Yes. It means carrying out your plan. If for example you play a nice dual purpose move that threatens to either connect two of your weak groups or to pressure one of your opponents weak groups, and and your opponent chooses to thwart one of your aims, it is inconsistent to not carry out the other plan. You have to actually do what you set out to do.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

Well, ok, of course what I mean by "having a plan" is carrying it out. Otherwise what is merely in your mind is useless

The reason I wrote it, was for emphasizing that your moves should be "planned" for being consistent, rather than forcing your moves to be consistent with your previous ones.

_________________
If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

On planning and consistency:

Well, OC, having a plan helps you to be consistent. However, plans may be inconsistent. In one of my comments on an early Malkovich game I claimed that Black's play was inconsistent, by which I meant that his stones were uncoordinated. They did not work well together.

But there is another kind of inconsistency that I have seen in Malkovich games, as well. And that is a failure, as daal says, to carry out your plan. As I recall, Znosko-Borovsky's book, How Not to Play Chess, talks a good bit about the importance of planning, and of carrying out a plan. Remember that you have an opponent, and therefore you will seldom be able to carry out your plan unimpeded in an ideal manner. One error that Znosko-Borovsky talks about is abandoning your plan when you run into difficulties. True, sometimes your opponent will refute your plan, but more often he will create problems for it. Generally you should not lose heart, but forge ahead. Just because your opponent fights back does not mean that your plan was bad, or that you have erred. But if you abandon your plan you are admitting that either your previous play was in error, or your present play is.

Also, remember that circumstances may change, and new plans should take that into account. Suppose that a joseki in a corner gives you outside strength. You played first in the corner, but your opponent ended up with the territory while you got influence. OC, your earlier play allowed for that possibility. But your subsequent play must be consistent with the fact.

I remember a game against a 4 dan where, late in the middle game, he threatened an invasion on my left side. I did not reply, but played a knight's move in the center to enlarge a central framework that had emerged. Unlike many of my opponents, he did not immediately invade, but paused for a few seconds, and said, "He wants to win." Now, protecting against the invasion would have been consistent with my early play on the left side, but it would not have been consistent with play as it had developed later.

As it happened, he invaded anyway, I chased him out with sente, and then secured the center and the game. Note that his invasion was consistent with his plan. Should he have changed his mind after I did not protect? Possibly. But I think that I was ahead, anyway. (And, gathering from his remark, perhaps he did, too.) But he stuck to his guns and invaded. And that is part of the reason, I think, that he was 4 dan. Maybe your judgement is flawed, but that's the only judgement you have. You have to back it up. If you lose, you lose. Learn something and do better next time. If you keep changing your mind and you lose, what have you learned? Only what you have admitted already. You made a mistake somewhere.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Of Bill's ("your", if you are Bill) comment, I like this part the best:



I can't help but feel that this has happened to me before.

_________________
be immersed

There is consistency and then there is flexibility. If you can start with consistent plan and win with no disruptions from beginning to end, it probably just means your opponent is a lot weaker than you are. I think what Mr. Yang is talking about a lack of whole board focus that often manifests itself fairly early in the opening for many amateurs. But things change. Your opponent may make a mistake that presents a clear way for you to win if you are willing to change you plan. Who can really say it is better to stick with your plan in that case? I think the challenge is that sometimes things look clear but aren't. Sometimes we are like babies getting a photo taken: "look at the shiny puppet! look at the shiny puppet!" And in a go game, this is often just bait. Everything can be traded for anything else of equal or greater value, it's just that some things have misleading value unless you're strong enough to read and judge accurately.

The fact that it is impossible to hold a plan forever against a strong opponent is one of the things that makes go fun.

I believe thinking like this causes one to get weaker, actually. I hardly ever ponder such things when I am crushing the life out of my opponent.

When I'm crushing the opponent, I think about the bills, about what I'll have for dinner, and which starlet is getting married soon. So I'm more interested in what people think about during a hard fought game against a serious opponent.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Generally, nothing even close to this. My mind is completely occupied with reading in hard games, and I don't think much about strategy.