indessed roscivs

Today I got my braces adjusted for the first time. I say “adjusted” because that’s what I’ve always heard people call it, but I think because my braces are “self-ligating”, it means they actually don’t have to be adjusted. All they did was take out the old wire (which involved them pushing lightly on the brace on each tooth to snap the “door” open, then taking the wire out) and put in a new wire (the same process in reverse).

The assistant asked if I wanted to brush or floss while the wire was out. I wasn’t expecting that. “Is that, um, normal?” I asked. “Yeah, it just makes it a lot easier to brush without the wire in. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“Oh,” I said. “I guess I don’t really care.” I figure one special brushing every seven weeks isn’t going to really make that much of a difference in my dental hygiene. I’ll probably try it next time just for the experience, but it just seemed weird this time since I wasn’t expecting it. The assistant happily put the new wires in and that was that.

I had to wait for a while for the actual orthodontist; she was busy pulling the braces off another patient’s teeth. Oh, how I long for that day! Straightened teeth and no more wires! But, unfortunately, that’s still several years away for me.

Once the orthodontist came over, she poked at my teeth, checked out my bite, and that was about it. All in all the visit took about half an hour! She did say that there was little chance of my top teeth moving out of the way enough to get braces on the bottom teeth. So, as I had feared, they’ll probably have to put spacers on my molars while the bottom teeth straighten out. She said she won’t do that for at least another couple of months, though, but once they’re on they’ll be on for four to six months most likely. I’m not looking forward to that.

After work, I played Go at Uwajimaya for the first time since last October. Not only was it the first time playing at Uwajimaya since then, I haven’t played Go at all—not even online—since then. Surprisingly I wasn’t too rusty, but I only played a pair of 13×13 handicap games. I won by exactly three points both times. I hope I can play again next week, maybe even on a full size board!

I’m not much for sight-seeing, but when I first learned that I’d be going to Japan, I immediately thought of the Nihon Ki-in. The full name in Japanese is 日本 棋院 会館, or Nihon Ki-in Kaikan—日本 literally meaning Japan, 棋院 literally meaning “Go institute”, and 会館 literally meaning “meeting or assembly hall”. The “Ki-in Kaikan,” as my Tokyo City Atlas had it listed, is the Tokyo Head Office for the Japan Go Association. It is where the insei study Go, where major tournaments are held, and is in general the hub of the Go world in Japan.

The major reason why the building is so interesting to me (apart from having a cool store where you can buy all manner of Go-related items) is because a significant part of the manga and anime series Hikaru no Go revolves around the Nihon Ki-in. In a way, I was stepping into the magical world of Hikaru.

When we first found the place (after taking pictures of the outside), we were looking for someplace I could play a few games. At first, we poked our head inside a room on the first floor that had dozens of boards but only a handful of people all huddled around a pair of boards, talking in Japanese with books in their hands. None of them acknowledged us, so we just stood at the door for a minute until I realized that this wasn’t a public area, but rather a place where inseis studied, so we quickly retreated.

We then headed up the elevator to the second floor (trying to decipher the kanji-laden directory), and discovered what appeared to be an information desk of sorts. “日本語が わかりますか?” the lady at the desk asked. “いいえ、すみません、” I responded, “英語が わかりますか?” She motioned and a younger lady came over and asked, “Can I help you?” in impeccable English. I told her I was looking for someone to play, and she explained that I’d have to come back on a weekday as they don’t have regular club play on the weekends. I thanked her, watched a few of the people playing, and then spent some money at the bookshop. (I bought an English book on joseki, a book of blank kifu for writing down my own game records, and a couple of Nihon Ki-in pens.)

Then we went exploring, trying out each floor of the building one by one, poking our head out of the elevator to see what we could see without being too nosy. On one of the floors, a couple of very young kids (probably younger than ten) were getting into the elevator. I’m sure they were insei, and could probably kick my butt at Go. I can only imagine how surprised they must have been, though, to see a couple of American gaijin on the elevator. That’s probably not something they see every day at the Nihon Ki-in!

The coolest floor was where, in Hikaru no Go, the insei study and the pro exam takes place. (I’m not sure how much of that actually takes place there in real life.) It was amazing to see how detailed the anime was in depicting the place. It was instantly recognizable, and even now when I compare the pictures we took to screenshots of the show, I’m astounded at how much detail was captured.

I’m glad we took time out of the one day I had for sightseeing to visit. It was definitely the highlight of my stay.

