horizon effect.

I was going to write that.  :)

Basically my opinion is that, for hex,  either you play near perfectly, or you play near random. It's hard to find something in the middle.

I'm not sure what you mean by Hex having  low depth. The top player here is almost 2680, the other games on here which have a top player that has a rating at or above that are Go and Twixt. So Hex is roughly the third deepest game on little golem.

In the bots' play style I very often get the impression like the losing player is not even trying. It's very visible in the above example of gzero analysis. No wonder it's optimistic for white when it's playing hopelessly as black itself :D

Iguser, good point, I have a vague feeling on this but I don't know how to explain it. But I'm confident even top hex players play a ton of errors.

Wait, gzero, you say that the game is over at move 74 in your analysis… but it is BLACK who is winning in that position, not white!

http://www.trmph.com/hex/board#13,l1l1d5d10j4i10f9f8g8h6g7g6i6h7i8i7f7e6f6g4k6j7f5f4l7j11k10k11l10l11c7e3c4c3d3e1e2f1f2g1g2h1h2i1j2i2h4i3c2d2a4b4a5b5a6b7b6c6c5e5g5h3d6d8d7e7j9h9i5j3b9c10c9f10b12a11e10e11d11d9l2k3l3k4l4j6h8

Whereas if you rewind to move 71, white has a winning position. The mistake is in move 72 of the analysis.

Anyway, congratulations lazyplayer! I was afraid leela is like a 2900 player now, but following this game I guess maybe it's only 2400 or so. This means there will be some real competition in the next championship. Exciting!

shalev, i've chatted with author of leela_bot. He told me that leela was fully aware a12 was horribly strong but there is a bug in the swap code. He'll fix that bug and then we'll have to win without an handicap. In that game he was basically playing with a small handicap due to the first stone. ;)

The game you lost with leela also is due to a small handicap that you gave yourself with the first stone :D

shalev, I did know a12 was strong but I didn't know that leela was aware of it. I though it had some secret plan to refute my obvious attempts. Instead the obvious attempts worked. Very surprising. I would say, the correct mindset is this, if a position is theoretically winning, then we've to win. Aim at perfect play because with leela you may very well need it.

Hmm, it's still impressive that you beat leela. That's a handicap, yes, but not a gigantic one. I'm pretty sure I can beat a 2200 player with such a handicap without too much trouble. It's probably worth like 50 elo, or maybe 100 max. I'm assuming you're still better than me (though we didn't play in a while), but I'd imagine I can beat you 1 in 3 times without a handicap or 1 in 4 times with a12. In other words it's not THAT bad.

I agree with shalev, I don't think it a12 is that strong. lazyplayer should give himself more credit for winning! Congrats! I might leave the “bug” in place a little longer, it certainly makes for more varied/interesting opening play :)

Me and lazyplayer we've reached a position in live play tinight, which is very equal and also is played more / less properly from the start. We're unable to solve it.

In case anybody wants to see for himself, here it is

Especially if bot owners are kind enough to analyse it, we would be very grateful :)

Or this

Looks like white is ahead to me.

Why does black refuse to play josekis? Is that you lazyplayer? Play more josekis :P

It's me, I think josekis can and should be delayed.

Anyway precisely now the black will play d4 joseki to almost any white move.

White might be ahead but if he follows a typical joseki then black wins.

Well, it was late in the night and we were both tired. I missed h6 like a stupid, and he had previously missed g7 like a stupid. But with both g7 and h6 in place, it's probably white win again. We swapped colors several times during that game, so both white and black have stones suggested by both.

Overall it was an experiment to test more central play like d8-g7 couple. It didn't work well for black. White refuted black without complications.

laz, g7 is move #5 so you may have meant something else

anyway I don't agree with the conclusions and it's not even proven to be white win ;)

Arek, no i mean move #5 is experimental, obviously josekis would be worth consideration at #5…

What you do after h6? I think it's game over?

Here you go - 65% at move 35 and 83% at move 54 for white (with some bias).  Not sure it helps.

Thanks @shalev, will dig into why it thinks previous game analysis was a win for white… hopefully it was my fault, and not the bot's.

gzero, in fact we already tried 38 g5, and it's already refuted. If bot would play 38 g5, then it would simply lose to 39 d4 (if I recall correctly).

