Is it possible to play Go without strategy?

[Polama]

The missing concept here is 'Positional Judgement'

reading is obviously so limited compared to the possibilities inherent in the game, and therefore even in reading you are making strategic assumptions

This implies to me, at least, that you consider positional judgment to be strategy. If I look at an atari of a key stone to save a group, and dismiss it as 'no, it escapes into too open an area, I won't have time' that's positional judgement. You seem to view that as strategy. To those of us disagreeing, though, it's more a part of reading: It was a local determination, it built on local intuition about what could be expected from tesuji here and how many moves could be expected before the group was captured. Reading isn't just a brute force resolution of a position to its very end, but also the reasoning around which lines can be pruned and reading to a point to make a judgement.

Or put another way, joseki discussions involve things like 'good for black: white has too much aji for the territory black gained'. It's positional judgement. Obviously, nobody read the joseki to all possible conclusions. To many of us, the strategic discussion would be whether it made sense for white to give up so much for influence on this board. The question of the local position is closer to reading, because it builds on reading likely local continuations. Beginners often view huge shimari as safe territory. Partially that's bad strategy, thinking they can make up for it elsewhere, partially it's bad reading: They can't visualize the ways an invasion could work.

Does that explain the disagreement? Positional Judgement is 100% necessary to play. If you say positional judgement is strategy, then yes, strategy is by far the most important part of the game. But if you view Positional Judgement as a third concept built up from both reading and strategy, the topic becomes something for discussion.

[illluck]

Sigh, evidently the mods here don't enforce rules about personal attacks tightly or consistently which would explain much about the functionality/dis-functionality of this particular forum. Maybe they think things like "I can tell you are a weak player, because I have superior reading ability" are par for the course.

My reading ability is telling me something else.

[SmoothOper]

The missing concept here is 'Positional Judgement'

reading is obviously so limited compared to the possibilities inherent in the game, and therefore even in reading you are making strategic assumptions

This implies to me, at least, that you consider positional judgment to be strategy. If I look at an atari of a key stone to save a group, and dismiss it as 'no, it escapes into too open an area, I won't have time' that's positional judgement. You seem to view that as strategy. To those of us disagreeing, though, it's more a part of reading: It was a local determination, it built on local intuition about what could be expected from tesuji here and how many moves could be expected before the group was captured. Reading isn't just a brute force resolution of a position to its very end, but also the reasoning around which lines can be pruned and reading to a point to make a judgement.

Or put another way, joseki discussions involve things like 'good for black: white has too much aji for the territory black gained'. It's positional judgement. Obviously, nobody read the joseki to all possible conclusions. To many of us, the strategic discussion would be whether it made sense for white to give up so much for influence on this board. The question of the local position is closer to reading, because it builds on reading likely local continuations. Beginners often view huge shimari as safe territory. Partially that's bad strategy, thinking they can make up for it elsewhere, partially it's bad reading: They can't visualize the ways an invasion could work.

Does that explain the disagreement? Positional Judgement is 100% necessary to play. If you say positional judgement is strategy, then yes, strategy is by far the most important part of the game. But if you view Positional Judgement as a third concept built up from both reading and strategy, the topic becomes something for discussion.

I think that local reading is also strategic decision, for example choosing a gote, sente, ko, thickness, sabaki, etc.

[Polama]

I think that local reading is also strategic decision, for example choosing a gote, sente, ko, thickness, sabaki, etc.

Yes. I agree with you that deciding whether it's better to live in gote or tenuki and accept a ko for life is a strategic decision.

You could say that always living in gote, because life > ko for life, is a strategy. I'd argue it's useful to just call that reading. They read the local outcome, then didn't consider any other information so made a tactically strong, but possibly strategically inferior choice.

The reasoning that leads to strong advocacy of reading ability is that whether you play thickly or lightly in a position can be less important than how you do it: That if it's strategically superior to play thickly, it'll often be better to play lightly and play lightly very well, then to play thickly but get tricked into still leaving important aji. You can see this in life or death, where even knowing that tenuki and ko was an option you could chose can require a fair amount of reading ability.

Personally, my strategy is stronger than my reading and they clearly both have value. I have to get more points than my opponent, because I'll negate the value of some of my position sooner or later by missing something important on the board.

[SmoothOper]

I think that local reading is also strategic decision, for example choosing a gote, sente, ko, thickness, sabaki, etc.

Yes. I agree with you that deciding whether it's better to live in gote or tenuki and accept a ko for life is a strategic decision.

You could say that always living in gote, because life > ko for life, is a strategy. I'd argue it's useful to just call that reading. They read the local outcome, then didn't consider any other information so made a tactically strong, but possibly strategically inferior choice.

The reasoning that leads to strong advocacy of reading ability is that whether you play thickly or lightly in a position can be less important than how you do it: That if it's strategically superior to play thickly, it'll often be better to play lightly and play lightly very well, then to play thickly but get tricked into still leaving important aji. You can see this in life or death, where even knowing that tenuki and ko was an option you could chose can require a fair amount of reading ability.

Personally, my strategy is stronger than my reading and they clearly both have value. I have to get more points than my opponent, because I'll negate the value of some of my position sooner or later by missing something important on the board.

I seldom capture as many stones as my opponent and sometimes they capture very many, even when I win, which I think is a defect, that I am trying to improve, though it is kind of odd to me that at my rank playing other people at my same rank winning marginally greater than 50% something like this would occur.

