Traditional games: Besides CHESS: What are the best in the world?

^Haha thanks!

Likewise, I'm glad you're feeling better too.



I actually just made a small thread about how, when I get sick the last 2 years, I have this new symptom of mental spaciness, which seems a unique symptom, that I never had before the pandemic.

www.abovetopsecret.com...


Regardless, I think the most important thing is to maintain our general health & well-being, in total.

So that's everything: Eating good food, getting good sleep, probably even the difference of our emotional state being positive or negative. I think our TOTAL health is really the MOST important thing in this pandemic.

Stay healthy and happy, everyone.

a reply to: JamesChessman

Too bad I don’t have an online chess game I’d play with you. Used to be one of my favorite games in high school

originally posted by: Brotherman
a reply to: JamesChessman

Too bad I don’t have an online chess game I’d play with you. Used to be one of my favorite games in high school

Haha thanks, but I'm really about playing alone lately. I have a nice chess game built-into macOS, so I can play against my computer.

But if you're interested in playing chess, a real nice website is actually just "chess.com."

You can play against the CPU, or play other people, and I used to get a kick out of choosing to play against far-away countries.

a reply to: TheAlleghenyGentleman

So I'm playing against the website and I'm learning and enjoying it.

I'm only playing the default settings against the website though.

I'm not sure if I see how to choose different difficulty (so I can practice and learn the best).

When you look at the computer opponents, is the bottom of the list, the most difficult?

EDIT: Assuming that the lower list is stronger AI opponents, it seems that default settings, and a 19x19 board, only lets me play against "doge_bot_4
[9k]" so I guess that's where I belong right now, lol.


...


Also, should I try other variations of Go, or is it really just the standard game that's the most important? It's what it seems like but I want to make sure.

a reply to: JamesChessman

I have been stalking you lol. If you click a persons name it shows you their profile. From there I can see your past and present games. I will screen shot the varibles and post soon. I am making a pho broth.

We should play a couple unraked games and I can give you some basic pointers.

originally posted by: TheAlleghenyGentleman
a reply to: JamesChessman

I have been stalking you lol. If you click a persons name it shows you their profile. From there I can see your past and present games. I will screen shot the varibles and post soon. I am making a pho broth.

We should play a couple unraked games and I can give you some basic pointers.

Haha OK. I didn't know it saved up my games because I've really just been practicing and developing my eye for it.

I resigned several games that seemed like pointless losses received from the CPU.

The board edges were tricky to get used to because it doesn't really work how I expected at first, to surround pieces against the edges.


...



ALSO something funny happened, while playing Go, I remembered the first time I met someone, a decade ago.

He was a friend-of-a-friend, so off the bat, I had good expectations of him as an intelligent, decent person. I subsequently gradually realized that he's not a decent person, and he's actually willfully ignorant and toxic, altogether.

So my good expectations were wildly off-base when I first met him, lol. I heard he collects HUNDREDS of board games, so I was excited to learn some new games from him (as I mainly only loved chess, myself).

Plus he was basically the only Asian guy I had ever met -- there's just not many Asian folks in my area -- so I had really positive expectations related to that, like I expected him to be VERY well-read, for example, so I expected to learn some new good books from him. (Asian cultures are said to have MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS of unbroken literacy and learning, whereas people of European descent, like myself, come from our ancestors all being illiterate farmers a few hundred years ago, in the Middle Ages.)

Turns out, the guy actually dislikes reading, so there goes that expectation, lol. Even then, I didn't hold it against him, I figured he must be really intelligent in other ways. I was wrong, he's actually an ignorant, obnoxious fool who just happens to collect 100's of board games. I don't think he loves or respects anything, and honestly I think his interest in games is only to insult other people for being unfamiliar with his 100's of games...



...




Alright, so here's the first time I met him, a decade ago. I didn't take this as bad as it really was, until I just remembered this, a few days ago:




So just meeting each other, I mentioned how I love CHESS, and I said something to the effect that it's "the best, most advanced game in the Western world." Which is a fair statement, plus it's a common description.





So he replies: "Well, there are more advanced games from Asia."

And I'm like, "Yes, I know. That's why I said that chess is the most advanced game in the WESTERN WORLD."




