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Point popularity by move number
Path: StatisticalAnalysis · Prev: NumberOfDifferentFuseki · Next: KombiloExportSearchResults
Keywords: Theory
I've recently been having some fun gathering patterns and statistics from a large collection of game records. Statistics from games showing the popularity of points by move number. That is, "How popular is the 4-4 point on move 1?", "How popular is Tengen on move 20?". I did this for each unique point across every move. Below are sample results. This is a vastly simplified view. Here is a GIF animation of it. Shaded in blue to indicate popularity. Points that are at least 80% as popular as the most popular point switch to red shading. 19x19
First 247 plays of 31,756 all pro games. 13x13
First 110 plays of 6269 amateur games. The same basic trend happens here as well only accelerated. 9x9
First 79 plays. 23,322 (!) games (202 of which are actually pro games). These games tend to be very short[1]; by the 79th play the sample size has already dropped to 633. It's difficult to represent with SL diagrams.
Plays 1 - 4
So, obviously the first four plays are in the corners and the 4-4 point is by far the most popular. Play 5
You can see that play #5 is much different. Kakari, Shimari and long extensions have started. Play 11
Through play #11, we continue to see the corners being settled and long extensions. Play 29
By play #29 the a corner approach is still the most popular point. And the 3-3 point comes in second (90%). Higher approaches and extensions on the third line come in next (80%). Play 39
By play #39 things have officially moved to the third and fourth lines along the sides. Strangely (to me anyway) the 3-3 point remains 90% as popular as just below the star point on the side ( Play 66
By play #66, things move from the sides to the center. Play 105
By play #105 it's truely all about the center. Play 142
Around play #142 things begin to move back to the sides but on the second line now. Play 199
By play #199 we can see that the corners are certainly settled as well as the third and fourth lines. Action is still going on in the center but common play has clearly started to move to the second and even first lines. Play 210
Here the center action begins to die down and the first line becomes the most important. Play 257
This continues until the first line sides are literally all that's left. It's the same through the end of the game. [1] It takes 247 moves on 361 (19x19) crossings before the number of games played drop below the significance level, 247/361. On a 9x9 this is 79/81. This is a bigger ratio, so in 9x9 it takes more moves to fight about the same size area than on a 19x19 board. In other words the 9x9 games are relatively longer. --mAsterdam Alex Weldon: This is fascinating, and the diagrams are beautiful. Perhaps our proverb "Corners, then sides, then center," should be adjusted to "Corners, then sides, then center, then sides again." :-) Cool! Can you summarize your algorithm? -- Evpsych AshleyF Very simple algorithm. Conceptually (implementation differs) create a three-dimensional integer array of 19x19x300 to track counts of plays at each point across 300 moves. Read through 32,000 pro game records (SGF files) and for each point played in a game, increment the point (and all isomorphic equivalents) in the array for that move number. That's it. Takes about 2 minutes to run. This would make a wonderful 257 frame animation, methinks. --JanneJalkanen These are fascinating new sources of insight and questions. -- Charles Matthews I would like to share in the general awe with an original compliment but I can't think of anything nearly as nice, brilliant or insightful as what you show us here. Remember Koyaanisqatsi? -- mAsterdam Path: StatisticalAnalysis · Prev: NumberOfDifferentFuseki · Next: KombiloExportSearchResults This is a copy of the living page "Point popularity by move number" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |