thanks for the commentary - h7 was a very unexpected move from gzero's point of view. moo is scary to play against, at least gzero can somewhat guesses leela's next moves. :)
Going to play moo and daniel at hex 11, and anyone else that joins the waiting room. note the model is only 3 days old... it might resign on move 3 or something silly!
@Andrey haha - thanks for the support and monster compliments!! ;)
@lguser - i don't know much about DeepEZO, but ICGA entries have been barren the last few years. It very well could be the strongest bot. I have a wee hunch moo is a mohex revival which historically won ICGA hex for many years. I am 90% sure it isn't a pure A0 bot.
12.h3 is another move from gzero that I don't like. How is it going to threaten anything on the left now? I expected e4 or some tactical magic in center. Anything that would make a direct threat.
Black d5 is an obvious one here.
Now white need to threaten simultaneously on the left and to surround h7, probably there is no time for this before black secures solid connections. We can expect a joseki now anyway, most likely d4-e4
They're still playing but it's over. It's fascinating that there are positions quite clear for humans but the bots seem to have hope in. Mostly it's the other way round :)
Continue guys, please. Not for all humans it is clear :) What about humans - could we try to find out which move should probably gzero change (in case further moves will prove white lost)?
this is the moment I was almost certain that gzero gave away the win.
IF 16.f6 is a winning move then I think it may be the only one in the position along with maybe d12 that would just delay f6. Like I said in the first place, only magic tactics in center could save it for white and, as usual with bots, the tactics were found.
Gzero if that's possible give us some insights how the bot would plan for 17.g5!
@lazy - thanks! did you see the (ongoing) #2125583 11x11 game? Think that might be the first bot v bot at 11x11.
@rookDriver Good job so far! :) I hope to read about your modifications & improvements. I see you are playing 19x19, I thought it would take some serious compute to train that size of board, at least with conventional zero techniques?
@gzero I thought you could set up any position and start from there. We could start a new game with me as black and I play 17.g5 as soon as we reach the same position :D
lguser, you can trust or not, but this 11x11 bot game above is close enough to perfect play. Problem is that black had no chances since a11 was swapped... We already know that a11 wins and how it wins - it's almost "solved" even on 13x13.
11x11 is a playground for tricks but bots would just play on diagonals which is the strongest but is solved.
Oh, white d8 regardless of black move! This is really coherent then.
I get it know! White strongly secures the left side in a way that it can connect to right alternatively with H6 (directly) or G6 (around H7 towards the K7) depending of black's need for i3!
This is the brilliant tactics that I well knew had to be found but I didnt believe it existed :)
@Iguser, there can be demand for a downloadable hex bot. But think what effect can this bring to the games between humans. It can significantly reduce the interest amoung humans who want to compete with other humans and not bots. And especially it is strange when humans compete with each other using even not their bots. There will be disbalance between somebody who has bot and somebody who on his own. Also it will reduce the time of our thinking. And why we are here? We want to think, develop and try our best. The bots compete in special tournoments - and this is correct.
At the same time I like that here are some bots. But it is important that bots don't hide under humans. It is true that playing against stronger opponent - you are growing. I admire owners of strong bots, but for me it is preferable to have an opportunity to play against bots and to compete with humans when you know they have the same instrument as you - only our brains.
Also want to add that there is difference between draw game and game when one player has 100% theoretically win. I think we will miss hex 13x13 when it will be solved. Yep, we can go to the 19x19, but we will miss I think.
Now the question is how a human can find that stuff - the combination of f6 and d8. Given that I had all the clues for what to look for in this position
hex is the only game on little golem and probably the only established abstract board game where an 11x11 board is considered too small. I believe that if hex had a long history of play such as Go, it's default board size would be 35x35 or something around there. I am also surprised that an innocuous looking first move like obtuse corner would be almost solved in 13x13.
@lguser I think the modern baseline for board size should be where the bots cannot finish training within a finite timespan so that we're always ahead :)
But seriously, I think Hex 19x19 tactically is incomprehensible for human brain so it should be big enough no never become fully explored.
13x13 is enough in these times where there are at most hundreds of players in the world. The obtuse corner move turns out to be really strong but with plenty of room for tricks between humans it will stay perfextly playable.
13x13 is a good size but it's becoming a bit too tactical at the higher levels of play. I find 19x19 too large. I think 15x15 would be great, but unless (until?) they add it to LG I'll be stuck with 13x13 ;)
I certainly agree with Arek that bots are not going to solve 19x19 anytime soon. But then we are all amazed at how quickly they have come to dominate 13x13 :)
Iguser, smaller boards are too easy but large boards are too hard. I think it tends to become as hard as Go as board size goes to infinity. The "units" of Go are the cells of the board (the score is approximately the area of the board that you occupy or you've surrounded) and for hex it tends to become the same because you really need to "use" all the board to win on large boards.
Iguser, as board size goes up, brute force matters less, so there should be more opportunity for humans. I think the same was true in Go, the 19x19 was harder to crack for computers than 9x9.
Anyway, you're correct overall that humans can't compete anymore against well-equipped bot. But I think we can learn from bots and we can improve and use bots ourselves as assistant.
Same for time controls, LG time control allows better play by humans, although we probably need supporting stuff like books to store our analysis before we forget everything.
Little Golem