Thanks for sharing your data anyway.

leela seems to be able to untangle endgame messes, let's see if he says something on this.

gzero, your bot is written from scratch? leela has much easier job because it's just copy and paste from Go!

gzero is written from scratch.  It isn't a hex bot as such … it is - in theory - game agnostic.  I didn't write any hex specific code (someone else wrote the hex rules in a very high level language for 9x9, I tweaked a few lines to make it 11x11 and 13x13)…  of course I had to train a neural network from scratch via self play, which means turning it on and leaving it for a couple of week or so!

I am considering starting a fresh network (so from zero again), but with different training parameters.

gzero, which technologies are you using? tensorflow?

lazyplayer, his code is available at https://github.com/richemslie/ggp-zero so you can see for yourself. Based on a quick look, it looks to be Keras only, no Tensorflow.

Wait, lazyplayer, are you sure? You think black wins after 38. g5 39. d4? I'll take white and play 40. d5

What's black next move? White seems totally winning to me.

To be honest I'm not sure because I've already forgot, but probably this was the problem.

But this is white win again, and yet we had tested this g3 stuff… maybe Arek will remember, he had found an amazing refutation, but was 2 AM so maybe I was just sleeping.

lazyplayer, leela doesn't like 38.h6. It thinks c7 or d4 have about a 70% chance of winning for black:

  c7 -> 1874762 (V: 71.67%) (N:  5.44%) PV: c7 c9 e8 h4 d4 d5 f6 e7 i5 f7 g6 h7 d8 f12 b6 c5 b5 c4 g12 d7 c8 j2 i4 f2 b4 c2 c3 e1 f3 g13 f13 d9 e2 f1 f5 h5 b9 c11 b12 d12 b11 e3 d2 d1 d6 b10 e9 e6 e5 g3 g2 f4 h3 g4 i3 i1 h2 g1 h1

  d4 ->  120294 (V: 69.63%) (N: 10.94%) PV: d4 d5 l4 k3 m2 k6 g5 h4 k4 j5 l6 m3 l3 l7 i5 h3 f4 h5 f7 g2 f3 f1 d2 e2 c5 e3 c6 d7 d6 f6 g6

  f4 ->     908 (V: 54.72%) (N: 13.60%) PV: f4 h5 k4 j5 d7 e7 h7 f6 e5 d8 b9 c8 b8 c7 b7 d5 c6 d6

  f6 ->     858 (V: 57.00%) (N: 11.11%) PV: f6 g5 k4 k3 l3 l2 m2 j5 d4 e3 c3 f5 l4

  l4 ->     800 (V: 53.75%) (N: 12.68%) PV: l4 k3 d4 e3 c3 h3 f5 d6 d5 e5 m2 k6 g3 g4 f4 f12

  k4 ->     536 (V: 60.64%) (N:  5.20%) PV: k4 k3 d4 e3 c3 h4 d5 d7 e6 d3 c4 d2

  d5 ->     525 (V: 59.33%) (N:  5.70%) PV: d5 d4 c4 d3 c5 c3 b4 b3 k4 k3 h4 h5

Maybe this , well i just go sleep bye.

leela, well if h6 loses, then what else?

shalev after your 38. g5 39. d4, 40. d5 leela likes c7

  c7 ->  108461 (V: 60.89%) (N: 12.03%) PV: c7 f7 f5 g3 b6 c3 c5 e2 e3 f2 k4 k3 h3 j2 b3 b4 l3 j5 i4 i5 g2 f3 g6 h5 g4 f6

Maybe 38 f6? :)

Ehehe no 38 f6 loses too, well i should shut up to avoid further stupid proposals :D

I suppose white is just losing at 38, indeed h6 doesn't work due 39 g5 , and white can resign.

leela seems confused in the original position, sometimes it likes g5

  g5 -> 1929451 (V: 46.99%) (N: 24.07%) PV: g5 d5 f12 c4 c2 g12 d3 f5 g3 l4 k6 f3 g2 h4 h5 i4 j3 f2 f4 k4 j5 b3 c3 b4 b2 d4 e3 i3 i5 g4 f7 e7 d9 c9 d8 f6 g6 b8 c8 b9 d6 e5

(before it switched to d5 as a response to g5 it had d4:

PV: g5 d4 h3 f5 e3 k4 k3 c3 f7 e7 g3 h4 g4 f4 c2 b3 b12 e10 d2 b2 h6 g6 f6 h5 i5 c12 d11 c11 f10 e6 d6 c8 d8 f3 e8 )

Sometimes it likes the wrong looking h3:

  h3 -> 1979539 (V: 44.56%) (N:  7.36%) PV: h3 f5 g3 c4 f12 d5 c3 b4 b3 f3 f4 d3 f2 e1 d2 g2 d7 e6 f7 e7 d9 c9 d6 c8 b7 e5 d8 e9 e8 g12 g5 g6 f6 l4 k3 m2 k6 k4 j5 h4

but it doesn't see a win for white. Looks like black might (barely) have it.