Go proverbs are as much about life as anything else. The game of Go is a game of balance, of yin and yang. A greedy player who tries to snatch up everything will end up with nothing. The proper way to play (and usually the correct strategy) is to allow the opponent some territory in exchange for the territory you yourself are taking.

“Play away from thickness” is another Go proverb that has meaning outside the game. “Thickness” means areas where someone is strong. You shouldn’t play near areas where your opponent is strong, for they may attack you. But similarly, you shouldn’t play too near area where you yourself are strong; you should expand further into new territory and become more well-rounded.

“Only after the tenth punch will you see the fist.” When an opponent finds a weak spot in your armor, they will attack it again and again and again, often using the same patterns and exploiting you in the same way. Only after the tenth time (states the proverb) will you realize how every mistake you made was part of the same tapestry. Before that, you didn’t even realize you had a weak spot at all.

Of course, even once you’ve seen the weakness in yourself, you will likely not be able to successfully evade such attacks from your opponent. It will take many attempts before you manage to block the fist. And even then, the process of learning is not over—it will take many, many more attempts to be able to replicate what you see and utilize similar attacks yourself.

One of my coworkers today (who knows I play Go) mentioned to me that he saw an article on digg stating that there had been some new breakthrough in Go-playing computer technology, bringing computers much closer to professional-level play. He couldn’t remember any details of the article, but with a bit of digging (no pun intended), I managed to locate the article he had read.

Two Hungarian scientists have come up with an algorithm that helps computers pick the right move in Go, played by millions around the world, in which players must capture spaces by placing black-and-white marbles on a board in turn.

“We are not far from reaching the level of a professional Go player,” Levente Kocsis of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences computing lab Sztaki said.

I happen to be subscribed to a computer Go mailing list, where researchers from around the world discuss the current state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence with relation to the Go world. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been following along recently, so I hadn’t seen the article before my coworker pointed it out to me. Intrigued, I wondered if there really was some cool new algorithm that had been discovered, or if it was simply another incremental step in the quest to get halfway-decent Go-playing computer programs.Sure enough, when I got home and started pawing through the mailing list archives, one of the first posts was lamenting how the article had completely butchered Kocsis’ quote. From a Yahoo article on the same subject:

“On a nine by nine board we are not far from reaching the level of a professional Go player,” said Levente Kocsis at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ computing lab SZTAKI.

Aha! This is a considerably different statement. Go is played on a 19×19 board. Beginners will often start with a 9×9 board, and then move up to a 13×13 board, before playing on the full-size board. But 9×9 Go, while structurally the same game, is considerably less deep and considerably easier for a computer to process. How much easier?

Well, 6×6 Go is completely solved—or, in other words, computers have calculated the exact sequences of moves that will result in the highest score possible. 7×7 Go has allegedly been solved within the past few years, but nobody (to my knowledge) has exhaustively proven that the sequences they discovered are, in fact, the optimal lines of play.

9×9 Go is only slightly larger than 7×7 Go, but it is so exponentially more difficult that professional Go players routinely trounce the world’s best 9×9 Go programs. As Kocsis’ quote says, we haven’t yet reached the point where computers play 9×9 Go at a professional level. We may be getting close (mostly, in my opinion, due to faster computers—not any special new algorithms), but we haven’t reached it yet.

13×13 is even further from 9×9 than 9×9 is from 7×7. And, predictably, computers do exponentially worse at 13×13, getting crushed by strong amateur players. By the time you get all the way up to 19×19, the world’s best computers are still only about my level. New algorithms or no, we still have a long way to go before Go-playing computer programs are even interesting to watch, much less solid opponents for the world’s best amateurs.

One day at work I was wearing my Go t-shirt and a Chinese coworker asked me if I played the game. I replied yes, and that I was about 10 kyu. She didn’t understand me at first, but as it eventually became clear, she said, “Oh, you mean negative 10 … I thought you meant a positive 10!” Typically it’s not said that way, but it’s pretty accurate: I’m still in the negative digits when it comes to playing Go.

She was quite surprised that I was a “10″ because the highest Go players in the world are a positive “9″, or more commonly “9 Dan” (using the same kyu/dan rankings as many martial arts programs). It would be pretty unthinkable for me to be anywhere near that level of play. In fact, it got me thinking—how many Americans are there total who are even near that level of play? In Japan, the “Dan” rank is typically only used for professional Go players. “How many professional Go players are there in America?” I wondered.

I did some digging around and discovered a page on Sensei’s Library (a Go-related wiki) that had a list of non-Asian players that have received professional ranks in the world of Go. The list was surprisingly short: a total of eight players. Three from the US, two from Russia, a German, an Austrian, and a Romanian. Only three were above 3 Dan.

