Thoughts on obsession with shape

[John Fairbairn]

I'm struggling to understand the supposed distinction between static and dynamic shape.

Well, I would, too. But that's not the distinction I was hoping to talk about. I see the distinction between static shape and dynamic flow. In addition, I don't see it it as being about predicting the next move, but as about a way of describing what's in a given position (i.e. talking about go in natural language). Concentrating on static shapes just leads to lists. What can you do with them except memorise them and make further lists of their attributes. Doesn't seem very useful.

Concentrating on dynamic flow, however, creates (I hypothesise) a mindset that leads to better understanding of the flow of the WHOLE game (and that may lead to better prediction of best moves).

I have no trouble in accepting some western players do, at least sometimes, think with a dynamic-flow mindset. The point is, though, that I think not enough players do it and those that do it don't talk about it in that way, and so the full usefulness of that "flow" (suji/haengma) mindset is missed.

Palaeontologists have to work with static shapes. They can deduce remarkable things (or have remarkable imaginations, if you prefer), but it's pretty obvious zoologists have a head start when it comes to talking about animals. A zoologist can knock a living animal on the head, turning it into a static shape, and dissect it to learn things about its structure. A palaeontologist can't thump a dinosaur bone and tell us anything like as much, or as reliably, about its living form. I see the same problem with go players treating positions on the go board as a fossil dig.

Another example from art. Even the best artists had trouble drawing horses in motion until still-frame photography came along. Until then they just imposed a static vision on the poor animal. Then suddenly they could make it flow. Yu might argue that they used a series of static images, but a series is a flow, and the end result was a much better representation of motion.

A separate question is whether westerners and orientals view things differently. As I've said above, I think there is some basis for believing that their versions of the go terminology (plus their innate understanding of what the terms really mean) do give them an advantage. But in a much broader sense, I have had cause over the years to wonder whether cultural factors also play a part. Some decades ago, at a time when Japan was emerging as an economic powerhouse (and, as one fellow journalist here put it, when Japanese bankers started strutting instead of walking), there was the inevitable fashion for books and magazines to explain the "mysterious" east, and for exhibitions to highlight oriental art and culture. What I noticed at that time - which was a time before characters could be rendered using fonts, and so all characters in western books were artwork of some sort - was that there was more than a 50% chance for characters to be displayed upside down. It was extremely rare to see a sideways character, but there was a very strong chance for it to be meaninglessly the wrong up.

I pondered why. I never came up with a completely satisfactory answer, but, given my own journalistic background, the answer I favoured was that westerners were seeing characters as having a base in the same way that they were used to fonts such as Times Roman having serifs, and so they assumed the supposed base of characters had to go on the bottom, too. Further, they did not know the meaning of the character and so were seeing it just as a static shape. A CJK person, in contrast, would typically learn each character as a dynamic flow of strokes starting in the top left, and know nothing of serifs. He would get the character the right way up with no conscious effort. And, incidentally, knowing the meanings of the characters, would choose a suitable one to illustrate a book on Confucius (e.g. 仁 rather than an upside-down 而). I argue that, along similar lines, properly understanding CJK go terms is much more useful, as regards becoming stronger, than calling a shape a B52 Bomber.

[pwaldron]

"Bending round and keeping the opponent out of the centre" is implicit in the term magari for a Japanese-speaking go player - and VERY useful for thinking about the game both tactically and strategically. But for the average westerner, "magari" is not much different from saying "raspberry jam" or "gefurtel". It's just a label. So they miss out on the mindset that leads to go calculus.

I was reading the Evening Fragrance Pavilion. Several moves were described as "barriers", presumably translated from the Chinese equivalent. The quote above rushed into my mind, as I thought how the barrier description bring along connotations of a goal as well.

I think there might be something to it, John.

[John Fairbairn]

Just checking in with recent updates on SL, I noticed a different and good example of western obsession with shape.

