Is efficiency sente?

[daal]

Robert, the word efficient already has a meaning, and while wordings may differ, they all basically amount to: "performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort" (Dictionary.com).
Reinventing the wheel would be to replace this good word with something else, such as "best usage."

[golem7]

I don't think there is a need to redefine efficiency as a local concept. It works both on a local and global scale. The introduction of "best usage" feels forced, it's just another description of efficiency. You don't really need seperate terms for that.
I suppose everyone remembers the following diagram. At least that's how I as a beginner first came into contact with the concept of efficiency in go. It includes both local and global considerations.

$$c The first 10 moves...
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X X . |
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$$ | . . . O . . . . . O . . . . . O . . . |
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$$ ---------------------------------------

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c The first 10 moves...
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X X . |
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$$ | . . . O . . . . . O . . . . . O . . . |
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$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

[Mef]

in korean word we call it 보리선수. (borisonsu)
sonsu is same as sente in japanese.
i have no idea where bori came from or what it means but two word combined will represent a sente that will help your opponent.
sente that is helping opponent has differnet point of view than sente that is inefficient.
i would like to call it helping opponent move. or call it borisunsu?

In English this is usually called a "thank you move" as in, you make this move and your opponent should be grateful that you made it (and say "thank you").

[lovelove]

in korean word we call it 보리선수. (borisonsu)
sonsu is same as sente in japanese.
i have no idea where bori came from or what it means but two word combined will represent a sente that will help your opponent.
sente that is helping opponent has differnet point of view than sente that is inefficient.
i would like to call it helping opponent move. or call it borisunsu?

In English this is usually called a "thank you move" as in, you make this move and your opponent should be grateful that you made it (and say "thank you").

Thank you move is 이적수 (利敵手) in Korean. 보리선수 should be aji-keshi from Magicwand's diagram.

[Uberdude]

Efficiency is not about achieving as much as possible with the given stones. Instead, the go concept describing this is, what I call, 'best usage' (of one's stones).

Just you then.

[Phelan]

[admin]

Gentlemen,

This has the seeds of a thread hijacking. Please keep on topic.
And please remember that we have a forum for advertising books.

Thanks

JB

[/admin]

In case people missed it.

[HermanHiddema]

Although efficiency is not equal to sente, it does allow you to take sente more often. The basic definition of efficiency is something like "to achieve as much as possible using as few stones as possible". When you manage to achieve the same aims using fewer stones, the stones you didn't use were played elsewhere, and thus you got sente more often.

[John Fairbairn]

Robert: not a trolling question, but a genuine enquiry. Why do you repeatedly try to tell native speakers of English what English words mean (when they don't mean what you think they mean)? In the posts above you can see that several native speakers disagree with you on 'efficiency'. You also mistakenly use 'best usage' when you mean 'best use'. You (as so often) use 'mighty' when you mean 'powerful'. These, and other examples, just point up the unreliability of your linguistic assertions.

The analysis you gave above looks potentially interesting, but I can't see that it will make much progress with other people when expressed like that. I can understand that you don't want to write everything in German for an even smaller audience, but it seems better to me that if you do write in English you would make more progress if you were more tentative. Maybe ask the forum for the best word first? Maybe you should add the German word you have in mind when you try to redefine an English word? Just provoking people with strong assertions may eventually elicit some feedback for you, but it irritates some people and hardly strikes me as the 'efficient' way to do it, or 'best use' of a discussion forum.

Even in English, of course, 'efficiency' is not cast in stone (pun intended - sorry). Context matters. E.g. is 'efficiency' the same as 'effectiveness'? Also, if it occurs in a go context that derives from Japanese usage, there are different kinds of efficiency there. The most common reference would probably be to 'hataraki' which is almost always used as a property of a concrete thing such as a stone, group or shape rather than an abstract concept like a strategy. The idea of efficiency here is, as in a steam engine, the 'work done'. 'Best use' would often fit here, as it happens, but is harder to flag up as a technical word than 'efficiency'.

BTW I second your query as to the appropriateness of the premature admin interjection.

[RobertJasiek]

daal, golem7, Uberdude, let us, according to what you appear to suggest, suppose for the moment that efficiency should be used a) on the global and long-term scale or b) on any possible combination of scales from local and short-term to global and long-term. This would have the following consequences for our terminology and its usage:

1) Efficiency = haengma = best use =? most beautiful shapes =? natural flow of all stones.

2) Whenever efficiency is determined, one would need to state or have given by context a) the assumed scale of space and b) the assumed scale of time.

Since efficiency, haengma and best use all are not particularly well understood concepts yet, we might take the freedom and implement a common concept (1). However, I am not at all exited about always having to take care of (2). E.g., something can be the most efficient on the local and short-term scale but can be not or hardly efficient on a (more) global and (more) long-term scale. To be sure which aspect of efficiency one is speaking about, one would need to declare explicitly "efficient only on the local and short-term scales". Currently, I call such "efficient" but "bad haengma and missing best use".

There is a historical reason why my definition of efficient refers to only the local and short-term form: every usage of efficient used as a go term in literature I have seen was related to some local and short-term movement. Mostly it described an extension, a movement by a next stone leading a running group to the center or the absence of overconcentration of a local stones formation.

Contrarily, haengma came with references to local to global scales, but often without explicit time scales. Haengma books, AFAIC, tend to show more examples for local stone development, apparently because their discussion is easier for book authors or because they feared that more global examples would not be understood so well by beginners or kyus.

