Quote:
In almost all cases, brute-force is wrong because there are shortcuts and pure techniques application is wrong as insufficient. Tacticsl reading lies in between. Your mistake is refusal to apply it to confirm or refute your quick and dirty analysis.
My interpretation of this is that you have, at last, come round to something like the position that most other people have already held. I have not read your books so I can't be sure you haven't stated the above already yourself, but previously, on this forum, you have a given a strong impression to me that you believe in an almost total primacy of tactics and
not just something in-between. Similarly, you have misrepresented the views of other people by inserting the word "pure". I don't recall anyone recommending that you only use patterns, shapes or proverbs to solve problems. Indeed, we all know the classic case highlighted by James Davies. The quasi-proverb "the L shape is dead" is fantastically useful, yet many kyu players know that but still can't actually kill the group. They need more practice with reading. Furthermore, James himself points up the fact that the quasi-proverb is just a starting point that needs follow-up examination, because it may have legs, liberties or hanes. That's extra work but it's a helluva lot less than starting by making a list of all possible starting moves and examining each line of the tree branches in turn, i.e. "pure" brute-force.
By adding other inappropriate words you are further misrepresenting the other side's view of techniques, proversb or whatever you want to call them. "Quick and dirty analysis?" "The L-shape is dead" is certainly quick, but dirty? My choice of extra adjective was "fantastically useful." I'll leave it others to decide for themselves which end of the spectrum is more accurate
I also find you are lax in the use of the word "patterns," oddly enough by being too strict in trying to pin the word down. Less mathematically minded people are happy with loose definitions, and, when they need to be more precise, they add extra words. For example, we may get "pattern recognition," and in that particular some people may even add extra words to show what sort of "recognition" they mean. You may remember Bill Spight doing precisely that.
I personally like to think of "pattern understanding" but I don't try to push the phrase because it doesn't seem quite satisfactory even to me. I have tried previously to explain some of my thinking by simply talking about recognising people's faces. However, here. as a discussion point I will elaborate a little on that purely in terms of the position you contributed.
In that position, at first glance, I did not see any significant static "shapes" beyond a vague element of symmetry. But the
dynamic "patterns" that I did not so much "see" or "recognise" but "understood" instantly were three, not directly visible but implicit in the "flow" of the stones (i.e. in the suji). They were (1) the long line of points that I knew were potentially long enough to allow a seki, (2) what I and some others call "three eyes" - others may detect the same ideas under the heading of miai, and (3) what I call the bent elbow.
I won't try too hard to explain the bent elbow here because I did that in "Carefree and Innocent Pastime," my translation if the Xuanxuan Qijing, but in jlt's diagram below it would mean imagining a black move at a or d, and if White then gets a move below a or d, a shape can potentially arise where White can create a false eye with a throw-in at b or c. It doesn't work here, which I can decide by simple inspection rather than reading. I tend to think of bent elbows high up in the order of my first thoughts simply because they were so common in the approx. 750 problems of XXQJ, and that the frequency of that (dynamic) pattern has been massively vindicated, for me, in looking at problems elsewhere.
- Click Here To Show Diagram Code
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$$. . . . . . . . . . .
$$. . . . . O O O O . .
$$. . O O O X e X X O .
$$. . O X O X . X . O .
$$. O . X X X X X . O .
$$. O a b . 2 . c d O .
$$. . . X X . X X . O .
$$. O . . O O O O O . .
$$. . O . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . .[/go]
I think you will also see from those three first guesses what I mean by (three) final shapes, which is rather different from the sort of final shape you cited - a shape that would never, ever occur to me.
Even with those potential final shapes we still have to do "in-between" reading, and in may case I start with "play in the centre of symmetry" and then see if that can be made to tie in with the possible final shapes I have predicted, i.e. trying to link the two ends.
In that process, I did
not, in my own mind, ever use the word "tesuji" though I would argue that it is implicit in both "play in the centre of symmetry" and "bent elbow." I may use it, however, if I have to give a final description of the solution, and so for both reasons I would argue strongly against the view that there is no tesuji in this position.
The key component of tesuji is suji, which conveys a sense of flow - here, of course, the flow of the stones. The flow can either have already happened and so formed interesting shapes, just as molten lava has solidified into real rocks, or it can be an existing flow, like molten lava, and the interesting thing is predicting where the flow might lead.
Here, I would argue, we have mainly the former type of solidified flow and there is just a tiny bit of soft, sticky lava left lapping round the edges. In other positions, there can be rivulets of lava, either gushing or trickling hither and yon. But in each case we can detect a flow. I think it was Kajiwara who had another good way of looking at this: the stones go walking.
So we are left with the te (= hand) bit. This word is added to a small number of words in Japanese, mostly common adjectives but also verbs and nouns, to convey an extra nuance of meaning. Some examples are tebaru, tegatai, tebiroi, teatsui, tedori, tebikaeru. Teatsui is very common in go, and tebiroi (from hiroi = wide) also has a noticeable presence. The nuance added is not precise but is in the realms of care, precision, meticulousness or clarity. We actually have almost exactly the same thing in English. When you see a sign in a shop that says "hand-made fudge" you are assumed not to think of something made with dirty fingernails or widely variable quantities, but something made with tender loving care.
So, a tesuji is the part of the flow made with extra meticulousness or care or thought. That explains why it is often explained as the move at the vital point (White 1 here) or a brilliant move, or even something that stands out and so is worthy of a name. That's all OK but really only covers the te bit - you can't forget the suji. My impression is that some people here are forgetting the suji bit. And since good flow is meant to be implicit in
every move (at least in a pro game), it is obvious that the frequency of tesujis must be rather high. And since tesujis can often be identified because of the te bit, it follows that are also lots of types - and also that they are learnable and studiable and so recognisable (but not necessarily memorisable as "shapes").
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Javaness2
and 
reversed) White removes an eye but Black can continue with e.
then White will play there at move 3. Black can make one eye in 1 move at one place but needs two moves to make a second eye at each of two different places, so Black is dead.
will be played there and whatever the move 
then White can reduce eyespace and Black is dead.
then Black will play move 6 there and make two eyes.