There was an interesting series of articles in the late 90s in Igo Kansai in which an amateur working on programming go gave a long account of the insights he had thus gleaned into improving in real go. As a measure of how interesting it is, it runs for almost a year, over several pages each issue, and is almost solid text. In my experience, it is utterly exceptional for an amateur to be given such space in a major magazine. In fact, it is exceedingly rare to be given even one page in one issue. Clearly, someone in charge thought the ideas were worth airing, and I for one totally agree.
Without going into detail, but also with me adding my own take to some extent, a couple of sections were of special interest to me because they touched on subjects that I myself have tried to highlight (not just here but in the "From the GoGoD Archives" books) as being concepts that have not been properly taken on board in the west (I mean qua concept - I'm not saying there are no westerners who understand them).
One is bullying or ijime. Too many western teachers just promote the idea of getting stable groups with two eyes. Our programmer had a nice approach to this (indirectly) by introducing a new "proverb" - stop fighting only when there are three eyes. The important point is that stability as represented by two eyes in the early part of the game does not necessarily mean strength. The eyes at that stage are not likely to be well formed, even though they can be made easily in response to attack. In other words, they are virtual eyes. The trouble is that every time the opponent is attacking he is probably making a point or two profit. This is bullying. Unfortunately, in go, bullying often works. But if you have three eyes you are immune from bullying, because two of them act as miai. If the opponent threatens one he is a tempo behind - you ignore him, he takes that eye away, but you still have two left. In other words, when building positions you should be trying to make three-eye shapes rather than two-eye shapes.
The other concept is kakoi or surrounding. When I first mentioned this, some years ago, it inspired a very strong Korean amateur to remark that it was this concept that got him from 5-dan to 6-dan. It's rather hard to explain without diagrams, but our programmer (I'm avoiding his name because I can't be sure of the reading: his surname could be Eda, Echida, Etsuda, Koeda, Koshita, Koshida, Otsuda or Shiota - but Koshida is the most likely; his personal name is also slightly problematic but is probably Masatsune) points out that there are situations where there is essentially a choice between reducing the opponent's territory or increasing our own, and amateurs almost invariably choose reduction (in the widest sense, not just keshi). The main reason is that this can be done in one move, and a move that the opponent has to answer, and we all know there's nothing more potent than the drug sentepezam. But surrounding (kakoi) usually takes (or appears to take) several moves. Kakoi is indeed harder, but it doesn't really have to take several moves. If you can engineer play in a certain way you can do kakoi in a single move (there are examples in the GoGoD Go Seigen books), and the benefits are considerable. A reducing move eliminates bad aji for the opponent and in some circumstances may create a burdensome reducing group of your own. It does not give you any territory. But a well-engineered kakoi move gives you territory, eliminates bad aji in your area and has no downside. It may give your opponent sente, but you can't have that all the time.
Koshida (let it be that) does not talk only about 6-dan stuff. He indicates also that teaching at beginner level could be improved immeasurably by teaching people to work like machines and count liberties more. (Bruce Wilcox made a similar pitch, and in fact his Instant Go series was a similar interesting spin-off from computer research.) But in what I've seen, few beginners are in fact taught to check the liberty situation beyond ataris, ladders and nets.
There is one long section on a topic that was discussed here very recently - which is better: a big point or an urgent move. Koshida regards the proverb as problematical, at least from a computer's point of view, though he does give mini-algorithms for identifying both big points and urgent points.
Naturally enough, given the programming background, he also talks about depth of reading. He suggests that there is a direct correlation between go strength and how deep we usually choose to read. On that basis, he gives the follwoing table (moves = ply):
3 moves = 10 kyu 5 moves = 6 kyu 7 moves = 3 kyu 10 moves = 1-dan 13 moves = 3-dan 15 moves = 5-dan
That feels about right to me, but (in other sections) Koshida brings in two other important ideas that modify this. For one he invented his own word: girichon. This is presumably a portmanteau word from girigiri and chon (like smog = smoke + fog). It will mean something like "down to the wire". He did this to stress the point that fighting is a down-to-the-wire affair. You can't just stop halfway through. That seems obvious to the point of triteness, yet I think very many of us don't fight that way. E.g. in our reading we reach a point where we spot a nice shape for us and stop there. It's not entirely stupid - it's a sort of probablistic way of playing, i.e. a position with good shape in it is more likely to favour us eventually. But it's probably not as good as digging even deeper. The ideal is to establish not just that you have an attractive position, but that you actually finish ahead of your opponent.
The other Koshida point is that, as a measure of go strength, the difference between two players can probably be determined best in how they each evaluate any two moves. The one who can discriminate better between the two is the stronger player. That may seem obvious, but there is a touch of Columbus's egg about it, and I don't think it takes a huge amount of humility to realise that too many of us don't even try to discriminate very well. We often tend to find just one plus point (e.g. that old standby good shape) and stop there. Maybe more practice in rattling off a series of evaluations checks - like a computer - could pay big dividends.
No Mickey Mice were harmed in the making of this coffee-break entertainment.
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