I just found another chess book I can recommend to go players - in this case, on various levels. The book is "Chinese School of Chess" by the late Liu Wenzhe. Liu made a name for himself as the first Chinese to beat a grandmaster and then later as head of China's chess coaching system, a post he was given by go legend Chen Zude. Liu was also a formidable go player himself but originally he was a xiangqi player, which inspired his unusual views on chess.

At what we might call the macro level, Liu gives very considerable detail about the training regime for chess players in China. Most of this applies to go players and will explain much of China's recent progress. Also at the macro level, it is interesting to see how chess in China developed, because, on the one hand, it was in a similar relationship to the west as western go players are to the Orient (with the major difference, though, that the Chinese had government sponsorship), and, on the other, chess there was boosted by the Russians in the same way that the Japanese used goodwill missions for go. Liu gives insights about the Chinese players' view of these missions that must be similar to the views of Chinese go players, although Liu is inevitably a child of his times and Maoist thought imbues his views.

At game (but not specifically chess) level, there is a fascinating undercurrent of why Chinese thinking about games is different from the west's, and how this is reflected in styles. Liu sees the influence of xiangqi as being very strong in chess in China, but more than that - and at this level what he says applies to go - it is influenced by the Book of Changes. I wouldn't say he has proved his case, but it is certainly thought-provoking. The essence is that the push and pull of yin and yang always tends towards harmony and the golden mean, which in less grandiose terms means that Chinese (and Japanese and Korean) people are very prone to moderation (which means waiting until the enemy acts before you yourself strike - "patience" in a word), but when the enemy moves you must strike with unstoppable force (which essentially is a way of restoring harmony: you gain mastery over him so that his attack abates and then your response can likewise abate). Because of this way of thinking, the Chinese chess training system has ignored the openings and concentrated almost entirely on the middle game, Their chess players considered themselves inferior to western grandmasters in the opening but superior in the middle game. You can apply this concentration on the middle game with equal force to modern Chinese go and Korean go.

It should be noted that what follows from this is that it is misleading to describe Korean or Chinese go as aggressive. A typical westerner would regard an aggressive style as one where you immediately try to overwhelm the opponent - shock and awe. The oriental style is, as Liu also claims, to be aggressive only when attacked - awe and shock. Maybe we should invent the word "counter-aggressive".

There are a lot of other things similar to that in Liu's book - you may not agree with him but they are stimulating. One more example: he claims the Chinese and "foreign" styles of annotation are radically different.

Yet a further level of interest is specifically for those go players who have taken an interest in Robert Jasiek's approach. Liu is very much in the same mould, e.g.: "I classified over a hundred technical and tactical factors, which go to explain 17 differences between techique and tactics in chess". He also has "34 components of positional evaluation", which he gives and they are interesting because they include "sense of thick and thin: the feeling for solid and weak structures" and "sense of weight and lightness: the basis for deciding what to gain or reject". The other 32 "senses" are all interesting. They are not given in any detail because of the need for secrecy to preserve the interests of the Chinese national squad. But Liu started well before Robert and has had a full-time job dedicated to this research, so that consideration of how much this approach has contributed to China's achievements in chess could indicate what might be expected in go.

It has to be said that Liu is no shrinking violet, and had he written a few years later I wouldn't have been surprised if he had claimed his 34 elements helped China put a man in space. Apart from the constant I, I, I and China, China, China there is an irritating amount of bombast and even stupidity: "People who have studied art history know that the origin of art lies in Greece. It is entirely logical to suppose that chess, as the art of thinking, originates from the philosophy of the Book of Changes." This startling conclusion is supported later by pointing out that the 64 hexagrams match the 64 squares on the chessboard. He ignores the fact that his beloved xiangqi, the chess native to China, uses a 10x9 board. He also claims that, "The Chinese School will be pre-eminent in the chess world. This is the necessary logic of chess history." Many may accept the former sentence, but the latter will be hard to swallow.

However, as I said above, he was a child of his times (born 1940) and went through the persecution of the Cultural Revolution, so we must overlook these stylistic quirks. As far as I can make out, western chess players appear unconvinced yet impressed by what he says. But we are go fans, and I would say that in almost 300 pages of mostly solid text, there is something meaty on almost every page for a go fan.

The term "counter-aggressive" is a nice one. I don't think its a term that will be entirely surprising to strong players. Most strong players know, even if they don't have a term for it, that to play too passively when your opponent attacks, just responding to his moves, is likely to lead to defeat. You must seek ways to fight back hard.