With the exception of trivial beginner examples of the type golem7 shows, I have not seen efficiency used for global scale. For every such global usage, AFAIC, 'efficient' was used in an informal sense of the word (presumably related to cited English dictionary meaning of the word) and not apparently used as a go term. Therefore and because 'best use' examples are either rare or express the intention informally, I overlooked the relevance of best use (or, as you might prefer to say now, efficiency on the global and long-term scale) as a strategic concept (or as the global and long-term form of your apparent suggestion of the efficiency strategic concept) entirely until earlier this year. The concept has been hidden so well in Western literature that, according to my observations, hardly anybody has had an explicit awareness of it, but only ex-inseis and professionals show their implicit, subconscious awareness of it. When I asked ex-inseis what they had learnt as inseis, they could not or hardly tell me anything else than "frequent playing with other inseis helps". Only once I had discovered best use by myself, I would then become aware that the ex-inseis must have learnt that concept subconsciously. Therefore, daal, best use is more than just another phrase. It is the understanding and awareness of this strategic concept or alternatively of the possible global and long-term scopes of what you still want to call efficiency. It is very much more than making fun of a local-only usage of efficiency and of a usage of 'best use' as a concept of its own right. That global and long-term concept, whether called 'best use' or 'efficiency viewed at its global and long-term scale', is of a very great importance (about as important as connection or life-and-death). Burying it under the name efficiency and then forgetting about the possible variety of space and time scales would be bad. If you prefer to call also it 'efficiency', then I suggest that you avoid using that word informally but, in go context, always use it as a term and that you declare the space scale and the time scale whenever they are not obvious from the context.

Uberdude, since you are making so much fun, surely you can provide us with lots of whole board examples and show us what efficiency is in global and long-term scale.

daal, golem7, Uberdude and gogameguru, do you really want to unify efficiency with haengma and best use or do you see aspects of haengma and best use that then would be ignored?

Unification of these concepts has the advantages of consistency and agreement with English dictionaries and the disadvantage of regular necessity of stating space and time scales explicitly. As somebody having used explicit scale statements before, I could accept such a unification. Can you accept it, i.e., are you prepared to regularly state or be careful about contexts for scales?


EDIT: replace best usage by best use

[topazg]

Many beginners have this problem. They play moves that are sente, but which are aji keshi.

FWIW, so do dan players. I'm not sure when this particular habit is supposed to disappear

[RobertJasiek]

Why do you repeatedly try to tell native speakers of English what English words mean (when they don't mean what you think they mean)?

When English words of common language are used, then I use what I think is correct but I am happy to be corrected when I make mistakes.

When go terms are used, then usually they have meanings DIFFERENT from common lanuage English words, regardless of which meanings common English words might have. E.g., "stone" as a go term has a meaning different (more specific) from what is understood in common language. A common language stone can have various shapes and functions. A go term stone always is a playing device, and all go stones (of a game set) look alike.

In case of efficiency, I have seen it used as a go term with a meaning different from or more specific than the common language word efficiency. I do not try to force upon English speakers a change of the meaning of the common language word, but I try to describe the meaning implied in the typical go term usage of 'efficiency'. (Also see my other messages.)

In the posts above you can see that several native speakers disagree with you on 'efficiency'.

It is not about knowing or not knowing English as a native speaker, but it is about best identifying the meaning as a go term. And no, that meaning is not just that of an English dictionary of ordinary language. Efficiency as a go term has more specific meaning. The closest agreement of the word in go texts to the ordinary language meaning occurred when the word was not or not clearly used as a go term but was rather used informally. Now, that we having this thread, suddenly the prospect appears that usage of efficiency as a go term could start to agree with the common English language word efficiency.

You also mistakenly use 'best usage' when you mean 'best use'.

This is very much possible. For years, I have tried to understand well the difference between usage and use. In particular, I have been aware that I did no know which would be correct in the best-u. phrase. I still do not know when to use usage versus use. Could you please explain this to me?

You (as so often) use 'mighty' when you mean 'powerful'.

How would they be translated into German?

I can't see that it will make much progress with other people when expressed like that.

After clarification of the linguistic semantics, chances are greater:)

'Best use' would often fit here, as it happens, but is harder to flag up as a technical word

IMO, this was a major reason why Western literature overlooked best use as a strategic concept. After naive translation, it would just come out as ordinary English words in different phrases such as "has used this stone well".

[RobertJasiek]

I'm not sure when this particular habit is supposed to disappear

IMX, sente aji keshi disappears around 4d - 5d level. However, the talk in Western countries / forums about this topic during recent years is starting to have an effect: quite a few players 3d- avoid it much more often than players 3d- did in earlier years.

[SmoothOper]

Although efficiency is not equal to sente, it does allow you to take sente more often. The basic definition of efficiency is something like "to achieve as much as possible using as few stones as possible". When you manage to achieve the same aims using fewer stones, the stones you didn't use were played elsewhere, and thus you got sente more often.

This is interesting. So you are saying that if you have efficient plays and don't use as many stones to say live or make territory, then you will have sente more often, without pushing the issue. What a concise concept.

[RobertJasiek]

if you have efficient plays and don't use as many stones to say live or make territory, then you will have sente more often,

Not necessarily. Playing efficiently means also leaving behind more weaknesses (or less strong shapes), which possibly let the opponent get more sente later. (Unless your play is so efficient that efficiency involves eternal sente... However, usually one would then call your play 'thick' rather than efficient. If you can play both efficiently and thickly, then your opponent must be a beginner;) )

[SmoothOper]

if you have efficient plays and don't use as many stones to say live or make territory, then you will have sente more often,

Not necessarily. Playing efficiently means also leaving behind more weaknesses (or less strong shapes), which possibly let the opponent get more sente later. (Unless your play is so efficient that efficiency involves eternal sente... However, usually one would then call your play 'thick' rather than efficient. If you can play both efficiently and thickly, then your opponent must be a beginner;) )

You are right RobertJasiek, efficiency means leaving behind weaknesses.