Go, software, and more.
Author: Anders Kierulf
It’s amazing how quickly Twitter has gone off the rails under Elon Musk. I won’t delete my account, but I’ve moved my online activity to Mastodon:
SmartGo & Personal: https://mastodon.social/@smartgo
Go Books: https://indieapps.space/@gobooks
Basically, once you’ve signed up for Mastodon, just search for smartgo and gobooks, and you’ll find me. Please join me there, and let me know when you’ve switched over.
Version 1.3 of SmartGo One adds a much requested feature: analyzing a whole game. I’ve also added a score graph so you can easily see where your game went off the rails. This is a bare-bones first implementation of that feature, will be refined in future versions.
To start a game analysis, tap and hold on the Hint icon, then choose Analyze Game. SmartGo will start with a quick pass through the game, then go back through spending more time on each move. Tap the Hint icon again to stop the analysis.
The score graph shows the score lead for Black or White so you can easily see lead changes. It’s currently using a log scale to better show small changes when the game is close.
You can also have it display the winning percentage. It uses a black or white horizontal line to indicate the projected winner – definitely a minimalist implementation at this point.
You can also tap and hold on the tree view to see the whole score graph (most useful on the iPhone).
This version also adds Spanish localization (thanks to Alejandro Montiel), reduces the app size by 200 MB to just 53 MB (by downloading large KataGo models on demand), and fixes some bugs, in particular one where empty text labels were wrongly written out in SGF.
Tap on the Hint icon, wait a few seconds, and a dot on the board shows you where KataGo thinks you should play. This minimalist version of Hint is now a thing of the past.
The newest version of SmartGo One makes Hint much more useful:
(1) It can show you multiple top moves that KataGo is considering. It uses the familiar color scheme from Lizzie: teal for the top move, green for other good moves, brown for moves that were considered but are not as good.
(2) It can show you the principal expected move sequence.
(3) If you like more information density, you can see top move choices and move sequence at the same time.
(4) You can easily switch between these display modes with a long press on the Hint icon.
(5) You can give KataGo more time: Settings > Computer Play > Time for Hint. If you set it to ‘Unlimited’, tap on the Hint icon again to stop computing.
(6) If you only see part of the board and the best move is off-screen, SmartGo pans the board to bring the best hint move into view.
(7) There’s now a keyboard shortcut for Hint: Cmd-K (think KataGo).
(8) Hint is now available on the toolbar in Replay mode, not just Play.
Enjoy!
I just added a new feature to SmartGo One: Tournament Mode. Basically, it turns off all smarts while you’re recording a game, and makes it clearly visible that you’ve turned them off.
Using an iPad or iPhone for game recording is a lot easier than pen and paper: no move number to remember, just tap the screen after each move. But with AI now much stronger than almost all players, even on mobile devices, those features can’t be accessible while recording.
Here’s how Tournament Mode works in SmartGo One:
Start recording: The only way to turn it on is to start recording a new game (in My Files, tap on + at top, then New Game). Enable the Tournament Mode switch, and the top right action changes from an orange ‘Play’ to a green ‘Record’.
During the game: While recording that game, all AI functions as well as joseki matching are disabled. A clearly visible green bar at the top indicates that you’re in recording-only mode.
End recording: When you’re done recording, tap on the popup menu in the lower left of the board, and tap on End Recording. This immediately removes the green bar at the top, and re-enables AI features.
If you switch to another game at any time, you’re also taken out of Tournament Mode. Once you’re out of tournament mode, the only way to get back in would be to start a fresh recording with an empty board.
Note that all the features that make SmartGo One so great for game recording are still available. For example, if you missed a pair of moves, you can go back and insert those; if you misplaced a move, tap and hold on that stone, and choose Replace Move.
I hope that Tournament Mode will allow both opponents and tournament organizers to feel confident that SmartGo One is being used for recording only. From the rules of the Dutch Open:
“Recording your game is permitted on a digital device, as long as the screen remains visible for your opponent at all times. And your opponent has to agree with recording the game digitally. If you want to record your game digitally, this will only be allowed on applications vetted in advance by the organization of the tournament, to make sure it does not have AI functionality. Recording your game with a paper kifu is of course permitted.”
These seem like good rules, especially making sure that the screen is visible to the opponent at all times. If that green bar ever disappears, tell your opponent to put the phone away.
Please let me know how this feature works for you, either as a player or a tournament organizer. Any tweaks that would make it better?
TL;DR SmartGo One now includes a powerful Guess Moves feature for pro games. You can also combine guessing with pattern matching to train yourself on joseki variations.
Pick a pro game, turn on Guess Moves, then at each turn think about where you would play. As you then play each move, SmartGo will tell you whether the move was:
(a) exactly where the pro played, or
(b) at least in the right area, or
(c) at the right spot, but your timing is off, or
(d) whether you’re in the wrong area entirely.
This is a great way to study pro games and learn about your blind spots. This SmartGo Kifu feature didn’t make it into version 1.0 of SmartGo One, but now it’s back, significantly better.
If you’re lost, tap on Hint, and it will reduce the remaining possible area by about 50%. Still lost? Tap Hint again to narrow the search further.
New in SmartGo One is the ability to guess moves of only one player – just choose whether you’re guessing both colors, only black, or only white. Another new feature is the ability to change the size of the area considered ‘near’. It defaults to a Manhattan distance of 5, but you can now set that anywhere from 2 (more difficult) to 7 (easier).
New in SmartGo One, you can combine guessing with joseki or fuseki matching. In this case, SmartGo will just give you a right or wrong answer – getting close in joseki is not good enough. Of course, this feature also works for guessing both colors or just one.
When guessing a joseki move, one of your choices is to tenuki (play elsewhere), and SmartGo will let you know whether that is indeed a position where it’s okay to tenuki.
At any point, you can turn on Hint to see the full joseki information for the current position. Note that obscure variations that have rarely been played are counted as wrong.
You can now choose to use only recent games for pattern matching, instead of always matching in all games. Joseki change over time, and some drastic changes have happened in the last years since AlphaGo. (See e.g. the just released ‘Joseki Revolution’ book by Shibano Toramaru.) For example, comparing the attach-and-pull-back joseki in games since 2016 with games since 2020, the solid connection has gone from 48% to 91%, and tenuki from 18% to 2%.
When you train joseki, it uses the subset of games you’ve specified in Settings > Games > Games to Match.
SmartGo Kifu kept track of your percentage of exact and near guesses. As yet, SmartGo One doesn’t keep track of any statistics, as the feature is mainly designed to help you learn. But trying to beat your previous percentage might add some motivation, so I will likely add this in a future version. Please let me know what statistics you would find helpful.
Enjoy! Let me know how you use this feature, and if there are any tweaks that would make it more useful to you.
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