Counting practice exercises?

brendan.hill · Post by **brendan.hill** » Sun Sep 23, 2012 11:41 pm

I'd like to work on my counting skills. In particular, to practice precise counting so I can more easily do approximate counting in games.

Is there a practice resource available for this? For example - show a group/board, you count then it shows you or you pick the answer. Like goproblems.com but for counting.

I looked around and couldn't find any thing on the internet (maybe most people would find this tragically boring) but I would be willing to pay a small fee for it.

Maybe one way is to load random games on KGS, go to the end, count then compare to Score Estimator - seems a but clumsy though.

Any other suggestions?

-Brendan

p2501 · Post by **p2501** » Sun Sep 23, 2012 11:47 pm

There are 9x9 endgame tsumego.

daal · Post by **daal** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 1:30 am

This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but you might find it useful anyway. It's a series of lessons on counting by DrStraw that he gave a few years back.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?SteveFawthrop%2FCounting

RobertJasiek · Post by **RobertJasiek** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 2:08 am

If you can't wait and want mostly territory counting, read Cho's Positional Judgment High-Speed Game Analysis http://senseis.xmp.net/?PositionalJudgm ... meAnalysis
If you can wait two or three months, the good news is that I just happen to write a detailed book on positional judgement and evaluating territory, thickness, influence, options, endgames etc.

Practicing counting is the easy part. The difficult part is to know what to count and under which conditions it may be counted or when simple counting is misleading. Then helping methods such as quiescence become necessary.

RobertJasiek · Post by **RobertJasiek** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 3:35 am

daal wrote:http://senseis.xmp.net/?SteveFawthrop%2FCounting

The general ideas contained in it are useful but I disagree to which intersections he assesses as territory, to the counts and to his heuristics for these purposes.

daal · Post by **daal** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 4:51 am

RobertJasiek wrote:If you can wait two or three months, the good news is that I just happen to write a detailed book on positional judgement and evaluating territory, thickness, influence, options, endgames etc.

Nice to hear! Sounds like you're on a roll ^^

brendan.hill · Post by **brendan.hill** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:49 am

RobertJasiek wrote:If you can't wait and want mostly territory counting, read Cho's Positional Judgment High-Speed Game Analysis http://senseis.xmp.net/?PositionalJudgm ... meAnalysis
If you can wait two or three months, the good news is that I just happen to write a detailed book on positional judgement and evaluating territory, thickness, influence, options, endgames etc.

Maybe I'll have my cake and eat it too by doing both! :p

pwaldron · Post by **pwaldron** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 11:13 am

You might pick up a copy of the Train Like a Pro series, if it's still available. There are a number of excellent full-board endgame problems on 13x13 boards. Your job is to read out the last 20 or so moves in the game and figure out the final game result. Highly recommended.

speedchase · Post by **speedchase** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 4:31 pm

I would recommend positional judgement by cho chikun

mrnoob · Post by **mrnoob** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 5:51 pm

Why not just get a random pro game that you know ends within 5 or so points and count that? You can count it at the end position to start, and slowly take some moves off and estimate. As a bonus, you also get to learn good endgame moves.

RobertJasiek · Post by **RobertJasiek** » Tue Sep 25, 2012 2:25 am

hanekomu wrote:And a sample: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanekomu_a ... hotostream

It is good to see that that book determines Current Territory.

p2501 · Post by **p2501** » Tue Sep 25, 2012 2:59 am

hanekomu wrote:This reminds me of an article in the American Go E-Journal, where Michael Redmond 9p says "what I did last year was to copy game positions about 30 moves from the end of the game. [...] I write the result – for instance in this game, White wins by one point – so I have to hold the position in my head and count it, and by doing that, I think I’m improving my reading ability. Not just reading out an endgame, but life and death problems, as well.”

http://www.usgo.org/news/2010/06/michae ... ros-train/

Interesting, I think I will give this a trial.

Phelan · Post by **Phelan** » Tue Sep 25, 2012 4:24 am

hanekomu wrote:Here is a picture of the cover: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanekomu_a ... hotostream

That is one groovy cover, man. :cool:

p2501 · Post by **p2501** » Tue Sep 25, 2012 4:25 am

Endgame problems from senseis:

http://senseis.xmp.net/?EndgameProblems
http://senseis.xmp.net/?PracticalEndgameTests

Kanin · Post by **Kanin** » Tue Sep 25, 2012 8:26 am

Phelan wrote:
hanekomu wrote:Here is a picture of the cover: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanekomu_a ... hotostream
That is one groovy cover, man.

I love it! Laughed a lot and for long time when I saw it. Awesome.

Life In 19x19

Counting practice exercises?

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