It is an article on SABAKI. It has the usual obvious fault of higgledy-pigglediness of SL articles, but also has the worst and insidious fault of SL (and wikis in general) in that it cites unreliable sources. To quote a list of English books that mistranslate Japanese books, adding words such as light and flexible that are not in the original Japanese, in order to justify a definition that is based entirely on the notions of lightness and flexibility is circularity of the most perverse kind.

If we look at this from the standpoint of the present thread, we can see that the western writers are starting from the stance that they are "making sabaki" >> "making something" >> making SHAPE, and are then inventing attributes (light and flexible) for that shape that they think they are seeing in the examples they have looked at. Because it is a SHAPE, they deduce it must have a precise definition. But it is pure invention built on a false premise. In contrast, the Japanese stress the function and so just have in mind COPING in a difficult situation. When in such a situation, they go to the toolbox and pick out a suitable tool. Sometimes that tool may be delicate tweezers, at other times that thing for taking stones out of horses' hooves, and at times it may even be a sledgehammer.

Statistically, the chosen tool may well be most often one that you can use lightly and flexibly - but that's the tool, not the concept, and that tool does not ever find use in anything like 100% of cases.

To stimulate further discussion, I append here my article from the GoGoD Concepts Library. For reasons inherent in the above, I, like most Japanese authors, do not attempt a definition. The point is to get the reader who finds himself in a difficult situation NOT to say "what shape do I make here?" but to say, instead, "how to I COPE here? Where's my toolbox?" The difference is a subtle but important one, and at an even deeper level brilliantly summed up in the famous Irish joke: tourist lost in the countryside asks local "how do I get to Dublin from here?"; local replies, "If I was you, I wouldn't start from here."

It is, of course, possible to argue that western players have the right to create their own concepts and not to follow Japanese practice. But doing that while translating Japanese books, or using the Japanese term for a western concept, seems rather perverse. It just creates a disordered situation where further sabaki is called for!

Sabaki サバキ

This is a verbal noun derived from the verb sabaku, meaning to cope, handle, deal with. Many go dictionaries do not recognise it as a go term. For example, Hayashi Yutaka, in his large encyclopaedia does not list the term, although he does give two proverbs: sabaki wa tsuke kara and sabaki yurusanu burasagari. The Seibundo Igo Annai glossary also omits the term.

The Nihon Ki-in's book of terms simply says: "Coping deftly so that one's stones do not stagnate." They give an example:

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White, it says, needs a move at d4 to repair his thin shape. Simply playing there is gote (too slow). He does this best by playing b4, then if Black b5: d4, a4, g4. Coping deftly fits this perfectly. Note that White is playing in an area which he dominates, and is not really running away or playing lightly.

The Igo Club Go Encyclopaedia repeats the Nihon Ki-in definition but does not bother with an example diagram.

Books, or even book chapters, devoted to the topic are rare. However, in Hayago ni tsuyoku naru ho (How to become strong in fast games), Otake Hideo devotes a third of its space to a section headed "Techniques of sabaki." It is about moves such as White's b4 above rather than any grand concept. But as an introduction he says the following:

Sabaki is written with the character 捌き. It is a noun from sabaku but nowadays, as a technical term, it seems to be written only in katakana. Sabaku basically means "handling things well" or "resolving something disordered", and so in go too it is understood to mean similarly coping skilfully when stones are contending with each other.

Otake then goes on to say that it is an important aspect of playing fast games because it helps one (typically by handling a situation in sente, as in the Nihon Ki-in example) control the flow of the game.

So the Japanese seem ambivalent as to whether this is a technical term or not, let alone a major concept. Even if it is a concept, it is one on the vague level of (say) invading rather than aji - it is something you do rather than something you create or exploit. The basic meaning (coping deftly) is really rather simple - it is the array of techniques that is important.

Western players appear to have created a concept of their own, perhaps by confusion with shinogi (saving weak groups). The Go Almanac definition of sabaki, for example, is "Making light, flexible shape in order to save a group." More specifically, shinogi is (according to Hayashi) "making life, without incurring loss, for stones that are under attack". the Nihon Ki-in book uprates this to "without incurring loss or detrimentally affecting one's adjacent stones".

