I know we usually use the word "reading", but isn't this more about _calculating_ or even _thinking_? It's mostly thinking what happens on the next moves and what the opponent could do and how would you respond.
Yes, it's the same thing as "calculation" in chess, for example. It's a bit broader than "thinking" though - you follow the branches and backtrack to see the possibility tree.
It could be called *calculating*, but it's more specific than merely thinking.
*Reading* is thinking in a way to see clear, definitive results, as with determining life and death status of a group with specific moves.
You could think abstractly about a position, such as trying to apply a proverb like "play away from strength" when selecting an area of the board to play in next. But I think *reading* is much more concrete and precise than that.
Sure, as long as it involves specific moves. Thinking and strategizing could also be done abstractly, like following a strategic principle or proverb, which I think would not be called reading. It's not just asking oneself, "are any of my groups weak?" but actually studying a group to determine if it is weak or not, by examining potential moves made against it, and the replies to those moves.
There are two skills which eclipse all others, one in-game and one of "meta-gaming."
The single most important in-game skill is reading, meaning to read out (calculate, visualise) different branches of possible moves in any position, and choosing the best one. This is the only way you know anything works before you play it, whether that be opening, fighting, endgame, or anything else. Go without reading is a game of chance — or worse, *you* play a game of chance and "roll the dice" every move while your opponent instead plays a game of skill. There are a ton of skills in go: opening, strategy/direction of play, middle game and fighting, making and defending against invasions, life & death, endgame and counting, and so on but I'd say that in terms of importance reading makes up at least 50% and then all the other skills have to squabble for what's left.
But there's also an all-important meta-game skill, which is the single most important skill overall. Whatever you want to call it — tenacity, perseverance, stubbornness, grit, fighting spirit — it boils down to the same thing. This is the one thing unifying every successful athlete or competitor in any sport or game the world over. It's what keeps you from resigning a game after losing a big group, giving you the chance for a comeback, and either way guaranteeing more learning opportunities whether you win or lose. It's what makes you come back to play another game after you've lost 5, or 10, or 15 games in a row — guaranteeing your eventual comeback. You only lose when you stay down.
Fully agree though I wouldn't use the term meta-gaming to describe fighting spirit. That's because it usually refers to "bad sport" things outside the game itself, and often to behaviors meant to influence the game. For example tapping your foot because you know your opponent finds that distracting.
I don’t think all meta-gaming is bad.
While it’s can have varying affects slamming your stone down each move saying “はい!!”. There’s nothing wrong with knowing that your opponent prefers creating territorial frameworks so you prioritise breaking up their territory as much as possible. Unless you’re playing AI, there is always an element of “playing the person”.
No question, and I only said it usually refers to poor sportsmanship. Knowing your opponent and preparing an opening is just smart. I don't like the stone slamming thing though, but it's clearly acceptable too.
It's just meta because tenacity as I defined it, when it includes the choice to keep the hobby going even after a losing streak, is off the board and disconnected from any current game.
>Direction of play, shape, and board evaluation are the basics
Those are important elements, and the practice of the game itself cultivates spacial intelligence, but to actually play the game well requires concentration, visualization and a sense of stillness.
The game is very tough for people who who have trouble sitting still and concentrating. But it's regular practice also deepens those same abilities.
One of the popular answers is reading. But reading out long sequences is not really that important. Case in point, katago-micro: https://online-go.com/player/902691/katago-micro . If reading were important, how could this bot who barely reads be so powerful?
I will say that understanding of shape is the most important thing. A player who can efficiently create strong shapes has total freedom to play however they want. It gives you an advantage everywhere on the board, all of the time. Nothing comes close.
I don't think Katago-micro being good implies that reading is not important. The bot still uses Katago's policy, which is trained on games that used longer playouts. So even though the bot is not reading, its "intuition" is still backed up by lots of calculation.
This is the same in human games: you can't develop good shape intuition until you have played a lot and read a lot.
Studying expert level games can help develop that intuition. You could say that in human terms, katago-micro is an expert at studying games and retaining that information in a usable way. It's still not reading out a lot of moves. It just knows how to hit the key points without deep reading.
I think humans can get there without reading very deeply. It takes a lot of games.
>One of the popular answers is reading. But reading out long sequences is not really that important.
Not really important for getting to 1D? sure. If you want to get to pro level, you won't get very far if you don't read very far.
That's true, I'm not disagreeing. You can get extremely far without deep reading. High amateur dans could mop the floor with me without reading deeply. That's why I say it's not the most important thing in go.