I say this as a weak player. I tend to behave in this passive way, I have to remind myself to look for better moves when I'm under the cosh, but I don't always remember

That is an interesting post I have always thought that the contrast between east and west was simplicity vs. precision, but applying that to games I could see how it could come across as passive but strong middle games vs. aggressive openings, because Chinese are interested in simplicity, which leads to strength in the middle game, where as westerners are interested in getting a precise repeatability, which usually translates to fast, but complicated openings, because they do it over and over again working out all of the variations. Sort of the French opening vs. the English opening if you will. You can see this in Western approaches to Go with emphasis on sophisticated large scale Joseki and approach moves.

I think there is also a different dynamic in professional Chess play that is no longer in Go(they used to play ten game matches in Honinbo), in that they play 20+ games to figure out who is the best. So perfecting the opening against a specific opponent is more part of the game, whereas in Go the games last all day, so playing three or five game finals each game lasting most of the day leads to more emphasis on middle game, and clawing back if you lose ground in the opening is par for the course.

An example of the simplicity vs. precision in eastern vs. western styles, can also be observed in cooking. Chinese stir fries are an exercise in simplicity, all you need are some fresh vegetables and rice, they don't even need an oven. The real trick are in the sophisticated chopping and stirring techniques, with a good bit of improvisation to use whatever is in season. Western baking on the other hand is very precise and methodical, some even check the barometer to see if it is a good day to bake a souffle so it won't fall, and may require several repetitions to "get it right".

Peking duck requires an oven and precision to make a perfectly crisp skin. Making a sandwich on the other hand is quite simple.

And if you think Chinese cooking is the epitome of simplicity, I dare you to find a western meal which is more extravagant than the Manchu Han Imperial Feast.

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I have no idea what you have been smoking...

People usually don't make Peking duck at home. As for banquets/feasts, Chinese usually have many like 8, 9... a dozen or more dishes prepared sequentially since they usually only have two burners and no oven. So yeah a feast, but still simple preparation methods with an emphasis on fresh. As for a real sandwich, you still need to bake the bread and cook the meat. My experience comes from cooking with my wife. She tried to simplify making cookies, leaving out the eggs, they were horrible, she also insists on using the mixing bowl to bake in... trying to simplify the process. Me, I tend to cook the same things over and over adding different ingredients and refining the process, substituting fresh ground spices for flavor mixes... It gets old though.

I thought you must have had a terrible experience with cooking to think this way. Leaving eggs out of cookies... There are the rare recipes that do not contain eggs. Generally for allergies sufferers. But to suggest cooking cookies in the bowl is simply absurd and, frankly, I don't believe it. I think a child would know better. I can bake very good bread with 5 ingredients. It is simplicity in itself. I cook both oriental and occidental cuisine on a regular basis and the cooking analogy degrades very rapidly. Classical French is far simpler than Classical Chinese. While the single technique of stir fry is easy to learn, it is still one based entirely on temperature control. It is a precision technique. Your application of it may be simple and easy, but in the hands of a pro... Well, simple need not apply. Another analogy would be better.

I don't think it is all that precise, because it depends so much on the ingredients at hand, and there are no recipes that describe precise timings, probably because they would be in seconds. I don't know how many times I have heard this, but "Chinese cook by taste, not measuring ingredients", which suggests to me a general absence of precision, in deference for simplicity.

9p at thread derailment...

I have to admit I was also very tempted to respond to the claim that Chinese cooking is simple.

Mmm, I like eating and cooking and the 'eastern versus western philosophy'-discussion, so let me add my cake on this.

Comparing a full recipe to using the ingredients at hand, using the recipe is something that loses a lot of subtlety, nuance and precision. Let's say you want to bake cookies and the recipe says you need two eggs. The eggs you have at hand might be of a different size, viscosity or taste than the ones used by the person who specified the recipe. Thus resulting in a different cookie. On the other hand, a master chef uses his own taste and interpretation of the ingredients at hand to find the perfect dough for the cookie. A recipe is more useful when the external environment can be perfectly replicated, so that the same recipe leads to the same cookie.

Now, we can draw a parallel to predictive models. Let's take the weather predictions as an example. Such model of reality can be fed variables and predict certain outcomes. However the more sophisticated and exact the weather prediction gets, the more variables (e.g. humidity, wind speed, air pressure) it needs. If we go back to baking cookies, this corresponds to the sophistication of the recipe (e.g. sizes of the eggs, types of flour).

However, a written recipe or any other non-interactive medium is only one set of input-variables leading to one outcome. This is only one 'equation' (i.e. certain input equals certain output). Also, even the most sophisticated model leaves out certain variables for complexity's sake or... because they are unknown/implicit.

