searching around for resources I came across this site http://sanrensei.info/
there is a choose the best move test,and i took it and got this result:
Your score is 220 from 300

You know a lot about using influence, but you don't like to play all-or-nothing games or games where you must kill your opponent's group inside of your moyo.
We might recommend that you use other influence-oriented fusekis, such as the Chinese family of fusekis (Low, High, Mini), takamoku-based openings, or tengen.
All of these openings are more flexible than san-ren-sei and it's usually possible to switch from influence to territory if the position requires it

it says I know about using influence but I don't even know what influence in Go means. Can someone point me in the right direction here as to what the eval means. Thanks.

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"Hell if you understand everything I said, you’d be me." ~ Miles Davis ~

Your score is 240 from 300

San-ren-sei is a perfect choice for you!
We cannot promise that you will win all of your games when you use it, but we are sure that every game you play where san-ren-sei appears will be very exciting and enjoyable for you!

Awesome, I'll start sanrensei now

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A private blog on Asian go books and interesting go sightings
Now open only for a select few.
Go is such a beautiful game.

even that senseis definition is a bit ambiguous, but thanks, i'll look through the references they have..

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"Hell if you understand everything I said, you’d be me." ~ Miles Davis ~

Let me introduce Robert Jasiek:

wow never saw that page thanks..

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"Hell if you understand everything I said, you’d be me." ~ Miles Davis ~

Meh. My understanding of influence is primitive at best. I must go look up the takamoku based openings though, have never heard of them before.

That I score this highly in the test given I've neither played nor studied nor played against the san-ren-sei makes me suspicious that I'm being sold something.

For me as a mere KGS 9k with question mark this seems surprising.

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I got 260 out of 300... mostly I just kept asking myself "What kind of crazy move would takemiya play here..."

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Let my comments be as eggs thrown on stones... explosive and hard to wash.

FWIW I answered randomly, without even looking at the positions, and got 200 out of 300! So I guess that says something about what this "test" means.

Darn, I guess I'll have to stick with double sansan...

No it doesn't 0- 300 isn't skill its how well you could use sanrensei. if we took that test randomly 100 times i would expect the average to be close to 150, not 60.

Here is another hint:



Sounds random to me.

Seriously, what does "most accurate" mean? How would you validate the test results? Not by rank, surely.

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Sheik Yerbuti -- if that really is your name --

Perhaps based on how much they actually liked sanrensei?

FWIW, I scored 285.

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Sheik Yerbuti -- if that really is your name --

yeah, i got 5 more points than you on the test and you wiped me off the board a few days back.. but i look into this influence thing around the web..

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"Hell if you understand everything I said, you’d be me." ~ Miles Davis ~

I think the test must give "partial credit" rather than credit only for the best answer. If it were full credit or nothing on each question and each question is worth the same number of points then answering randomly, with four choices per problem, would be expected to result in 25% of questions answered correctly for a score of 75 out of 300.

By the way, I also did the test deliberately choosing the worst answer I could, which in most cases was a move that went for territory or which spoiled my own moyo, and I got 60.

well, before I saw that site, I heard of Takemiya, and his "crazy" moves. i thought hell, i probably make crazy moves so let me look into this guy. i actually downloaded his games so I can take a look at them once I have a better understanding.

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"Hell if you understand everything I said, you’d be me." ~ Miles Davis ~

I have a friend who plays san ren sei almost exclusively, and over the past few weeks, I've been trying to copy him. In general, you avoid the 3rd line like the plague, and give up fair amounts of territory in exchange for even more influence when your opponent successfully invades. But then comes the fun. Coming into middle game, you are seriously behind, but your opponent has left weaknesses, and from then on, win or lose, the rest of the game is played on your terms. 250/300

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"When you are learning, it is not so important whether you are right or wrong." - Bill Spight

that quote of yours in your sig sums up what I just read..

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"Hell if you understand everything I said, you’d be me." ~ Miles Davis ~