So he's like, "Well, you could just play the more advanced games from Asia."

Me: "Well yes, of course. I'm interested to learn the more advanced games from Asia. That's one reason I was excited to meet you, that I heard you're familiar with all these games."



Him: "Well, you could have already gone ahead, and learned about the more advanced Asian games, already."

Me: "Well yeah, I could have, but it hasn't really come up yet. I've always been playing chess, and the people in my life play chess. No one in my life plays the more advanced Asian games, so it just never came up yet."


Him: "Oh, okay." (With an expression of ignorant obnoxiousness.)





^So what's wrong with that conversation, LOL!!

He proved to me that he's an ignorant, toxic idiot, the first time I met him, and I didn't even acknowledge it, at the time.

The magic of playing Go currently, is what brought up that memory to me, and clarified it.




My initial statement was perfectly accurate, that chess is the most advanced Western game, and the guy was acting like he was having an argument that wasn't there.

Plus he was basically, vaguely insulting that I hadn't already learned about other games, lol. Which doesn't amount to an insult.

Rather, it really shows his mentality of loving games only to the extent that he can be insulting against other people who are unfamiliar with his games, lol.


He's also all about the vaguely insulting remarks and ugly faces, which don't really amount to an insult either. (It hadn't come up for me to learn Asian traditional games before. "Oh, okay" with an ugly, obnoxious expression.)










Well god bless everyone, and it's good to find clarity about the people in our life.

a reply to: JamesChessman

Hahaha yes. Watch some Kurosawa movies and you will see humans are all the same. Some extremely smart and thoughtful and others just morons. Intelligence usually has nothing to do with race color or religion but luck of the draw and exposure to ideas and experience.

Don’t play the edges as much.

The rating system works as such

25k is weak.

18k is weak

10k is an active player and is good

1k is strong as all hell and will obliterate you

Then you have the dans and professionals

1p is professional but 8p is strongest.

Check this out. It will explain in detail

senseis

Remember. Play the corners first. Then the sides. It is important on a 19x19 you at least take two corners. Those points really matter.

On a 9x9 if the player is weaker I will take the middle.

Im going to challenge you to a game and talk you through it. You are seeing the game but a few times have missed some obvious theory and as soon as you see that your game play will explode

a reply to: TheAlleghenyGentleman

Thanks for the info!

I'm happy to play online with you, and I'll look forward to your feedback, but I don't want to be on any kind of time-schedule commitment, with it.

I just started a new job and I'm trying to find a new schedule for myself, in life, in general... so I'm happy to play, if you don't mind that I don't want to commit to a certain time schedule...

I know that I'm still learning the basic gameplay and it can be frustrating / unclear what exactly I should be doing better... although I'd expect that with enough practice gameplay, I'd eventually catch on better, altogether...

a reply to: JamesChessman

We play to learn only. If the game times out no big deal we will start a new on.

Congrats on the job

I just made the time limit like 28 days per move

I just downloaded the conquest of go on steam. The game is still in development, but I have been finding it quite enjoyable. I think it might be a good platform for beginners to learn the basics on. It has a few fun boards that I like to play on especially the forest board. It is nice on the eyes. It also shows you with fun graphics when a stone is in atari.

I love to support anything go related.



I was searching the web to find an answer to an AI question and decided to post on OGS forums.

A poster there led me to my new favorite more advanced engine.

katatraining. The open source platform AI engine. It has an outstanding teaching platform for players who are out of the beginning phase. I highly recommend this download to anyone intrested in advancing their game through review.



KATAGO

KATAGO MANUAL

a reply to: TheAlleghenyGentleman

^Thanks! Looks great, at a glance. All this time, I have not put time into such tutorials etc. yet, so I know that I'm going to soak up some knowledge with your embedded vids.

As promised on ogs here is my board and stones.

It is a 2” bamboo goban. 75 dollars. Great for practice. I want a goban with legs. That will happen.

My stones are Chinese. Yunzi Double Convex Stones 9.2mm (Size 33)

They are very nice stones. High quality. As nice as you can get for Chinese stones. With the bamboo bowls and carry bag they cost 110 bucks. But they are not the Japanese clamshell and slate. The Japanese stones have three different quality types and can go for well over a grand. They are absolutely beautiful tho. One day.