However, the pioneering English work Strategic Concepts of Go - still highly recommended - says "the meaning behind sabaki in Japanese is development" and that this carries over into go. This is an attempt to convey the implicit dynamism in the term. The examples given show that the compiler understood perfectly well what it means on the go board, but the word 'development' is perhaps best avoided because of confusion with other terms, especially nowadays when the Korean term haengma is often bandied about. SCG does, though, usefully make the point that there is a subdivision of sabaki called karui sabaki (light sabaki). Unlike shinogi, which requires no loss to be incurred, light sabaki can - and often does - accept some loss (i.e. sacrifice, which is a form of lightness).

Note that the concept is better known in shogi. Ito Sokan II was noted also for developing it as the art of opening up a game through exchanges to enhance the effectiveness of one's pieces. 'Development' might be the best term in that case.

Useful proverbs:

Sabaki wa tsuke kara - Sabaki often starts with a contact play
Sabaki yurusanu burasagari - The iron pillar descent does not allow sabaki

The English usage of make/achieve sabaki is not normal in Japanese, where the verb forms of sabaku are preferred. It is, however, possible to say sabaki o tsukeru.

© John Fairbairn & T Mark Hall (GoGoD), London 2008.

[CDavis7M]

If you want to see the grassroots efforts to promote the obsession on shape go see the recent Reddit post on r/baduk where someone wants to compile a list of static shapes to make a counterpoint against beginners who prefer chess because all of the chess pieces have their own fun move patterns. https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... r/?sort=qa

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And why do the Japanese get to borrow words from other languages and use them in the wrong way but Western Go players cannot do the same?

I cooked sabaki eggs this morning.

[Elom0]

If you want to see the grassroots efforts to promote the obsession on shape go see the recent Reddit post on r/baduk where someone wants to compile a list of static shapes to make a counterpoint against beginners who prefer chess because all of the chess pieces have their own fun move patterns. https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... r/?sort=qa

Wouldn't that be just more static shape?

And I think actually dynamic shapes, haengma, or shape behaviours would do better at achieving that goal! The entire meaning of a shape is that it suggests a function, as far as I can tell. To skip the function and jump to the shape seems like putting the cap before the pony, as far as I can tell.

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And why do the Japanese get to borrow words from other languages and use them in the wrong way but Western Go players cannot do the same?

I cooked sabaki eggs this morning.

Well I don't know if Japanese players of western Chess players do that, haha!

Also, whether when a term is used differently important nuances are lost and people lose out are dependant on what the term is, and how it's used differently from the original. westerners, very generally, seem 'material objective oriented' although there is much variation; southern europeans approach closer to the Japanese are more 'internal/introverted philosophy' oriented (Japanese culture that rely on that aspect are more popular in Spain, for example). Koreans seem to take very seriously concept of applying any internal philosophy to external true competency so we get terms like haengma. The actual differences. But in a game like go, it seems extremely important to keep the nuance in any terms. It could be the reason some players get stuck, just one term they're misunderstanding!

Also, while mispronouncing Karate is fairly harmless--I assume--it's probably normal for details and nuances to be lost and we lose out but we don't know about it because ignorance is bliss, like how it's obvious with the word 'Kung Fu'. But I haven't personally seen this yet in Japanese Speakers

[Elom0]

When I saw this thread, I first wanted to examine the premise. The shape page on Sensei’s Library has had links to pages about static and dynamic shape since at least 2017, so the idea of dynamic shape is certainly not unknown in the West. But John first brought up this topic, so far as I can tell, in May 2001, so he can be forgiven for thinking we’ve been slow to pick it up!

However, the idea of thinking of moves in a way that considers their “movement” isn’t new at all to the Western literature. The first go book I read was way Way of the Moving Horse, by Janice Kim, which uses the concept of haengma to introduce the reader to moving stones. And Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, one of the classics of Western go literature, talks about the way “the stones go walking.” So the question, in my mind, is not just whether Western go players have a vocabulary to talk about the movement of stones (they do), but whether that idea being part of the discussion of shape is particularly important.

