Training and Fuseki Study
I'm writing here since I thought others might be interested as well, so rather than sending e-mail to Antti, I wanted to ask few things publicly.
Antti mentioned in one kifu newsletters, that he might study sanrensei opening. I am curious how do pro and strong amateur players study fuseki? Does one go through professional games with the fuseki in question with or without AI, play out as many variations as possible against AI and other strong players and then analyze the results somehow, research books written about the subject (might be somewhat difficult nowadays to find books that are up to date since AI has changed a lot) or some combination of these?
Also is there any tool to find pro games with certain fuseki pattern and download sgf files of those games?
Antti also mentioned in newsletter post that KataGo received update recently. In light of this and the fact that I happen to have some time with summer holiday, I decided to give KataGo a try. So far I haven't played or used AI for game analysis since playing igowin as ddk. Which platform does people recommend running KataGo on and which version of KataGo would be best? I hear that as platform, Lizzy is quite popular and from other forum post I gather that Antti uses it on his desktop. I have desktop setup with Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU. Would the 40 block version of KataGo run on that or should I pick something lighter? My main usage would probably be playing even game fuseki against AI, not complete games and analyzing games I've played.
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In my case, I look through variations that KataGo recommends for the sanrensei, combined with testing the opening out in internet games and games against the AI. This way, I figure I should get both theoretical and practical knowledge on the subject.
For researching pro games, I figure Waltheri’s go pattern search is the most popular option: http://ps.waltheri.net/
Some people might recommend KaTrain now, but I still prefer to use Lizzie with KataGo. Your GPU should be more than strong enough to run the 40-block KataGo.
I have an opponent who has been playing this fuseki against me since late 2017 in correspondence games between us. He does it every time he's black and I don't approach his nirensei from the inside on fourth move, which I tried twice. So far it makes for nine finished games.
Since our games are slow and there are breaks between them, I did quite a lot of reading, AI-reviewing (Lizzy, earlier with Leela, now with Kata), asking stronger players, researching pro-games (ps.waltheri.net is awesome!), etc., specifically about sanrensei. I also have some notes and sgfs, but still... I feel I don't know much about it - my key takeaway is, I no longer fear facing this fuseki more than any other, which earlier used to be the case. Currently I'm in another game with him and sanrensei is there with us, for the 10th time :)
Curious to know how exercising this fuseki with AI works for you. Never tried training an opening this way, but it sounds interesting.
Thank you for the responses!
At one point I used to play yonrensei a lot whenever I had black, however much has changed since then. So when I faced sanrensei in my NDG game, together with Antti mentioning that he is curious about studying it, I thought I should give it a try also! The one NGD game I got to try it in, I lost by half a point.
I will definitely take advice from how Antti studies fuseki and try to study in same manner myself, perhaps including study of pro games with the fuseki in question as well, since those will have far better quality reading than my own games.
I'll give that Waltheri's go pattern search a try for finding suitable pro games. And will try to set up Lizzie with that 40 block KataGo.