Hex bot battle continued

I think you overall miss the point, the humans still win with much less computational effort, so, they're still using the better algorithm. The problem of course is that it's not good enough to compensate for hardware difference. Anyway, larger board, larger time controls, larger training efforts, etc etc, everything helps humans more than it helps bots. :)

I'd enjoy watching someone who's good at 19x19 play against mootwo.  The bot responds quickly.

I'm not good, I got trounced.

Tom, currently Arek is probably the least bad , but we're all very bad on 19x19. :D

And 1 k5 is absurd, surely there must be fair openings on the first column...

Uh, I was confused, 1 e11 was played. Even more crazy.

If we reach the point where many have a perfect opening repertoire memorized, another possible way to keep Hex interesting would be a more complicated opening protocol such as 3-move equalization. One player puts two black stones and one white stone on the board, and the other chooses which side to play. Or a larger grid of course.

that doesn't help the memorization problem, one could gain an advantage from studying out of a 3 move start and playing it every time

A better way to deal with the memorization problem might be to change the board size. Although a lot of the joseki patterns might stay the same with an increment of one. I don't know enough about how hex changes with different board sizes to tell.

Iguser, the swap can be generalized in a way that I've discovered several years ago. First player chooses a number N0 and places N0 stones of any color, second player chooses if he wants to play black or white or if he wants to choose another number N1 such that N1 and to place N1 stones and then first player has to choose and the process repeats with N2, N3, etc etc.

This should be the optimal swap rule, making the full use of the possibilities of the whole board.

lazyplayer, I don't see how that addresses the memorization problem brought up by david bush

And anyway, I think this issue the bots are having here, lack of randomization, it's a flaw of the bots not of the game.

The game as played in practice includes a "psychological" element of guessing what the other player will do and acting unpredictably whenever possible.

Iguser, it addresses it because with my swap rule the game will always start from an arbitrary position.

Lazy, just because a starting position could be called arbitrary, does not necessarily mean memorization would not be involved. Consider chess 960. There are already opening studies on the 480 distinct starts. 3 move EQ is kludgy, but your proposal is the mother of all kludges. What a terrible thing to do to a pure innocent game such as Hex.

My initial point was that as AI solves pie rule Hex, a strong player with excellent memory might be able to beat another player with more talent but who hasn't memorized the opening as well. A larger grid would provide a temporary refuge. So would a more complicated opening protocol. Ultimately we are all doomed. Have a nice day.

David, It's mother of all kludge because, depending on what you want, it can gives birth to different babies! You say chess960 has 480 distinct starts? In my game, there are ~2^128 distinct starts for 9x9 and ~2^191 for 11x11! And the branching factor remains almost as high for the next moves unless both players agree on a starting position and they start playing conventional hex from there. So you've plenty of choices, indeed, you've ALL the choices possible while ensuring termination! :)

And moreover, my rule approximately preserves the symmetry between first player and second player. Just think about it for some time you'll see it's the best... :)

David, another property is that, in case normal 1-move swap is ENOUGH to balance the game, then my rule will *automatically* convert itself into 1-move swap equalization. Basically it does automatically pick the N so that N-move swap equalization is fair.

lazy player, it is not clear what values you propose for these N0, N1, N2,... values.

If they are high, it looks to me as the game is altered to a point that it looks as a different game.

ypercube, the players choose these, basically, first player choose an arbitrary position, second player choose if he wants to play black or white or if he wants to pick another position. The constraint is that the new position will have to contain at least one stone stone less than previous position. Then the other player will again choose between black, white or picking a new pos.

Guys, should I be a coward and copy mootwo game vs leela in the current champion or should I play something else? Let's put this to a vote... :D

Any good bot playing Gomoku Pro?

I have no opponent.

I say it's smart to play mootwo's moves if they are objectively good. Otherwise you risk leela changes and you end up with bad position. It's not cowardly to win :) You can play as many other games vs leela for glory as you want outside of the champ.

Hello everybody,

mootwo is trying to understand hex19, if anyone is interested in playing it, do not hesitate to send an invitation to mootwo.

Eh I maybe will never beat leela if I failed this time. From my point of view I did everything right and I started from theoretically winning position of 1.a2. Still lost. I don't know how mootwo could win games given his ridiculous approach :p

@Leela please I will appreciate if you show a piece of report from the bot. I wonder if the initial moves were to blame, that is #8, #10 and #12 or did I mess up later?

If the guys running bots want to do us a favor, please analyze this position. It's our last game me vs Arek. Who had the theoretical win?

Personally I think it's white win (Arek was white) via 18 f3. There are lot of complications but black is just playing tricks.

For Arek's game against leela ( 2124651), leela thought f7 at move 8 would have been better than e8, but not by much at all, something like 46% vs. 52%. leela was right at 50% after moves 8, 10 and 12 (51.7, 53.5 and 51.4 to be precise). It got happier after move 14 (up to 61%) and from there just slowly and steadily went up (no big blunders!). Well played Arek!

@lazy, leela thinks your position is a white win, but not by playing 18 f3, but 18 e4 (around 65% win, so by no means a sure thing). After f3 leela thinks c4 has a 54% chance of winning (for black).

Did anyone else notice how thoroughly mootwo humiliated leela: It won on both sides of K12 and G11!K12: 2124434 and 2121893 G11: 2123807 and 2124448

Leela, we all thought you had mastered hex and instead... it's more complicated. This is the funny thing of hex. It seems always almost solved but it's never solved.

