Life In 19x19

Bill Spight wrote:For human readability, IMO nothing beats diagrams. As for emails and such, why, we write diagrams with text all the time, when we post diagrams here. If you don't have a program to convert diagram text, use a font with constant spacing, like Courier New.

Example: A diagram I posted to another thread here, altered slightly for sending via email.

B10 - B18
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| . . . 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . 4 X O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . 7 . 5 . O . X . . 3 . 8 . . . . . . |
| . . . X . . O X . , . . . . . O . . . |
| . . . . . 1 2 O . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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The first go book I encountered was the Smith book, which used algebraic notation for games. This was extremely annoying to use for study. I liked what uberdude said about move descriptions. In TV games in Japan the game recorder announces moves with descriptions such as "keima gakari" (knight's move approach move), "kuro tsunagi" ( Black connects), "migi no hoshi shita" (right side below the star point), etc. It would almost be possible to play through a game with just these descriptions if the reader knew go terminology. It would also be a lot easier to memorize a sequence from the descriptions alone, especially if the reader were sufficiently familiar with go.

Another demonstration of the utility of diagrams comes from joseki dictionaries. The thumbnail diagrams are by far the easiest to use to look anything up. One wants to be able to see the sequence shape, whether the stones are oriented differently on the board or the colors are reversed.

Memorizing a sequence of moves is helped a lot by being able to see the shape that is developing, inferring the moves from that rather than memorizing move by move to see the shape.

I actually think that it is a real drawback of go that one cannot easily specify sequences of moves (and variations) purely with text.

When mastering chess, one learns to think of variations as text. You and I could both be looking at a position and I could say "What if e5, Nd7, Bxh7+, king takes, Qh5 check, does that work?" without moving the pieces, and you know what I'm talking about. The closest you can do in go is name the local shapes in a sequence like "hane, extend, cut, throw in", which helps, but at some point you have to make the actual moves.

Textual representations of moves also help when learning to visualize in chess. It is valuable visualization practice to read the text of a variation and try to move the pieces in your head. Go variations are generally represented as diagrams so the visualization has already been done for you. You can try to reproduce it by going back to the original diagram and trying to imagine the variation diagram being constructed, but it's not the same.

It's also easy to add alternative variations when writing chess lines, just putting things in parentheses (and you can nest them more than once). With go, when you try to list alternatives, you end up with atrocities such as "If Black 3 at 4, then White 3."

dfan wrote:I actually think that it is a real drawback of go that one cannot easily specify sequences of moves (and variations) purely with text.

[..]

I don't know … maybe it’s just one of the nice things about it … like … you have to DO it to actually understand it … ?

Reminds me of that anecdotical composer who played his newest composition on the piano for his visiting friend, and when that friend afterwards asked him what the meaning of that composition was, he sat down again at the piano and played the whole thing, again