Strategy vs tactics ( aka theory vs reading )

[flOvermind]

[...] If you think about the example again, for tsumego problems, you need to have "two eyes to live". The phrase, "two eyes to live" can be thought of as "strategy" in the sense that, by making two eyes, you can make a situation in which it is impossible for the opponent to kill you. It is a *fundamental* piece of strategy, but it could still be considered strategy.

Yes.

Now there are at least two ways that you could come about knowing that you need to have two eyes to live:
1.) You read in a book someplace, or your friend tells you, you need two eyes to live.

2.) Nobody told you anything about two eyes, but you came to the conclusion that two eyes allowed you to be uncapturable, because you read out some basic situations, and stumbled upon that truth on your own.

I agree. And while some people might argue that 1) is more efficient, I personally prefer method 2). Actually, I have real trouble remembering anything that I can't derive myself.

I think now I understand what you mean. What I argued for was that you need strategy in the game to guide your reading. What you argued for was not that you don't need strategy, but that you don't need to *study* strategy. I'm not sure I can agree with that, but it certainly makes a lot more sense than not needing strategy at all

We can think in the same way for global situations. We can blindly follow what somebody has told us about something being good, or we can, through experience in reading, learn for yourself what is good in a global situation.

There is a third way: You can follow what somebody has told you, but not blindly. Try it out, learn the reasons why it is good and why something else is bad. Yes, you do that basically through reading. But I think you need the initial input to guide you. Otherwise there are just too many possibilities, and you won't just stumble across it by accident... This is especially true for unlearning bad habits, but also to some extent to finding new ideas.

fl0vermind claimed in his post that he made "no reading mistakes". This cannot be the case if he omitted some possibilities that led him to victory.

With "no reading mistakes" I mean that every sequence worked out in the way I read it out. I reached the end position that I wanted to reach. The mistake was that this position was not good, which has nothing to do with reading. True, I made the mistake of not reading ahead until two passes and then counting. But not even pros can do that except in endgame...

[daniel_the_smith]

With "no reading mistakes" I mean that every sequence worked out in the way I read it out.

...all that means is that your opponent was sharing in your hallucinations...

[Kirby]

I think that we are coming closer to agreement. I will just make a few comments:

Now there are at least two ways that you could come about knowing that you need to have two eyes to live:
1.) You read in a book someplace, or your friend tells you, you need two eyes to live.

2.) Nobody told you anything about two eyes, but you came to the conclusion that two eyes allowed you to be uncapturable, because you read out some basic situations, and stumbled upon that truth on your own.

I agree. And while some people might argue that 1) is more efficient, I personally prefer method 2). Actually, I have real trouble remembering anything that I can't derive myself.

I also prefer method #2. I think it leads to a better understanding. It may be inefficient in some ways, but there is also the possibility that, because you do not understand method #1 as well, you might misinterpret it, which could lead to future difficulties. So somebody taking method #1 might jump ahead at first, but then run into problems when they truly have to understand something.

I think now I understand what you mean. What I argued for was that you need strategy in the game to guide your reading. What you argued for was not that you don't need strategy, but that you don't need to *study* strategy. I'm not sure I can agree with that, but it certainly makes a lot more sense than not needing strategy at all

I guess this is basically what I am saying. I never categorized things into "strategy" and "tactics", but rather felt that reading could provide me with my own understanding. Perhaps this includes what many are calling "strategy".

There is a third way: You can follow what somebody has told you, but not blindly. Try it out, learn the reasons why it is good and why something else is bad. Yes, you do that basically through reading. But I think you need the initial input to guide you. Otherwise there are just too many possibilities, and you won't just stumble across it by accident... This is especially true for unlearning bad habits, but also to some extent to finding new ideas.

This is a good point. Although, I do not always follow this, because I have some trust issues, I think

With "no reading mistakes" I mean that every sequence worked out in the way I read it out. I reached the end position that I wanted to reach. The mistake was that this position was not good, which has nothing to do with reading. True, I made the mistake of not reading ahead until two passes and then counting. But not even pros can do that except in endgame...

