alt Hacker News5 kyu in normal go here: I played a couple of games and got crushed by the AI. Groups are much harder to kill in this game, so having a large group of connected stones with zero or one eyes (what we call “dragons” in normal go) is a much better strategy (I think) then to create potentials in the corners.
This is counter to the best strategy in normal go. We actually have a saying that “big dragons never die”, however it is actually an anti-proverb, because most dragons can be harassed while your opponent builds territory. So even if your dragons lives, you wasted a lot of stones keeping your dragon alive, while your opponent was calmly building territory, and gaining points.
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I'm similar strength (4k ogs) and I had the same experience. I think the essential difference is the cross-cut in this game can produce 3 groups (a connection on the shorter axis remains), whereas it produces 4 in Go. That makes it possible to rampage across the board, cutting a weaker player to ribbons while staying in one big group. Fun game.
Thanks for playing! I don't have a ranking in traditional Go, but after tens of hours playing this game I'd generally agree with your assessment.
One issue is that I think I made the small board too small. This makes it very easy for a monolithic group to dominate. The bot prefers to open right in the center, and I've generally found that to be strong.
I _think_ that playing on the big board gives some more variety to the strategy, but I haven't finished enough games yet to be sure. Playing really connected though seems to still be hard to beat. If players continue to get stronger and play big board games it will be interesting to see how the meta evolves.