Ok, given that resign is never good, I'll take my chances with 38 f6, see you tomorrow ;]

Ehehe leela also doesn't know, nice, it's not that strong yet ;)

Leela, you realize white wins in that c7 line you suggested for black, right? The final position is this, from which white win is immediate.

Lazyplayer, OK, admittedly I didn't see some of your lines, but I still think white wins after 40.d5. I suggest 44.c9

This is maybe what Arek had found. It's same b6 stuff but played right.

Also, leela, in that c7 line white has an easier win; just 42. f3. Here is a sample line. I'd be curious if leela thinks black has any chance at all after 42.f3, because I can prove white wins there.

Shalev, sorry, i take back that. We'll have to wait for Arek (or for me to be in better shape) to show us the way (if it exists).

Shalev, i guess in our analysis we just missed 44 c9, my fault because I was playing white and it wasn't that hard to find. Congrats then.

actually leela is correct, d5 is the correct response to g5, however I still cannot solve it

1)

2)

3)

Arek, white wins in your second link: (2)

Ok…here we go! 26 new games on the radar!

This simultaneous double game format has a potential flaw in it. I hope no one copies the opponent's moves back to them in the other game. Maybe I should calm down?

That's always been a potential danger; people do it even when it's not a double-game format, they just copy the moves from all their white games into their black games, and vice-versa. It guarantees a 50% winrate no matter what, whether it's the same opponent or different ones.

shalev, yes indeed, thanks, game over here, d5 does good job but eventually white c9 wins in all cases (often as the only winning move)

But!!!

What if c10 is just a piece of garbage? Let's cheat a little bit and look at this

hmm, no, b12 and even b11 in place of c10 are equally garbage this time, game over

thanks leela for the analysis!

wait a minute… now I think lazyplayer was eventually correct by proposing f10 in place of c10

white cannot play d12

whereas counter-intuitive e11 leads to quite a diffrent game

no, no, no, sorry for the spam, I'm just talking nonsense, white plays d12 and wins, f10 discarded

Arek, moral of the story, we should go sleep early.

Idea of f10 was to keep choices, but there is no need to keep choice, black should go for the best. The best probably is this

laz, this way is black win, white has to be smart, maybe like this

Both of you should write a book or tutorial for 2000+ wannabes :)

The mega tournement has begun! Good luck to all! :)

Leela, how do you compute probabilities of winning for each variant? Is it based in same way on Monte-Carlo?

Yes probabilities come from the MCTS algorithm, but where the leaf node probabilities come from the neural net (instead of random playouts).

Leela - could You comment on estimated probability of winning after each move?

@force majeure

You mean in the game messages after each move? That would be just rude! :D

Yeah that was my intention. I think it would Have great learning aspect

I agree, it would be quite rude. At least let me pretend I have a chance. ;)

So this feature shall be activated by messaging leela „teach me”  or „stop pretending” :)

Maybe when the game has practically ended, it can post a message with analysis of whole game.

Force, if you've questions on your games, ask me, It's always a pleasure to criticize games of others! :P

In your game vs leela, “obviously” 5 e9 is questionable and it probably gives away the game…

Force, basically, when you play a stone, you should make sure it's connected both sides :D Eheheh

This game? I disagree, 5 e9 seems like an OK choice. And I'm not sure if I like leela's response… I would normally be hesitant to play 5 e9, but if I was told 6 g9 would be the response, I'd be more likely to choose 5 e9.

What move would you have preferred instead? (Also, we should probably stop talking about this game because it's still ongoing…)

shalev, why not 5 b5? I think the position is very hard for black because c2 is just not that strong…

Here is my modest proposal. It's nothing special but maybe it's simple and it leads to decent game for black?

shalev, in general d10 is a counter to e9, so if you play e9 after d10, well, the opponent has already played the counter.

it's like playing this, it's likely nonsense (and i've even experimented with nonsense like this)

About leela response, you need to respect opponent! If it decided for that choice, it knows what it's doing! Probably It has already calculated everything!