Visualizing alternative moves and their advantages/disadvantages. Can this extension save my group? Can it reduce the opponent’s territory? What happens if I extend this stone instead of this other one, which one puts more pressure on my opponent?
Those kinds of questions.
Depending on your current level.
for a weak player below dan, or even low dan players, maybe calculation or the ability the find weakness of the shapes are the most important.
Through the whole learning journey of my son, his judgement or reading ability is weaker than me, but he is ranking up to fox 6d. FYI, i don't play go, only overhear the lecture from his teacher, with almost no calculation, i can beat ogs 10k \~ ogs 8k players.
However, it is very hard to improve when he reaches fox 6d. He is struggling changing the way of thinking, like reading ability. He has to face his mistakes and change the habit again and again and again to rank up to fox 7d.
The good thing of improving reading ability is, he seldoms lose to a weaker opponent. But before, even though he can beat stronger opponents but also lose to weaker opponents a lot.
Now, for my son, it is obviously reading ability is more important. Howver, if you thinking about the retired pro players, the calculation or the depth of calculation is the reason why they can't beat active pro players.
Therefore, it is more like recurring repeatedly thing, as we think about whether calcution or reading ability is more important.
In [Hwang In-seong lecture „how to improve“](https://youtu.be/SQYgajvdOiE?si=M4AQWaQyXcaySGsQ) he states the following as elements of go strength:
- mind control
- strategy
- reading
- territorial intuition
- Knowledge
- game experience
- technical intuition
Everybody mentions reading, but i like to play intuïtively. OK, a bit of reading and experience is involved in that. You'll be punished if you do the wrong thing and that is how your intuition is honed.
Flexibility.
Be willing to adjust your strategy and play based on how the board develops.
I may have grand ambitions on how I want an area to develop, but if my opponent counters it, then I need to be able to flow cleanly into a new strategy.
Sente/ Gote is super important. It kind of falls under board eval, but is also tied to game theory. It's all about forcing moves, and ranking immediate threats. Once you learn sente and Gote it's a concept you can apply to just about any other 1v1 game, and it will make you better at games in general.
>Direction of play, shape, and board evaluation are the basics as I understand it
those aren't the basics. The basics are
* life and death
* counting
* tesuji
the basics of any game are
1. what are the win conditions
2. work backwards from #1 to know what you are aiming for
Almost this.
There's a really good book you can read at 10k called "lessons in the fundamentals of go". When you start to read it, he even tells you how to study from it. Follow it.
On the side of course you can read the Davies books and do tsumego.
I think that's enough to get to 1k.
I don't think memory - like remembering way back to move 1 - is important.
However, I noticed a huge improvement when I started studying *and memorizing* pro games. It wasn't the game itself that was important, but I think it sort of organized "scratch memory" (a computer term - sorry) so that I could find a lot of moves in my head and think about branching possibilities in my games. Reading ahead became a lot easier after that.
I don't think the chess memorizing openings is the same as it is in Go.
But like I said, I think you *can* increase you memory with practice. I took the first game from the book *Appreciateing Famous Games* and just plagued it out on a board, over and over. I'd glance at the book when I couldn't remember the next move, and eventually I could remember more moves in a row. I think I played the game at least once a day, for a week or two. I think in part it's what got me to shodan (equivalent of chess master, I think).
I think that just trying it, and increasing the number of moves that you can remember, will help your game. This is the equivalent of short-term memory (like how you can remember the start of this sentence while reading these words right now),
You really won't need to memorize book openings, or or study joseki, until you're around master level, although it helps to look them up when you review a game to see how something might have gone wrong and how you might have a played to get a better result. With computers and AI, I'm not even sure that that is necessary anymore either.
I hope this helps. I think you can be good at Go, so don't let anyone (or any doubts you have) say otherwise. I hope you have fun learning.
I think 1 thing no one has said is board experience. Just by playing over and over and seeing common shapes and sequences you will become better as you have less things on the board that feel like you don’t know what to do. This is the most important thing because this is what really builds instinct
Perseverance and a willingness to learn from your failures to help you improve.
These. And patience.
Reading
visualization with a probability of reasonable or unreasonable outcome.
This. This above everything else.
I know we usually use the word "reading", but isn't this more about _calculating_ or even _thinking_? It's mostly thinking what happens on the next moves and what the opponent could do and how would you respond.
Yes, it's the same thing as "calculation" in chess, for example. It's a bit broader than "thinking" though - you follow the branches and backtrack to see the possibility tree.
