How to learn to count during midgame

[Magicwand]

every point is unresolved until solidified.
they look at each position by deciding who has more rights to the position and draw imaginary sequence accordingly. <---SDK level
from that it is counting what you have and what your opponent has. <----DDK level.
for unresolved territory that is hard to calculate they leave them at last and use comment such as "in order for A to win he has to create at least 5 points in this unresolved region"
much much simpler than what you described.

edit: do you ever read professionals comment?

[RobertJasiek]

every point is unresolved until solidified.

I am not sure what you mean by this.

they look at each position by deciding who has more rights to the position

The whole board position? What does "having more rights" mean? Such a phrase makes more sense for each intersection considered for itself; then it can be substituted by "having more influence there". If it refers to the whole board, then counting numbers of "rights" makes little sense because difference rights can be differently mighty / important.

and draw imaginary sequence accordingly.

Ok. But what is such a sequence's nature? Like Cho's or my peaceful reduction from the outside of every territory region?

for unresolved territory that is hard to calculate they leave them at last and use comment such as "in order for A to win he has to create at least 5 points in this unresolved region"
much much simpler than what you described.

It may be "much much simpler", but is also much much less informative. E.g., there can be positions with several unresolved regions and several moyos. Each of these can favour Black or White and have different degrees of safety. You / they appear to forgo a moyo assessment. I don't; I assess their territory potential. Being simpler is worthless when essential information about moyo values is missing! What is more, there can be territories ending in moyos; one must know where the safe territory ends and the weaker territory potential starts.

And what about the prisoners? Come on, it is really very "obvious"! But I want to know whether your professional sources have made you aware of it, i.e., whether they teach what they should teach. It is so easy to make the most elementary mistakes if one does not know yet.

do you ever read professionals comment?

Which kind do you mean? Books or journal articles written by professionals? Those: yes.

[Magicwand]

Robert: i am not going to argue with you because i do not enjoy it.
if you are so smart and have anser for everything why are you so weak?
exactly my point!!!!

[RobertJasiek]

I prefer to "post" examples in the book. However, if Magicwand does not solve the prisoner aspect by himself, I may show an example for that.

[RobertJasiek]

if you are so smart and have anser for everything why are you so weak?

(Where "weak" = German 5d.)

As I have explained several times, I am weaker or reading more slowly than 6d+ WRT to a few aspects including these:
- local life and death problems per se and reading speed
- endgame calculation speed
- average speed of reading unfamiliar problems

Overcoming these requires more time and effort than
- ca. 1999-2010 I did invest while studying go rules theory and go research theory more than go playing strength theory
- I currently have time and energy while investing that in earning money

The aspects mentioned above that keep me at 5d do not prevent me from having a much better insight WRT to many other topics of go theory.

There are also a few weaknesses (such as a just recently discovered most essential and important strategic concept) caused by absence of explanation in (available) literature and missing access to verbal information at relevant sources such as an insei school, where chances are presumably greater to hear of such aspects at least accidentally, so that one has a chance to start studying them at all.

It is a great mystery whether age of starting go has a great impact. Players starting go as a child and making it 6d+ appear to have an on average easier time with solving life and death problems. An alternative theory is that I am one of the greatest victims of the available teaching by examples literature especially in case of the life and death topic. If (advanced) analytical life and death solution literature were already available and I would not need to write it for the sake of giving myself the chance to read it, then I would have improved incredibly much faster at life and death problem solving, because I am very good at learning from analytical teaching material. Instead, I am struggling to find out everything by my own, e.g., a possible "strategy" to killing a local group is "regardless of the opposing replies, reduce from one side AFAP, only then reduce from the other side AFAP".

(Go server rating weakness has lots of further reasons, of which I am responsible for a part, most interestingly my by a factor 10 or 20 higher blunder rate compared to real world games.)

[emeraldemon]

Clearly this calls for a Magicwand-RobertJasiek malkovich!

[p2501]

(Where "weak" = German 5d.)

@Magicwand
http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Pl ... y=10213203

An alternative theory is that I am one of the greatest victims of the available teaching by examples literature especially in case of the life and death topic. If (advanced) analytical life and death solution literature were already available and I would not need to write it for the sake of giving myself the chance to read it, then I would have improved incredibly much faster at life and death problem solving, because I am very good at learning from analytical teaching material. Instead, I am struggling to find our everything by my own, ...

