John Fairbairn wrote:
Can I remind people that the starting question of this thread, virtually unanswered, was: What is the easiest way to determine a rough value of a move in order to compare alternatives. I am more interested in "ballpark" than "correct."
Thanks for the reminder. I had almost forgotten that I had asked the original question precisely
because I am so bad at counting correctly.
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Does this matter? Well, one celebrated example in real life of the folly of counting angels was the fall of Constantinople when the Byzantine courtiers argued over the meaning of sente while the Turks were left undisturbed to plot their successful invasion of the city.
Just quoting this because it is so much fun.
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I don't mind being the barbarian at the gates and so will attempt to give daal an answer to his question. It's something I call the principle of affected areas. I gleaned it from Japanese books, but I have mangled it horribly since then, and have no idea whether it is truly useful. It's certainly not correct but might possibly be called ballpark. I don't know the origin of that American term but I assume that it refers to being in a baseball stadium and making a stab at guessing how many spectators are there. My method is more akin to being on the moon and guessing how many people are in all the ballparks together. Still, I do fondly believe it contains the germ of an idea that could work for daal.
I think so too. What I especially like about this idea is that the term "affected areas" is easy to intuitively grasp and remember to apply. As to "ballpark," my uncorroborated feeling is that it allegorically refers to the area where a ball is in bounds, i.e., within a large but not exactly defined region. I wonder if they should introduce komi for different sized baseball fields... Now there's a task for our friends!
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(I hope I'm not being too intrusive, or wide of the mark, with these speculations, daal.)
Not in the least.
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The principle of affected areas, as shown below, tells us. An SDK certainly, and possibly even a DDK, can easily surmise that if White ignores Black and plays the monkey jump, Black can jump into the new triangled point and (because White then has to worry about the safety of his entire group) set off a sequence that leads to something like the square-marked stones being played in sente (with some filling in round the edges towards the end of the game), so that Black can return to the lower side to answer the monkey jump. We can then easily visualise, again without precise calculation of tactics, that the triangle-marked stones will appear on the board. The marked areas are the "affected" areas and we can see that the area in the upper right is bigger then the one in the lower left, so Black is justified in starting at A and not worrying about the monkey jump.
I really appreciate this kind of explanation. An easy to follow and nicely illustrated text.
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Now another aspect of what daal was asking about, which seems to have been mostly ignored, is that we would like to know how to choose between big moves at any stage of the game, and not just the endgame - and not even just the boundary plays.
Indeed. I hadn't dared bring it up again what with so many move values beginning with a decimal point, but yes, in fact the reason I originally posted had less to do with endgame, and more to do with how to establish priorities.
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Below is an example from real life. For those who want to see the whole game it is from the Oza on 2017-07-13, Takao Shinji playing Son Makoto.
I don't know how much I will learn from it, but I have memorized the first 100 moves. Btw, Go4Go calls Takao's opponent in this game Sun Zhe.
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As I said, I have mangled this method horribly. I have never made any attempt to refine it as I so rarely play, so I don't know for certain whether it is refinable. Even if refined, I don't expect it to be anywhere accurate enough to satisfy the angels.
I am curious to hear their take on it though...