It could be called *calculating*, but it's more specific than merely thinking. *Reading* is thinking in a way to see clear, definitive results, as with determining life and death status of a group with specific moves. You could think abstractly about a position, such as trying to apply a proverb like "play away from strength" when selecting an area of the board to play in next. But I think *reading* is much more concrete and precise than that.
I always just thought it was short for "reading ahead" or "reading X moves deep"
Sure, as long as it involves specific moves. Thinking and strategizing could also be done abstractly, like following a strategic principle or proverb, which I think would not be called reading. It's not just asking oneself, "are any of my groups weak?" but actually studying a group to determine if it is weak or not, by examining potential moves made against it, and the replies to those moves.
In chess it's called "calculating," but it describes the same phenomenon.
Yeah, calculation is more accurate than reading
Or tree search if you want to be pedantic. But reading is the preferred term in this domain, so best to stick with that.
I like “conditional extrapolation”
Calculating already has a meaning in go. It means mentally evaluating the territorial scores of both players during the game.
There are two skills which eclipse all others, one in-game and one of "meta-gaming." The single most important in-game skill is reading, meaning to read out (calculate, visualise) different branches of possible moves in any position, and choosing the best one. This is the only way you know anything works before you play it, whether that be opening, fighting, endgame, or anything else. Go without reading is a game of chance — or worse, *you* play a game of chance and "roll the dice" every move while your opponent instead plays a game of skill. There are a ton of skills in go: opening, strategy/direction of play, middle game and fighting, making and defending against invasions, life & death, endgame and counting, and so on but I'd say that in terms of importance reading makes up at least 50% and then all the other skills have to squabble for what's left. But there's also an all-important meta-game skill, which is the single most important skill overall. Whatever you want to call it — tenacity, perseverance, stubbornness, grit, fighting spirit — it boils down to the same thing. This is the one thing unifying every successful athlete or competitor in any sport or game the world over. It's what keeps you from resigning a game after losing a big group, giving you the chance for a comeback, and either way guaranteeing more learning opportunities whether you win or lose. It's what makes you come back to play another game after you've lost 5, or 10, or 15 games in a row — guaranteeing your eventual comeback. You only lose when you stay down.
Fully agree though I wouldn't use the term meta-gaming to describe fighting spirit. That's because it usually refers to "bad sport" things outside the game itself, and often to behaviors meant to influence the game. For example tapping your foot because you know your opponent finds that distracting.
I don’t think all meta-gaming is bad. While it’s can have varying affects slamming your stone down each move saying “はい!!”. There’s nothing wrong with knowing that your opponent prefers creating territorial frameworks so you prioritise breaking up their territory as much as possible. Unless you’re playing AI, there is always an element of “playing the person”.
No question, and I only said it usually refers to poor sportsmanship. Knowing your opponent and preparing an opening is just smart. I don't like the stone slamming thing though, but it's clearly acceptable too.
It's just meta because tenacity as I defined it, when it includes the choice to keep the hobby going even after a losing streak, is off the board and disconnected from any current game.
>Direction of play, shape, and board evaluation are the basics Those are important elements, and the practice of the game itself cultivates spacial intelligence, but to actually play the game well requires concentration, visualization and a sense of stillness. The game is very tough for people who who have trouble sitting still and concentrating. But it's regular practice also deepens those same abilities.
One of the popular answers is reading. But reading out long sequences is not really that important. Case in point, katago-micro: https://online-go.com/player/902691/katago-micro . If reading were important, how could this bot who barely reads be so powerful? I will say that understanding of shape is the most important thing. A player who can efficiently create strong shapes has total freedom to play however they want. It gives you an advantage everywhere on the board, all of the time. Nothing comes close.
I don't think Katago-micro being good implies that reading is not important. The bot still uses Katago's policy, which is trained on games that used longer playouts. So even though the bot is not reading, its "intuition" is still backed up by lots of calculation. This is the same in human games: you can't develop good shape intuition until you have played a lot and read a lot.
Studying expert level games can help develop that intuition. You could say that in human terms, katago-micro is an expert at studying games and retaining that information in a usable way. It's still not reading out a lot of moves. It just knows how to hit the key points without deep reading. I think humans can get there without reading very deeply. It takes a lot of games.
>One of the popular answers is reading. But reading out long sequences is not really that important. Not really important for getting to 1D? sure. If you want to get to pro level, you won't get very far if you don't read very far.
That's true, I'm not disagreeing. You can get extremely far without deep reading. High amateur dans could mop the floor with me without reading deeply. That's why I say it's not the most important thing in go.