“Well,” I thought, “maybe there just aren’t as many opportunities for American Go players to make a living playing Go.” After all, the titles of the above eight were conferred by Japanese and Korean bodies, not by any American organization. “But maybe there are strong amateur players in the US?”

Turns out that the American Go Association’s web site has a “Search Ratings” feature. I checked it out: a total of 540 players in the US with a rating above +6.00. A quick glance at the list reveals mostly Asian names, although there are a fair share of Western-sounding names in the list as well. Regardless, suffice it to say that being a Westerner who can play at a professional level is unusual to say the least.

In a bit of pride, I must mention that the Seattle Go Center’s Jon Boley (very much a Westerner) appears on that list at +6.33! Hmm… I wonder if he’s taking students?

The difference between a stone played on one intersection rather than on an adjacent neighbor is insignificant to the uninitiated. The master of Go, though, sees it as all the difference between a flower and a cinderblock. Certain plays resonate with a balletic grace, others clunk, hopelessly awkward, and to fail at making the distinction is a bit like confusing the ping of a Limoges platter with the clink of a Burger King Smurfs tumbler.
—Dave Lowry, The Challenge of Go: Esoteric Granddaddy of Board Games

Tomorrow some people at work are meeting together at lunch to play Go. There will likely only be a handful of people there, but I’m hoping that we can start a regular thing, and maybe even attract some new players to the game! It’s a very easy game to learn, and I think it has a special appeal to computer programmers because of its prevalence in the AI world. Plus it’s gaining popularity in the West anyway.

So, to help attract other players, I was planning on printing out some handouts to give to people who might happen by, drawn by the pleasant “click” of the stones, interested in finding out what exactly the black and white patterns on the board meant. So far I only was able to finish one handout, a list of the Rules of Go (with a few explanations of each one). I emailed the handout to the other members of our newly-forming Go club requesting feedback. There were many good comments, probably none that I’ll be able to incorporate into the handout before tomorrow, but many good comments nonetheless.

An interesting thread was started by a Japanese player who refused to believe that area scoring is the same as territory scoring. The issue is this: there are two common ways of scoring a completed game of Go. One is to count all the “territory” (empty points surrounded by your color of stones), and add “prisoners” (the stones you’ve captured of the other player’s). The other way is to simply count all your stones on the board and all the empty points surrounded by your stones, and ignore prisoners altogether.

The counterintuitive part is that these two methods end up being exactly mathematically equivalent (given some assumptions about who plays last and no extra passing). Crazy, eh? But this guy refused to believe it even after I tried (rather poorly, I’m afraid) to explain it several times. He believed the scoring change would result in a completely different game, where it was more to one’s benefit to build up bulky shapes in the center with little territory, rather than building territory in the corners and sides with few stones.

Suffice it to say this is not true. But perhaps he will come to the Go Lunch tomorrow, and I will be able to show him first-hand, with stones on the board, the mathematical equivalence of territory and area scoring.

If there are sentient beings on other planets, then they play Go.
—Emanuel Lasker, chess grandmaster

As you may know, I am a Go fanatic. I have a floor board on tatami mats and everything. I was very much a beginner for a fairly long time, until we moved to the PNW where there are actually Go players within driving distance! In fact, there’s even a Seattle Go Center. So when we moved here, I started playing there, and almost instantly got much better.

I think mostly it was due to having the chance to player people who were much better than me. Online, pretty much the only people willing to play you are the ones your own rank. I think it’s hard to learn a lot that way, because they’re making the same sort of mistakes you’re making, so you don’t have an example of really great play to emulate. Once I started playing at the Go center, I was playing professional-level players (at least on occasion), which made a huge difference. I almost instantly jumped several stones in rank, and my progress has been pretty steady since then.

So tonight, I played three games on-line. I figured I’m about an 8 kyu, since that’s what I’ve been on KGS for a while now. But all three games I played tonight were against 8k, and I won all three of them! The first two games I played as white with no komi, because KGS thought I was “7k?” (the question mark meaning it wasn’t sure because I hadn’t played many ranked games recently).

The first I won by 30 points. The second I won by 20 points, so KGS automatically bumped me up to a 6k! But the crazy thing is that in the third game, I gave my opponent two handicap stones (because he was an 8k, just like the previous two players) and I still won by over 30 points! I think I really am getting better. It’s amazing to think I’m in the single-digit kyus, whereas once I thought that was such an astounding strength. Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.