Bill Spight wrote:
Well, these are not best move problems, they are shape problems. What is the locally efficient play? Not, what is the best play on the board? And I think, yes, the vast majority of pro moves are locally efficient. Sometimes one sacrifices local efficiency for global purposes, but as a rule one can achieve global goals with locally efficient moves. Besides, local efficiency is easier to achieve than global correctness.
In these problems, I think that the shape play is clear. And I think that consensus among pros on shape plays is virtually 100%.
This makes sense, for local shape problems.
But that brings another question: is the locally most efficient shape also the globally best move?
I am sorry if I seem to be harping on that, but I just think, from the perspective of us, lowly amateurs, what do such problems teach us?
Or, better yet - I am trying to address my own insecurity when confronted with such (or any) positions. I can figure out relatively easy in many cases what is the most efficient local move, or best local shape... once somebody points out which local area they want me to focus on. But sitting at the board, trying to make the next move in a real game - this is a different animal! My main issue is not always the local shape but where to play globally. And problems like that seemingly help me, but not really.
Same goes for tsume-go, whenever I see one. But at least tsume-go usually do not make the impressions of being whole-board global problems.
So in this sense, I think what bothers/confuses me also is the context of the whole board which is given while the problem is only a local one. If the problem specified only the portion of the board which was to be considered, then none of the global-vs-local issues would arise. But since it gives the whole board, somehow, in my mind, we have to find the best move in global position, and this makes it a global problem. Which in turn makes me think: is the best local shape also the best global move? And how do we even know?
In general, I guess local problems in Go are just simpler than global ones.
And it is this globality that I struggle with the most.
I wonder if pros also have such thoughts...
I think they do.
PS>
None of that is certainly not the problem's fault, nor is it yours, Bill. Thanks for posting all that.
As I said - just thinking out loud here.