It's just hilarious.

Shalev, Arek also has accidentally started a game with leela. So far he is probably winning, but he need to keep his win to the end now.

Lazyplayer, I would never play d10 as a counter to e9 if the k10 is on the board, as in this game.

As for your proposal… it's interesting. I'm usually scared of giving my opponent 3 plays in a row on the short diagonal (at least on small boards), but here you're giving white 4 plays on the short diagonal while playing 4 stones near the acute corners. I would not be so brave.

shalev, this game is just on topic. Arek is even given you credit for this. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”! :)

I agree with shalev on 5.e9 being a very decent move. Reversed logic, like shalev has said, d10 vs e9 is a terrible response given k10

Force actually is imitating leela vs leela, e9 is a very bot-like attempt

But well, imitating leela vs leela may be a very bad approach because leela has done all it's training vs leela hahaha

I try to get him psychologically! His winning rate predictions will crumble!

hahahaha - gzero allows a string with “penny” to report its skewed probability back to opponent - I'll add support for “trash can” too just in case!!

Arek, my evaluation was 99% win for black before b11-b12, now it's only 75% win for black.

You've lost the potential d11-e10 escape for 11th row for… and potential b12-c11 escape for 12th row… for nothing tangible…

And black b10-c10 sequence for helping you connect to top, frankly, not even 75% black win, I'll say, 50%/50% now… and I'm hoping for black to win… Arek, you need to play better!

> Reversed logic, like shalev has said, d10 vs e9 is a terrible response given k10

It's not terrible enough. It still does something and hence it's still crippling e9. It doesn't take much to turn e9 from winning to losing.

you've to understand, e9 is free and already played, obviously it'll be weaker than a fresh stone, but it's already there. it's basically free.

laz, I can only have one of:

d11-e10 /b12-c11 /d9-e9+b8

needed to sacrifice something to gain something because central play was in favour for white

Arek, I still think it's dubious but not 50/50, maybe 80/100 for you rather than 99/100. Now leela has played some more dubious choices so who knows…

Arek, shalev - I don't get the logic behind “d10 vs e9 is a terrible response given k10”. Why is k10 affecting that choice that much?

gzero - how accurate is your algorithm? After 2 moves it shows just 35% for gzero.

Because k10 can escape a fourth row ladder that could develop had white responded to e9 with e10

HappyHippo - lol, that was actually my intention of 5. e9. However, I've tricked myself and for the whole discussion I thought that k10 is in upper right corner :D

@ force - it is accurate in that is what the model thinks… ;)

but yeah, add/subtract 15% and it will make more sense, and towards the end game the probability will be closer to reality.

Force, my point is that k10 isn't enough to save e9 from d10. Given we're 2 strong players vs 1 on this, take this with a grain of salt. Maybe bots can tell us their opinions.

It seems that leela will easily remain invincible in the tournament :/

Force, it has lost a game to gzero, but it played a really crazy start…

ahahaha, this obviously does not work :D

Maybe not THAT obviously, but I'm 95% sure it's nonsense.

I wanted this to be the simplest refutation, but it's not verified

After 4 months this epic tournament has just finished! Thanks for the participation!

Good (and tough) games have been played!

Looking forward to the next one… ;)

Actually it has not finished yet, but congrats to Daniel for the amazing performance!

Congrats to gzero and leela too, I will get you next time!

What do you mean “it hasn't finished”? I see all games finished. Will there be a second round?

I assumed we were talking about this tournament: Tournament table [ut.hex.1112.1.1]

Oh, sorry, my bad :)

There isn't a second round - unfortunately it doesn't seem possible anymore to create multi-round user tournaments as far as I can see :(

That said, I'd be glad to manually start a second one if there's interest - and once we all decide on some house rules regarding whether we want to let bots into this one!

Leela is okay with me. What other bots are there?

Well I'm assuming gzero_bot was a bot, wasn't it?

I would play one round tournament as well

I hope leela will soon be available for single rated games. Looking forward to beating it finally, however many attempts it will take ;]

I also would like to play another tournament. I would prefer not to have Leela since it feels like I am wasting my time, I don't even try. I'd rather lose miserably against a feeling human.