Btw, as humans, we also had the feeling that 14 was wrong. At least I had it. It's a simple local/tactical blunder. He believed it was a free stone but it was not free.

Thank you Leela for the answers!

Ah, 8.f7 then... I considered it but I thought it would be more mess and the further from edge the more tactical it would get.

I'm curious about that 14.c8 because I would say that it is just a consequence of previous moves. Before playing #12 I had to assume that c8 must be free, else I lose. Given this assumption there is a question of WHEN to play it, and I tell you the logic that I always use. The most likely such a move (nozoki) is free when the stone on the other side, i.e. e8 is the most active. The big worry for white is that it slowly loses activity of e8, hence I thought the best moment was then at #14 when board still empty.

Another point is that without c8 I cannot immediately build on d5, so I basically need to play far like 14.h3 which again becomes a mess... We as humans need simplifications and we try to achieve them at smallest possible cost, but it seems we cannot afford this cost vs the bots. In my next match vs leela I will try to avoid simplifications and play the mess but then I will probably make a ton of blunders ;)

 @lazy, leela thinks your position is a white win, but not by playing 18 f3, but 18 e4

Wow, now that is interesting. I only considered f3, e2 and at last stupidly e6.

And indeed I was thinking c4 was the best black attempt vs f3, hence I got e6 temptations.

 Did anyone else notice how thoroughly mootwo humiliated leela

I don't look much at bot games, but I took a look now. It's very surprising to see leela losing. Worst thing is that mootwo doesn't play so well at all :D

I like how this position shows why 4-4 is wrong, mootwo exploits it perfectly. (Yeah, Im a big 5-5 proponent)

https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2124434&nmove=19

This is funny how leela loses at move #5!

https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2121893&nmove=5

After this mootwo just plays extremely simple and forcing until leela goes into total desperation :D

https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2121893&nmove=23

Next is what lazyplayer tried to copy. Really weird game. I don't know what is going on, but leela played 4-4 going fast into losing position

https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2123807&nmove=8

and again soon total desperation :D

https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2123807&nmove=26

And last is the most balanced but absolutely tactical game. I have no idea what the bots are doing, just nonsense but somehow tactically valid

https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2124448&nmove=18

After this mootwo is just having fun. I need someone to tell me please that f2 was not the only winning move and there were others clean ones... It may well be however that f2 is indeed correct in this position, we just never see it because it's closely tied to k7.

Thanks to Daniel Sepczuk for playing mootwo at 19x19.   I would've liked to see moo play better, but 19x19 is hard.  https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2128326

https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2129789 is a more interesting 19x19 game.

Thanks Arek Kulczycki for this game!

Note that the model has now been specifically trained on size 19, this was not the case earlier, so there is reason to expect improved play.

Congrats to moo.  Out of curiosity I started training gzero for 19x19 also.  It has just began to learn that connecting both sides is a good thing!

I'd be interested if it plays above 1500 elo right now, if anyone would like to challenge it.  It isn't ready to take on Arek&co. :)

mootwo, 9 s15? :D

this is nonsense but 19x19 is very hard for us to understand at all.

mootwo, i rejected your game offer because i'm just not in mood to play hex and i already have too many games started. Another time.

that was an unexpected win, i guess it goes to show that bigger board sizes do not increase the relative advantage of humans to bots

Iguser, larger boards make "knowing" more important than "calculating". In theory this should favor humans but in practice it'll favor computers because we humans don't have decades of time to dedicate on studying 19x19 hex.

Honestly I made all my moves in seconds especially that mootwo was playing very badly in opening, but such is the game of Hex that much can be recovered. In tactics humans are no match for bots so it finally brute forced the win.

Next time I will play more seriously but playing 19x19 seriously means a lot of work, might be over 50 moves

Quick question - what do you think is the biggest bang for the buck, regarding hex skill development? I don't have much of a free time to study the game, however I would like to steadily improve. I don't understand bot's highly tactical play and somehow I don't consider it very useful for improving my game. Any ideas?

Biggest is having faith in simplicity. However complex the position very often the best or at least decent move is the simplest one. Keep playing on diagonals and hold on to your stones and groups when attacked (don't let opponent undermine your stones by surrounding them)

My question was more about how to learn in a smart way (not to spend too much time), but anyway thank for every suggestion :)

Then I think my answer was the answer to your question, learn to play well by playing well, so you save time which you would otherwise lost on playing badly :D

Force, copy the first few stones from the games of strong players (leela, Arek, Daniel, me, shalev), either by playing identical openings or nearly identical, and then as the game goes on, be more and more careful on what you play. Almost all games are decided near the very end, except at the absolute top level.

Basically, don't get into the mindset, the game is already over, the other player know some tricks that I don't know and he has figured it out... it's almost never true.

Force, I'm looking at your last game with leela, this one. I think you lost at 8, you had to play 8 L3. I agree with Arek, always keep it simple and logical. Maybe leela can tell us if 3 L3 was the right way to go or not. Anyway, well, with the bot you can't recover from a bad opening like that. That's why they've 99% win rate against humans. :D

Another advice that seems to be valid is to compare relative worth of potential stones rather than trying to determine exactly who has the theoretical win. This should cut out some useless work. You'll quickly see that the simplest choices are that that go better with the other stones already on the board and with the edges.

*are those that go better

Leela, so what I did wrong in game #2124652 ?  I think my error was copying mootwo's bad opening!