[tveita]

I've had a similar problem. I would like to develop an intuition for the game by exploring different variations, "if I do this, the opponent does this, but if I do this, the opponent does this instead", but last I looked I couldn't find a client with a good interface for exploring the game tree that way with a computer opponent.

I know playing against humans is better, but a computer opponent has the patience to watch me try hundreds of moves that they know are dumb, or let me cheat to test "what if" scenarios.

A variation explorer with a "What would GNU Go do?" button feels like it would be good for this.

One thing that has helped me is Tsumego problems, which cover local life-and-death situations. They usually include responses by the opponent to help you see why a move is bad.

[gohrt]

My trouble with tsumego:

I can sit down and maybe solve a tsumego problem, OK. Sometimes I guess a bit (MCTS!) instead of working out the whole tree, developing that intuition.

But tsumego are labelled with difficulty and that they are winnable.

But when I play a game, how do I know how if a certain local position is winnable, and worth spending the minute(s) to find how to win it?

[NhanH]

There are two big purposes for Tsumego, one is to train your reading ability, the other is to train your intuition and knowledge.

For the former, you need to read out ALL variations, and not just one branch. For the latter, and your question, it's just simply a matter of solving lots and lots of tsumegos. In real game, people missed life and deaths situation all the time :-).

[dfan]

You might do better with problems that ask you to determine the status (alive/dead/seki/killable/ko/etc) of a group of stones.