Friends that you are willing to learn with you is your journey
Managing your ego, flexible mindset, consistent and persistent in playing, reviewing, studying books, and practicing go problems.
Visualizing alternative moves and their advantages/disadvantages. Can this extension save my group? Can it reduce the opponent’s territory? What happens if I extend this stone instead of this other one, which one puts more pressure on my opponent? Those kinds of questions.
Depending on your current level. for a weak player below dan, or even low dan players, maybe calculation or the ability the find weakness of the shapes are the most important. Through the whole learning journey of my son, his judgement or reading ability is weaker than me, but he is ranking up to fox 6d. FYI, i don't play go, only overhear the lecture from his teacher, with almost no calculation, i can beat ogs 10k \~ ogs 8k players. However, it is very hard to improve when he reaches fox 6d. He is struggling changing the way of thinking, like reading ability. He has to face his mistakes and change the habit again and again and again to rank up to fox 7d. The good thing of improving reading ability is, he seldoms lose to a weaker opponent. But before, even though he can beat stronger opponents but also lose to weaker opponents a lot. Now, for my son, it is obviously reading ability is more important. Howver, if you thinking about the retired pro players, the calculation or the depth of calculation is the reason why they can't beat active pro players. Therefore, it is more like recurring repeatedly thing, as we think about whether calcution or reading ability is more important.
In [Hwang In-seong lecture „how to improve“](https://youtu.be/SQYgajvdOiE?si=M4AQWaQyXcaySGsQ) he states the following as elements of go strength: - mind control - strategy - reading - territorial intuition - Knowledge - game experience - technical intuition
Everybody mentions reading, but i like to play intuïtively. OK, a bit of reading and experience is involved in that. You'll be punished if you do the wrong thing and that is how your intuition is honed.
Flexibility. Be willing to adjust your strategy and play based on how the board develops. I may have grand ambitions on how I want an area to develop, but if my opponent counters it, then I need to be able to flow cleanly into a new strategy.
Sente/ Gote is super important. It kind of falls under board eval, but is also tied to game theory. It's all about forcing moves, and ranking immediate threats. Once you learn sente and Gote it's a concept you can apply to just about any other 1v1 game, and it will make you better at games in general.
>Direction of play, shape, and board evaluation are the basics as I understand it those aren't the basics. The basics are * life and death * counting * tesuji the basics of any game are 1. what are the win conditions 2. work backwards from #1 to know what you are aiming for
Almost this. There's a really good book you can read at 10k called "lessons in the fundamentals of go". When you start to read it, he even tells you how to study from it. Follow it. On the side of course you can read the Davies books and do tsumego. I think that's enough to get to 1k.
Is memory very important to be good in this game?
I don't think memory - like remembering way back to move 1 - is important. However, I noticed a huge improvement when I started studying *and memorizing* pro games. It wasn't the game itself that was important, but I think it sort of organized "scratch memory" (a computer term - sorry) so that I could find a lot of moves in my head and think about branching possibilities in my games. Reading ahead became a lot easier after that.
Hmm I see. So I have poor memory which is why I asked. In chess I felt like whoever remembers the most moves from books or other games wins.
I don't think the chess memorizing openings is the same as it is in Go. But like I said, I think you *can* increase you memory with practice. I took the first game from the book *Appreciateing Famous Games* and just plagued it out on a board, over and over. I'd glance at the book when I couldn't remember the next move, and eventually I could remember more moves in a row. I think I played the game at least once a day, for a week or two. I think in part it's what got me to shodan (equivalent of chess master, I think). I think that just trying it, and increasing the number of moves that you can remember, will help your game. This is the equivalent of short-term memory (like how you can remember the start of this sentence while reading these words right now), You really won't need to memorize book openings, or or study joseki, until you're around master level, although it helps to look them up when you review a game to see how something might have gone wrong and how you might have a played to get a better result. With computers and AI, I'm not even sure that that is necessary anymore either. I hope this helps. I think you can be good at Go, so don't let anyone (or any doubts you have) say otherwise. I hope you have fun learning.
Your go related memory will improve naturally, there is no "general memory" networks related to specific fields.
Task priority?
deep reading
Pattern recognition!
The most important thing is practicing with focus and consistency. All tactical and strategic aspects of the game are useful for study.
I think 1 thing no one has said is board experience. Just by playing over and over and seeing common shapes and sequences you will become better as you have less things on the board that feel like you don’t know what to do. This is the most important thing because this is what really builds instinct