As a master of anything really, it is hard to make your values/principles into an explicit model. There is so much happening in our unconsciousness that we do not understand. The Western philosophy does try to make everything explicit but loses nuance (the unknown variable, the flexibility) in the process, while the Eastern philosophy is more personal and ambiguous. Does that make it less precise? It enables you to make precisely the cookie you want to, but with more effort.

P.s. my metaphores make no sense.

This is also talked about in Beauty and the Beast: Exquisite Play and Go Theory (1996).

It discusses the style of Chinese go from the 1960s-80s and their attempt to catch up with the Japanese in the opening.

FIDE does publish a ranking of countries by the top 10 strongest players:

http://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml

China is #3 on that list, which is certainly impressive. Russia and Ukraine are #1 and #2, so they still know something about how to train strong chess players. Also check out Armenia at #6: not bad for a country with about the population of Phoenix, Arizona.

For men ... china are #1 for women: http://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml?to ... 1&country=

Also, it's worth noting that 10-15 years ago they wouldn't have been in the top 10 on either. This may or may not bear any relevance whatsoever on the OP, but it is an indication that they are throwing some money and effort into chess at the moment somewhere.

That is because stir fry is a technique and not a dish. The ingredients are not relevant nor can there be a recipe, so of course there seems to be a lack of precision. If I ask you "what is in a stir fry?" You can and should answer "Just about anything." However, if I ask you "what is stir frying?" I can get a fairly definitive answer involving things like 'very high heat' 'metal pan' and 'fast'. As for cooking by taste vs. measurement, I will quote to you what I have heard from the many professional chefs in my circles "baking is a science and cooking is a art" Baking is the manipulation of ingredient ratios to produce the chemical reactions to achieve the desired end product. (cookies, bread, cakes, and so on) So different egg sizes and exact measurements and the humidity of the air matter a LOT to the results. Chemistry, even our common kitchen chemistry, can be a finicky thing (especially when leavening is involved) Cooking is a similar thing, but the without the need for leavening (and therefore the control of acid/base reactions or yeast) things get a great deal less specific. I don't need a recipe to fry a egg. I know how to fry things.

Just as we no longer need to reference the rules to play a stone, so too do we not need recipes to cook a stir fry . It's all about familiarity with technique. I do not need to look up the shape of a ko. I know what a ko is. I would have to look up the 4 in the corner joseki. Likewise, recipes. There are many "rules" in go, but there is a very small core of them that are the absolute -rules-. After that it is up to interpretation (how many go parables are there that tell you what to always or never do after all?) If you know the techniques then you frequently no longer need the recipe OR they become a baseline knowledge from which you vary as needed (just like joseki)

Cooks in any culture master the available techniques. If all you have is a pot than everything starts to look like soup. (which I think actually is a saying or a variation of one about hammers and nails...) risotto exists for the want of lids...(probably not really, though)

Go is analogues to cooking like chess is analogues to baking. Baking and chess are sciences. Cooking and Go are arts! I provide a example to you thus: Computer programs can beat the best chess players in the world. In Go it isn't even close.

Please keep things on topic to Go and chess, rather than making me hungry talking about stir fries

About 20 years ago (before 1996 anyway), Gary Kasparov was on Letterman and
Kasparov said he thought the computer would NEVER beat the best human players.
About 10 years ago, the computer was pretty bad at Go -- way more than 9 stones from pro -- one could say it wasn't even close.
Today the computer is at around 5 stones from pro (19x19) -- it is getting very close now.
(On 9x9, I think the computer is already near pro or at pro level.)

Sorry! It was more about precision vs simplicity but some how cooking became the analogy we were using. My bad for making you hungry. Maybe we need a cooking thread in the off topics :p

5 stones from pro (which is what? Shodan? 3d? What changes d to p? Money and a org?) still seems like a long way to me. Comparing computing from 20 years ago to today isn't even fair. Mathematically, going from a 19x19 to a 9x9 which is the difference between a calculation that yields a absurdly huge number and one that yields less possibilities than a chess board. That's just the math! Not even a discussion on rules, just math! 5 stones is SO FAR!!!!! ((((；ﾟДﾟ)))))))

In 2006, the best computer engine for Go I could find was around 10k. Now it's a reasonably strong KGS 5d. Even if it's still 5 stones away from professional strength, that level of improvement is still very impressive. I would be surprised if computer Go wasn't at KGS 8-9d by 2020.

I wouldn't. That level of play gets closer and closer to needing to be a creative AI. That tech has been 10 years away for 30 years now.