And while I like the idea of “dynamic shape,” I don’t think the lack of it in the Western go literature is what’s been holding people back. Mainly because when I listen to strong players talk about shape, they clearly have the idea of “functional shape,” which I think is the most important part of the conversation. Perhaps they won’t call a move the “shape point” when it’s not a recognizable pattern (like Go Seigen), but they can still find a more efficient move when it doesn’t fit a standard repertoire of shapes. And, just as importantly, they will play a good move even if it makes “bad shape.”

Now, to the other question: does the greater number of analytical folks in Western go tend to lead to static over dynamic analysis? I wouldn’t think so. Certainly there are some prominent figures that tend to a more systematic approach than I’ve seen in book coming from Japan, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the systems they devise will only include static terms. Mathematics and other “analytical” disciplines are certainly broad enough to contain both static and dynamic concepts. I think of the relationships between numbers in a series, for instance, as an area where we see “movement” in math.

Now, where you may feel a gap, John, is that there may be some who seek a more precise definition in the terms that they use rather than the sometimes fuzzy terminology that seems to be suitable in at least some Asian uses. I think it was the same haengma discussion on SL that I linked above that mentioned difficulty in getting someone from Korea to give a firm definition of the term. What I imagine this may lead to is taking words that have unclear meanings, or sometimes do double duty, and using multiple words to describe the same concepts. That leaves it up to the players to re-synthesize the concepts that may have had some natural unity in an Asian language. This, perhaps, does affect the way that some players develop (language matters!), but I don’t see evidence that the synthesis doesn’t happen.

That seems mostly true to me, but! And, I may be wrong, but I do feel that in the west it's "tell me the static shape first, and then tell me what it does and how it's dynamic' whereas in the east it's "tell me what is being done and how dynamism is operating and flowing though the board, and then tell me what the static properties of the shape are', so I feel a significant difference here. Easterners are more likely to personify the actions of the pieces, a 'bullying' move and 'two siblings shouldn't fight for the same road', whereas in the west you stuff named after a man-made flying machine.

So a logical understanding is pretty different to an emotional understanding. From a child the way an easterner personifies nature is different to how a westerner might (if those native to america are migrants to the east that are culturally and genetically related to the Japanese and Korean, so maybe they might perhaps have had a better time understanding these concepts of think for go, which may already be more familiar to many). In fact this has been a gripe of mine with people thinking they are diverse because they know a lot about the most shallow aspects of different cultures on non-emotional, objective level out of inquisitiveness or curiosity only, not need. Fale diversity. 'All of the world's food in the worst form possible', as one clinical psychologist might say!

[Elom0]

"yose" also refers to approach moves (on the boundary) in an approach ko. [...] it should be obvious that "yose" is not "endgame" because yose plays can be made at move 80 of a 200+ move game. And something the endgame devolves into a fight rather than peaceful boundary plays.

If that is all yose is about, then I agree with Bill that there is no difference between yose plays and endgame plays. Two phrases for the same.

Well, the 80th item out of 200+ is not the final part of that series. So it is not the "end" by definition. A yose play and an endgame play may be the exact same play locally, but the difference is when they are played. Maybe this goes back to the original post -- seeing a (static) endgame play rather than a (dynamic) yose play.

But again, this is talking of yose in Japanese (boundary play) and not yose in English (might as well just say endgame).

Yes, well . . . Maybe not?

I mean, I disagree with translators trying to translate every single word. Farewell, my dear Cramer, adding 'dear' since this implication the Japanese has isn't quite as clear with just 'farewell, my cramer', since farewell can have a less personal when leaving it as 'Sayonara, my Cramer' removes the need to add in the implied 'dear' in the translation. Being accurate avoids misunderstanding and complications down the road, as far as I can tell. Sometimes In one context a word is used in a way were there would be good equivalent, but then another time it would be used in a way in which it isn't the case. Using a word differently runs the risk of the cost of losing the chance of using it in it's original meaning. No one cares or has lost anything by changing the meaning of the word 'handle' to denote a steering wheel. But changing the word Sabaki to mean something else does seem costly, especially when we already have the word for light shape in english so it 's redundant, a significant loss with zero gain. I would argue the same for Kung Fu.