I don't know what to say Do you really mean that?

[RobertJasiek]

http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Pl ... y=10213203

The "declared rank" graph shows in 2011 what the French congress organisers declared, not what I declared.

Do you really mean that?

Sure. (The major problem is that almost all literature available on life and death is teaching by examples only, sometimes teaching by examples combined with sorting of problems by some low level type. What is almost completely missing is generalising, example-independent analytical teaching of the move sequences and involved decisions.)

[speedchase]

Sure. (The major problem is that almost all literature available on life and death is teaching by examples only, sometimes teaching by examples combined with sorting of problems by some low level type. What is almost completely missing is generalising, example-independent analytical teaching of the move sequences and involved decisions.)

The first chapter of Tesuji?

[RobertJasiek]

The first chapter of Tesuji?

This (and in more detail the Reading chapter of First Fundamentals) is about what reading is, but not about how to solve classes of LD problems.

[Mef]

you only need two step:

Step 1:
count what is definit resolved territory.

Step 2:
for unresolved territory, make an estimate on howmany points you or opponent need to cashout in order to make the game balanced.
you must factor thickness, weakness, aji, etc.

very simple and surprisingly accurate.

I think this method is quite practical and more or less what I try to do. The whole purpose of counting is to devise your strategy going forward in the game. If you count current solid points, you have a picture of what you need to do to win the game. If what you need to do seems fairly straightforward, you are probably ahead and can play a simple game to victory. If what you need to do is challenging, you are probably behind and need to complicated things. When you are actually playing the game, it's more important to know what you need to do to win, rather than know if you are ahead or behind.

I suggest everyone to study endgame before counting. you must have basic knowledge on endgame in order to apply counting.

I would disagree here, if only because I think counting is something everyone can start doing, and the more practice they get the better they will be at it. Studying endgame will certainly help you improve your counting abilities (because you will learn what is truly solid), but I wouldn't let not having studied endgame stop you from counting.

And for the side discussion with Robert (hidden for the benefit of those who wish to avoid it):

Counting intersections once one knows which to count is the trivial part. Knowing which intersections to count at all is the difficult part.

And what about the prisoners? Come on, it is really very "obvious"!

To me, these these statements are inconsistent. For middle game purposes, counting the board under area scoring will give a result identical to that under territory scoring, hence could be considered accurate. If you know what stones of are alive, then it is obvious which ones need to be counted. Counting stones is trivial once the stones to be counted are identified (unless you find some great burden that appears counting stones vs counting intersections, but that will be a tough line to sell). Therefore by your own logic, assuming you can accurately count a non-prisoner board, it is trivial to extend that to an accurate count on a prisoner board without paying respect to prisoners.

[RobertJasiek]

area scoring

It is not a scoring system argument.

it is trivial to extend that to an accurate count on a prisoner board without paying respect to prisoners.

It is not trivial (but becomes obvious once one sees it explained carefully for the first time), I will show a bit of it later:)

Hint: more than one sequence must be considered. Each has its prisoners.

[Mef]

It is not trivial (but becomes obvious once one sees it explained carefully for the first time), I will show a bit of it later:)

No, it is trivial. You can accurately count the board under area scoring without tracking prisoners. In middlegame, the area score and territory score will yield the same result. Therefore you can accurately count the game without keeping track of prisoners.

[RobertJasiek]

Ah, now I get it what you want to discuss. Yes, with a pure area count, prisoners are not needed. Which experience do you have with speed during the middle game?

[Phelan]

Hi guys,

I think it is very important to be able to count well during midgame in order to have ideas on how to play next.
Howhever I have never managed to do this very well.
I think the reason that I have never done this very well is because I always have done this by just "feeling" how big things are.

So lately it has been happening a lot that I loose games which I thought I was leading and vice versa.
I want to learn to count well but not loose too much time with it.
How did you learn to count well, and did this have impact on your game ?
Do you use some kind of guessing system, acurate counting, pair counting ?

Any tips welcome!

Thanks,
Otenki

There's an overview of several methods used in Senseis(where else? ). I, like xed_over, really recommend DrStraw's counting lessons.