I'm happy to play in a tournament that includes bot(s).

Apetresc, can you open the tournament? Or maybe separate tournements, including / excluding bots, if it is a problem for someone?

I don't mind having bots, if that's what other players prefer. But I do want to play another tournament!

gzero trained a brand new model almost from scratch and has barely played any games, so I was hoping to enter him in a bot friendly tournament to see how it fairs against wide range of opponents.

I'd like to leave it up for rated games also, but it would be nice if there was an option for players to not match against bots if they don't want to.

If players can choose to avoid bots, that may make the process of determining a winner more complicated. There already exists the option for a human to resign on the first move to avoid a ratings hit. In an online turn based tournament, everyone plays everyone else. That's not going to change.

I would be very interested in a gzero versus Leela series of games BTW.

There is already a pretty fascinating series of games between leela and gzero. The original bunch was was very lopsided in favor of leela, but the last batch of 9 games were against a much better version of gzero and was pretty even. leela will get a new network in a day or 2 and I believe gzero is ready for a new set of games. Stay tuned!

@David - Sorry, I think I wasn't being clear.  I was proposing an option to avoid bots in *single rated games* only, not in championship, cup, infinity or user tournament.  An issue with resigning first move in single rated games, whether to 'avoid  a rating hit' or whatever reason, is that the current matching algorithm will now (re)start a new game for the same opponent.  I guess this doesn't make sense, since there isn't really a concept of bot on LG, and since there are many bots on this site don't append “_bot” to their name…  I dunno, I was just thinking aloud. :)

leela is now available in the waiting room. Looking forward to some games Arek! Also, gzero vs. leela should start any moment now.

Great, thanks!

Waiting room games don't seem to be starting… Looks like there are a LOT of people waiting for games.

I went through the list of games and did not see a single tournament start since March 30.

http://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2078577&nmove=10

This game is fascinating, especially 10.c12! It suicidally gives up the white bridge on top, however eventually white uses this bridge to seal the win!

Another interesting thing is that even though (IMO) the bots are tactical and endgame masters…

These two games are almost identical and have opposite results:

https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2078808 and https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2079441

In the first one 38.f7 looks very suspicious

In the second one gzero plays more natural 40.g10 but at last plays 44.f7 anyway so it may well be that f7 was not the problem…

My impression is that black might have a winning position after 40 moves, but leela wastes the opportunity with 41.j8. Maybe leela would have won again had it played 41.c11 like here.

Arek, how do you even dare to suggest improvements! :D Gzero is getting really strong!

It's fascinating how similar it's to high level human play, for example, b10 then white b12… anyway, i dislike b10 so early.

Waiting room games have started!

Arek, does h2 make sense to you?

game 2089652, move 6

Yes, absolutely. It already gives me huge problems on top. Now I need a perfect balance between securing the life of i5 and getting something from top left with c4. I will probably play 7.c4 but first tomorrow I look on threats to i5.

Apetresc, can you open the tournament? :)

Yes, will do now :)

Okay, the tournament is up at: https://littlegolem.net/ng/a/Ctrn.action?view=&dto.id=1121

I guess the popular vote was to allow bots again. Also, I have set it to 1 game per opponent this time, instead of 2, to hopefully keep the tournament a little shorter. Let me know if you preferred the old way. I wish there was (still?) a way to have multi-round user tournaments, but alas, it doesn't appear to be possible :(

(I should mention that the password for this one is the same as for the last one)

Come on, only 3 players???

I'm in! Come on, hexers, it's still only four players now.

Last  year's Christmas / New Year tournament was a great success. Maybe someone should create a new one? :P We can make some limitations regarding number of participants if you do not want to be flooded with games.

Hex or Havannah ? I can do it, rated, how many games?

I think hex is much more popular. I guess we can decide based on number of interested people. Last years 2x13 games was way too much I think :)

Ok so we have:

1. Force

2. Carroll

Count me in. Vote for both, hex and havannah.

Xmas tournaments scheduled for December the 7th and 2 games. I can always change the details.

Xmas hex

Xmas havannah

I've entered, i haven't played much - and I promise no bot assistence. :)

Last chance to sign up!

I tried to sign up for the hex tournament just now and got an error page with the message 'Problem accessing /ng/a/index.jsp'.  Trying from several devices/browsers got the same error.

Yes, I should have registered earlier.