Life In 19x19

I today ended up playing pretty much a play-along of a Takemiya game that I have memorized (it was a game Takemiya lost I have to say). At one point my opponent played differently and 20 stones along the road a sente exchange Takemiya did earlier was exactly in the right spot, another 20 moves later my cut-off group would have been alive if I had not botched it with my bad reading along the road. According to the flow of the game, he must have read this sequence at least five moves earlier.

Thinking after the fact, this sequence was pretty straight-forward, may be readable if I discipline myself. But thinking that that much reading may well be behind every calm move a professional plays in a serious game... Wow. His opponent btw. retreated calmly and didn't fall for it.

Next to a go player, like many of you, I'm also a musician. I'm a decent amateur in both but it is easier to get a sense of professional abilities in music.

With our choir we weekly rehearse on fairly difficult jazz pieces. I can read sheet music slowly, with some confidence, one note at a time. After a few rehearsals I know the pieces by heart. That's how I (need to) do it. For our first concert, we hired a 22 year old piano player. He looked at the accompaniment and played it, with ease. We're talking jazz progressions, with dissonant voicings. To me this is baffling.

In one of the messes he played an improvization. He would look at the priest, how far he got with the communion and magically ended the story of his improvization when the priest was done.

I'd say the young man is about 1p. There are 9p musicians who are even better than that. I'm awed by such skill. Transferring that bafflement to go, I have no difficulty believing that Ishida and the likes of him can see 30 moves at a glance.