[Marcus]

I seldom capture as many stones as my opponent and sometimes they capture very many, even when I win, which I think is a defect, that I am trying to improve, though it is kind of odd to me that at my rank playing other people at my same rank winning marginally greater than 50% something like this would occur.

This does not seem to be a defect. Maybe I've misunderstood what you mean, but it sounds like you think that winning while not capturing as many stones as your opponent does is a problem, and that you should be capturing at least as many stones as your opponent. Is this what you meant? Because if so I think you may have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game.

Because capturing stones is only one way to make points (and not necessarily a good one), it is a fallacy to think that a balanced game between opponents will lead to an equal number of captured stones. Sacrificing a large number of stones CAN be (but again, not necessarily) a good way to win with a large and solid territory.

But, maybe I've misunderstood you.

[SmoothOper]

I seldom capture as many stones as my opponent and sometimes they capture very many, even when I win, which I think is a defect, that I am trying to improve, though it is kind of odd to me that at my rank playing other people at my same rank winning marginally greater than 50% something like this would occur.

This does not seem to be a defect. Maybe I've misunderstood what you mean, but it sounds like you think that winning while not capturing as many stones as your opponent does is a problem, and that you should be capturing at least as many stones as your opponent. Is this what you meant? Because if so I think you may have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game.

Because capturing stones is only one way to make points (and not necessarily a good one), it is a fallacy to think that a balanced game between opponents will lead to an equal number of captured stones. Sacrificing a large number of stones CAN be (but again, not necessarily) a good way to win with a large and solid territory.

But, maybe I've misunderstood you.

It just seems like my play would be more efficient if fewer of my stones were captured. IE I could do essentially the same thing in fewer over all moves.

[billywoods]

It just seems like my play would be more efficient if fewer of my stones were captured. IE I could do essentially the same thing in fewer over all moves.

Have you ever seen a professional game in which one player deliberately throws a handful of stones into their opponent's territory and then lets them get captured almost immediately? There are many important tesuji that involve stone sacrifice. (A very simple example is throw-ins to reduce liberties.)

[SmoothOper]

It just seems like my play would be more efficient if fewer of my stones were captured. IE I could do essentially the same thing in fewer over all moves.

Have you ever seen a professional game in which one player deliberately throws a handful of stones into their opponent's territory and then lets them get captured almost immediately? There are many important tesuji that involve stone sacrifice. (A very simple example is throw-ins to reduce liberties.)

Well, sure there is a time an a place for sacrifice, but I seem to do it more often others.

[oren]

Well, sure there is a time an a place for sacrifice, but I seem to do it more often others.

In a current DGS game, I just had an opponent save two of his stones I had in atari when there were more than 4 point endgame moves left on the board. I could have captured more stones, but I'd rather have more points than captures.

[lemmata]

Since this discussion has long since been derailed: An example of when getting a large group captured is an essential part of a whole board strategy for winning.

[Phelan]

While discussion seems to already be on another subject, I don't think anyone mentioned this:

reading is superior to strategy

That is not what anyone has said. Reading is a tool to help you put your strategy into action. It is also the only tool.

I disagree with this. Pattern matching is another tool. If you recognize good shape, you might not need to read. Memorisation and recall(of joseki, openings, etc) is another tool. There are likely others I'm not thinking of right now.

[billywoods]

While discussion seems to already be on another subject, I don't think anyone mentioned this:

reading is superior to strategy

That is not what anyone has said. Reading is a tool to help you put your strategy into action. It is also the only tool.

I disagree with this. Pattern matching is another tool. If you recognize good shape, you might not need to read. Memorisation and recall(of joseki, openings, etc) is another tool. There are likely others I'm not thinking of right now.

Perhaps I was unclear. I'm not advocating reading out everything in a position (because most amateurs just can't, and because sometimes reading 2 moves ahead is enough to know you've achieved your goal), and I'm not saying that all reading must be done during the game if you're able to use other shapes you already know to simplify the process. I'm also not denying the use of playing shapes (or joseki, or tesuji...) that someone else has read out and you only have a primitive understanding of, because again there's only so much you can do. But there must be some reading somewhere - it's just that, when you have a strong pattern recognition ability, this reading gets heavily deferred. You can't just shape randomly over the board, or make it your mission to always hane at the head of two or three without checking whether it's good, because you'll get sliced to bits.

[SmoothOper]

While discussion seems to already be on another subject, I don't think anyone mentioned this:

reading is superior to strategy

That is not what anyone has said. Reading is a tool to help you put your strategy into action. It is also the only tool.

I disagree with this. Pattern matching is another tool. If you recognize good shape, you might not need to read. Memorisation and recall(of joseki, openings, etc) is another tool. There are likely others I'm not thinking of right now.

This is an interesting perspective. I have definitely played a person who I felt had better shape than me, very interesting game and very close at the end despite so much tenuki. It made me think all these people who talk about influence are just another variant on the greedy approach, compared to that. Very interesting maybe even cosmic.

[topazg]

I disagree with this. Pattern matching is another tool. If you recognize good shape, you might not need to read. Memorisation and recall(of joseki, openings, etc) is another tool. There are likely others I'm not thinking of right now.

FWIW, I disagree with this In my experience, good shape is invaluable, but never a replacement for reading. What it does make is an excellent reading assistance tool, giving you quick access to good moves to start with in reading out lines.