Also, the terms used in Asia are those most tried and tested for being those most important for getting strong at go. Of course adding terms would nearly always be good, but if you start removing terms and meanings for new ones, there's no guarantee that those new terms are those most important.

If we were talking about Shogi it wouldn't be as much of an issue, since chess terms in the west have resulted in top-level chess. But go is a different game and it hasn't been proven in the west that our terminology can make you an igo world champion.

If verbs are used to describe everything on the go board then every stone has to justify itself, wheras when everything is a noun simply sitting pretty as a special snowflake is enough to warrant it's use. Beginners likely play at beginner level due mainly to this compared to more skilled play, and it's probably similar between average players and top pros or us and the east.

For another pet peeve of translation issues of mine. The word Rabb in Arabic. Evolution is strongly implied in the Qur'an through this word. But when you translate it as lord, you lose this implication, and a christian or atheist reading it completely misses their chance. If you're not going to translate rabb as 'nurturing evolver', then just leave it as rabb. At least the atheist will research the word to get the chance to learn the most religions do not conflict with evolution at all, 'christianity' (modern neo Essene Judaism) is relatively unique among religions in it being able to be interpreted as doubting evolution in any way, although That being said Maulana Muhummad Ali--who made maybe the best translation of the Qur'an to english whatever people think of his sect or not--did mention this in his notes so I'll give him that props!

[CDavis7M]

If we were talking about Shogi it wouldn't be as much of an issue, since chess terms in the west have resulted in top-level chess. But go is a different game and it hasn't been proven in the west that our terminology can make you an igo world champion.

You're missing the point. It's not knowledge of terminology that enables one a world champion gamer. It's being Korean that enables one to be a world champion gamer.

There's a long list of Western games with Western terminology made by Westerners where the top levels of gameplay are dominated by Koreans.

My guess - access to games at a young age and all that spicy food, it really gets them going.

[schrody]

Here's something we haven't discussed yet. I agree that the words we choose to a certain extent reflect and influence the way we think about the world. However, we don't just think in words but also, for example, images and I'd posit that visual thinking is more important in go than verbal thinking. Certainly when it comes to reading, playing out josekis or when we choose moves based on our intuition. Admittedly, I'm bad at visualisation but I'm still trying to imagine what the board would look like with various stones added and verbalisation takes a back seat in such instances. Consequently, I don't think any potentially mistranslated terms or misguided attempts at cataloguing the shapes play as much of a role during the game as this discussion made it seem.

[John Fairbairn]

However, we don't just think in words but also, for example, images and I'd posit that visual thinking is more important in go than verbal thinking.

But words help create images. And depending on the words chosen, you end up with photographs or with movies.

[schrody]

I'm curious. Which one do you think makes you a better player? Seeing the board as photographs or a movie?

[John Fairbairn]

I'm curious. Which one do you think makes you a better player? Seeing the board as photographs or a movie?

It's only a hunch, but movie. My hunch is based on a lot of experience outside of go. For example, I have seen master calligraphers write characters as if they are "dancing". I also do Scottish dancing where complex formations have to be learned. They can be described in diagrams but people rarely use these. The best way to learn is to make the movements, aided by the music. I would imagine things like golf swings or other things where people talk about "muscle memory" also benefit from actual movement.

As a newspaper editor I had to learn to make a page design "flow", and even at the micro level things like serifs count for a lot. A sans serif face like Helvetica is good for taking the eye down into the story, whie serif faces such as Times Roman help the eye go across the long lines within the columns.

There have been other threads here about visualisation if you wish to look them up.