I think that this part comes back to the evaluation part of reading. It's kind of like this:
Let's say I have a go problem, and I read out a position that has one real eye and a false eye. Maybe I see the final board position, and I think that it makes my group alive. The fact is, my evaluation is not that great - and I think that this is a part of my reading. If I had better reading ability, I would be able to tell that "this is a bad situation" better.

[Monadology]

I think that this part comes back to the evaluation part of reading. It's kind of like this:
Let's say I have a go problem, and I read out a position that has one real eye and a false eye. Maybe I see the final board position, and I think that it makes my group alive. The fact is, my evaluation is not that great - and I think that this is a part of my reading. If I had better reading ability, I would be able to tell that "this is a bad situation" better.

That kind of bad situation is bad locally. I don't think anyone has suggested that good local evaluation (which requires reading) is not necessary if one has strategy. The question, AGAIN, is not "are good reading and tactics necessary" which everyone would agree "Yes, they are." The question is "are good reading and tactics sufficient." The way one falsifies sufficiency is see if there is a case where they occur where they ALSO are not enough to win.

Suppose you read out the local situation and you don't make any local mistakes (like false eyes, or too many cutting points). Can you always know whether the position is better or worse in terms of the goal of winning without making strategic evaluations? How do you know whether a territory on the edge is better than outside thickness? Questions like this require consideration of other positions on the board. Can one read enough, without strategic heuristics to eliminate and select possibilities, to determine that? That's the question.

[topazg]

I think that this part comes back to the evaluation part of reading. It's kind of like this:
Let's say I have a go problem, and I read out a position that has one real eye and a false eye. Maybe I see the final board position, and I think that it makes my group alive. The fact is, my evaluation is not that great - and I think that this is a part of my reading. If I had better reading ability, I would be able to tell that "this is a bad situation" better.

What about evaluations that don't involve the life and death of groups? How do you evaluate these?

[Kirby]

I think that this part comes back to the evaluation part of reading. It's kind of like this:
Let's say I have a go problem, and I read out a position that has one real eye and a false eye. Maybe I see the final board position, and I think that it makes my group alive. The fact is, my evaluation is not that great - and I think that this is a part of my reading. If I had better reading ability, I would be able to tell that "this is a bad situation" better.

What about evaluations that don't involve the life and death of groups? How do you evaluate these?

Good point.

I think that you can read ahead: I move here, he moves here, I move here, he moves here, and then we have position X. Then I have to decide if X is good for me. For that, it's true that there's not a definite method of evaluation, and I have to take a guess. But then some situation results from it. After this happens a lot of times, I can re-evaluate my evaluation of the position (eg. I thought this was good, but white has *this*, now, so maybe not).

But by using this method, I come to establish *my own* method of evaluation, which I prefer to finding in some book.

[Kirby]

There are a couple of other things that come to mind.

1.) Uncertainty is present no matter what (even in local life & death situations if you are overlooking something silly, for example). Reading helps you to deal with this uncertainty.

2.) It's true that, at some point, global evaluation is more complex and fuzzy than easy life & death situations. But I would like to contrast the following two approaches:

i.) Reliance on a heuristic without reading (eg. empty triangle = bad. Avoid empty triangle. Do not make move that makes empty triangle.).

ii.) Reading possibilities in the global situation, and making an *attempt* to evaluate the result properly.

I think that it's essential to practice the latter of these two options. That's because, if you keep exercising this ability, you can have better and better global evaluations.

On the other hand, if you only practice the former, you will know that empty triangles are bad in general, but you will never know when they are good, because you have not tried to consider reading out a situation globally.

---

*** 4.) The further a game progresses, the fewer options there are available for players to play. Because of this, I think it is easier to evaluate a situation that's closer to endgame than one that's closer to the beginning of the game.