[schrody]

Dancing and calligraphy, to an extent, are performative arts where actual physical movement plays an integral part while in go any physical movement (e.g. placing a stone) is purely incidental. Any movement, flow or dynamics that we speak of in relation to the quality of the go game is imagined. The perception of movement is to a large extend imposed on the static image. Especially since compared to many other games, the stones in go are quite static and rarely move, so visually, at least, go is one of the more static games.

Also, when pausing and resuming a dance, something would be lost because continuity is a key component in dancing but when it comes to go that's not the case. Moves get sealed in important matches and correspondence games are still quite popular. Even when reviewing a game record online what you're essentially looking at is a series of still images of the game. You can pause and linger on any of them without it having any detrimental effects.

I think seeing go as a movie makes the games more exciting, but doesn't necessarily add much to the quality of the game. At least in my experience. The only thing I can say for certain is that I have seen far too many people lose games because they got too caught up in attacking or playing locally. I've also seen players lose games and perform badly in the entire tournament because they were too hung up on a single mistake they made in one game. If you see go as as series of static images then each image is a clean slate free of any of the baggage that you've accumulated thus far in the game.

I would like to point out, however, that me favouring the static view of go doesn't mean that I prefer form over function. Well, perhaps I do in terms of aesthetics but in terms of performance (i.e. when playing in a tournament), I'll go for function nearly every single time.

[John Fairbairn]

I travelled to a new area for a dance last night and so met some new people. I asked a man somewhat overdressed for the occasion in a Prince Charlie jacket, and so obviously not a Scot, what got him into Scottish country dancing, and he began his reply, "I'm a mathematician." He then went on to explain how he could see the patterns in the dances and they fascinated him. He then continued with a bit of a non sequitur,to say that he had to make a choice when going to university between maths (he actually said "mathematics" as this was a posh part of the country) and languages, but he found the choice was easy because German (which he would have opted for) was a "mathematical language" and so he could pick that up more easily later on if he studied maths.

But here's the thing. He danced with his head, not his feet. From my observation, all the non-mathematicians dance with their feet and so look so much better, and they also have more fun by breaking the rules (birling and yeoching and joining in adjacent sets), and can adapt when others make mistakes. And no, it is not a case of alles in Unordnung. It is a case of making Ordnung out of Unordnung. Sabaki in other words.

[schrody]

I suppose your anecdote is your way of saying that you can know the patterns while not fully grasping how to use them. It usually takes a lot of time and practice before someone has internalised them enough to be able to use them so freely and effortlessly. I think you're right that the STEM folk and the Arts & Humanities folk have different mindsets, though there's always exceptions to that rule, me being one of them. I used to do improvisational theatre for a few years and I noticed that there are different types of improvisers. Some take inspiration from physical movement, some just step on the stage and say the first thing that pops into their head and then there's the intellectual ones like me. Instead of going with the flow, I desperately tried to come up with a scene in the few seconds I had before I had to step up on the stage. I'm supposed to be in the Arts & Humanities group but apparently not quite.

If we return to go, I've studied shapes in isolation, their strengths, weaknesses and potential uses. I read through Shuko's Dictionary of Basic Tesuji and probably done other far too orderly things. When I analyse my games, I focus on shapes though in all of my shape-related endeavors I have rarely tried to memories them. It's more about letting them sink into my mind so that I can play them without having to name them and list all of their attributes. In other words, I've pushed my knowledge of shapes to an intuitive level. Since I am bad at reading (and don't intend to fix that at the present moment), my intuition is what helps me win games. At this point, when I look at the board for a while, images of different moves and shapes will start popping up. With time, my sense of their wrongness or rightness will change until one will emerge as the most right. Of course, I do try to read occasionally, there's also my knowledge of joseki, proverbs, heuristics, etc. but an increasingly large part of my game at the moment is this nonverbal visual intuition that's based on my subconscious shape knowledge.

The point I'm trying to make is that just as those non-mathematical dancers presumably also had to learn the patterns at one point before gaining this freedom of movement and improvisation, and they probably stumbled and were quite awkward when doing so, so can go players in the long run benefit from learning the go patterns. Though, it's the transition from knowledge to instinct that may be a struggle for some.