Therefore, the further you can read ahead (if you read ahead relevant situations), the closer to the end of the game you can see, and the better evaluation you can make. That is, when the go board is empty, I cannot know who will win the game. But the further ahead I can read, the better chance I will have at being correct.

**** 5.) Finally, people have been talking about their good (or bad) strategic ability. How can you know if your strategic ability is good if you have not done some sort of evaluation? If you have done this evaluation, then you could also use this evaluation in your reading process.

[flOvermind]

This is a good point. Although, I do not always follow this, because I have some trust issues, I think

But that's the point, isn't it? Never trust the stronger player, instead try to verify it yourself. Or, in some cases, you can even falsify it. Even stronger players make mistakes sometimes

[Kirby]

This is a good point. Although, I do not always follow this, because I have some trust issues, I think

But that's the point, isn't it? Never trust the stronger player, instead try to verify it yourself. Or, in some cases, you can even falsify it. Even stronger players make mistakes sometimes

Agreed. I think that it is a good supplement to your study. I like spending most of my time working on my own thinking rather than listening to others. But certainly listening to others can potentially suggest new possibilities that you hadn't thought of before.

[Wildclaw]

The whole topic doesn't make any sense. Strategy vs Tactics doesn't correspond to Theory vs Reading. In reality it is more like

Code: Select all

         Reading Theory Intuition
Strategy    X       X       X
Tactics     X       X       X           
L&D         X       X       X

There is a lot of tactical theory, and you can read a lot strategically. And yes, the addition of L&D below tactics was intentional. L&D decisions are generally quite different from ordinary tactical decisions

I personally don't find reading very special either. I don't really read much more now than I did back when I was 10 kyu. Mostly decisions are made using theory, intuition and just some minuscule reading.

Of course, my definition of minuscule reading may have changed with me growing stronger.

[topazg]

The whole topic doesn't make any sense. Strategy vs Tactics doesn't correspond to Theory vs Reading. In reality it is more like

Code: Select all

         Reading Theory Intuition
Strategy    X       X       X
Tactics     X       X       X           
L&D         X       X       X

There is a lot of tactical theory, and you can read a lot strategically. And yes, the addition of L&D below tactics was intentional. L&D decisions are generally quite different from ordinary tactical decisions

I personally don't find reading very special either. I don't really read much more now than I did back when I was 10 kyu. Mostly decisions are made using theory, intuition and just some minuscule reading.

Of course, my definition of minuscule reading may have changed with me growing stronger.

This deserves a +5, although I would merge L & D and Tactics, and intuition I would have said is a culmination of how well internalised theory is.

[Kirby]

...
This deserves a +5, although I would merge L & D and Tactics, and intuition I would have said is a culmination of how well internalised theory is.

It seems to me that getting really good at reading is another path to good intuition.

[entropi]

I personally don't find reading very special either. I don't really read much more now than I did back when I was 10 kyu. Mostly decisions are made using theory, intuition and just some minuscule reading. Of course, my definition of minuscule reading may have changed with me growing stronger.

I don't believe that only theory and intution can make you 8 stones stronger. You probably read much faster and much more efficient without even recognizing it yourself.

It is probably like reading text. When you first learn reading you read letter by letter. Then you start recognizing words, then maybe standard phrases, sentences etc. Like that you read faster than a child just having learned reading.

Maybe in Go, the key is reading in terms of shapes and not in terms of individual stones. This means reaching a higher level of abstraction. You see a shape and you immediately know it cannot be cut without reading the moves. And you are also aware of the complications in the surrounding area when the opponent tries to cut it anyway.

If this is true, then solving tsumego is like making spelling exercises for fast reading. It is good but not the most efficient way. Maybe then watching and/or memorizing pro games is a faster way to improve. Who knows...

[daniel_the_smith]

...and intuition I would have said is a culmination of how well internalised theory is.

Funny, I would have said intuition is a measure of how well internalized one's *reading* is...

[Kirby]

I think that this is my main conclusion:

During a game, think.