How to Read

[RobertJasiek]

Quotation reference:
http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... 52#p172152

to practice my reading I should just read?

No. Just reading is not good enough. You must also know what to read at all, read correctly, read more and more quickly and read sufficiently completely so as not to overlook any move affecting the outcome.

Should I simply solve tsumego or is it a good practice to just put some stones on the board and try to read some sequence?

Both belong to the useful methods. Generally try to solve a problem before you lay out variations on the board to verify your reading.

Only tsumego is not good enough. You also need to read life and death and problems on other topics.

Just some sequence is by far not good enough. You absolutely need to consider also variations and decision-making to select variations.

Also I do have a problem when reading out long sequences where I forget where stones are.

Start with simpler problems. Increase the depth and breadth of the variations tree always as far as you could already visualise all the sequences and their moves correctly.

How do you guys deal with reading?

See above. Besides read again when a previous reading attempt must have been incorrect, incomplete, confused or badly related to decision-making. During a game, when believing in having read correctly, verify the reading by starting all over again and repeating the reading for a second or third time. Only if all reading sessions yield the same is the reading known to be hopefully correct.

it is damn hard to read moves ahead if they don't seem natural or simple.

Yes.

[daal]

During a game, when believing in having read correctly, verify the reading by starting all over again and repeating the reading for a second or third time. Only if all reading sessions yield the same is the reading known to be hopefully correct.

Isn't re-reading a bad habit that wastes time and energy? I can understand the perceived necessity in a critical situation during a game, but are you not concerned about this becoming a crutch?

[OtakuViking]

For a more simple approach... why don't you try Kageyama's Ladder method? The method is this: Every day you get up and look at a ladder problem, start simple and keep making the ladder longer and longer until you can read out a long ladder with no problems.

You can read a little more about this here http://senseis.xmp.net/?Ladder%2FreadingTechniques

where you can also find a ladder problem to use. What you do is just move the ladder closer to the other stones so it becomes shorter, then read it out. Move it farther away every day until u can easily read the whole ladder.

[ez4u]

During a game, when believing in having read correctly, verify the reading by starting all over again and repeating the reading for a second or third time. Only if all reading sessions yield the same is the reading known to be hopefully correct.

Isn't re-reading a bad habit that wastes time and energy? I can understand the perceived necessity in a critical situation during a game, but are you not concerned about this becoming a crutch?

We see this and similar thoughts expressed pretty frequently. There is an underlying assumption, however, that you are wasting your time because you have completely imagined and correctly read out all alternatives in that first pass. All my experience has shown that this is a wildly optimistic assumption as far as my own reading goes. I'll stick with my crutches for now if the alternative is falling flat on my face.

[logan]

During a game, when believing in having read correctly, verify the reading by starting all over again and repeating the reading for a second or third time. Only if all reading sessions yield the same is the reading known to be hopefully correct.

Isn't re-reading a bad habit that wastes time and energy? I can understand the perceived necessity in a critical situation during a game, but are you not concerned about this becoming a crutch?

Yes, and as you get stronger you should aim to become confident and accurate enough that you don't re-read lines. I can remember at least two interviews with Korean professionals -- one of which was Yi Sedol -- where they discussed reading each line only once, esp. as it pertained to blitz and short, time-limit games. All top players have had to learn this as short time-limits have become more numerous in modern go.

In the past I've wondered how great some of the older games with longer time-limits -- of nine hours and greater -- would have been had the players not gone out to take naps, daydream, and do numerous other things we've all read about in those accounts, and fought to read as efficiently as today's top players in short, time-limit games.

to practice my reading I should just read?

You should do directed reading, that is reading that has a particular aim or purpose. Reading without aim or purpose is just aimless reading and won't improve your reading. The way to develop directed reading is to study the solutions to reading problems, such that you understand why a solution works with the particular layout of stones. You should ask yourself questions about the position to test your understanding of it, and think critically about why a solution is the solution until all the parts make sense to you.

You should start with learning the foundations that life and death offer, then incorporate tesuji, and finally endgame, opening and shape problems. At a high-dan level study refocuses back onto life and death and endgame problems almost exclusively.

Also I do have a problem when reading out long sequences where I forget where stones are.

Everyone has their reading limit, even dan players, and we're all working to improve it.

[RobertJasiek]

Blitz is different.

With enough time, re-read. Reading only once assuming no mistake and no gap in the reading is wishful thinking. Re-reading is a successful safety method to catch the brain's errors and laziness.

[Knotwilg]

You can achieve a major breakthrough by integrating a continuous tsumego practice into actual gameplay. Instead of spending the bulk of the allocated time to the opening, play a decent opening by applying basic strategic concepts like staying connected on a large scale, separate the opponent, surround, avoid being surrounded and applying basic techniques. When the middle game comes about, eventually life & death problems will arise and this is the time to pause. With the extra time you have reserved by not wasting it on joseki intricacies, you can outperform your opponent, even if their opening was marginally better, so your tsumego practice, well applied, will result in more victories.

Another good practice is to keep an eye on your groups liberties, and progressively more so as the game proceeds, because the more stones on the board, the less liberties. This kind of basic reading can avoid one of the major reasons why people lose games: blunders on ataris or a sudden decline of vital liberties.

[mitsun]

Part of the art of "reading" which I have found valuable (probably because my brute force visualization ability is not good) is techniques which let you avoid full visualization of every move in a long sequence.

1) In a semeai, instead of visualizing "he plays here, I play there", it is usually better to just count liberties separately for each side, without worrying about the exact sequence. Of course you still have to consider all the peculiarities of the position which affect the liberty count, like throw-ins and approach moves and eyes, but your visualization ability is taxed much less.

2) When "reading" a ladder, there is no need to mentally visualize the ladder taking shape with stones added one by one. Maybe that is good reading practice, but it is not needed to evaluate the ladder. Tracking the final perimeter stones which might encounter a ladder-breaker is usually good enough.

[Abyssinica]

2) When "reading" a ladder, there is no need to mentally visualize the ladder taking shape with stones added one by one. Maybe that is good reading practice, but it is not needed to evaluate the ladder. Tracking the final perimeter stones which might encounter a ladder-breaker is usually good enough.

I only start to begin mentally visualising each and every stone in the ladder when I come across a potential ladder breaker. I also say "Black white black white" in my head when this happens. I also know the tip that if a ladder passes through a star point, it will end up in the diagonal star point. "Like going from the top right star through tengen will end up on the lower left star."




Reading isn't hard in my opinion - knowing WHAT to read is the problem. On a large, open board, I won't even know where to begin. But in close quarters Life and death and tesuji problems in the corners, it becomes much easier.

There's one tsumego I remember that involves a net of stones, but the solution is about 26 moves deep. I read and re-read maybe 7 times because I would lose track of liberties (Since black could attempt to atari his way out), but I eventually verified that the net did, infact, work. It's unbranching; anyone can do it, just like a ladder.

Imo, reading width and not length is the difficult part in enclosed reading environments.

[Elom]

2) When "reading" a ladder, there is no need to mentally visualize the ladder taking shape with stones added one by one. Maybe that is good reading practice, but it is not needed to evaluate the ladder. Tracking the final perimeter stones which might encounter a ladder-breaker is usually good enough.

I only start to begin mentally visualising each and every stone in the ladder when I come across a potential ladder breaker. I also say "Black white black white" in my head when this happens. I also know the tip that if a ladder passes through a star point, it will end up in the diagonal star point. "Like going from the top right star through tengen will end up on the lower left star."




Reading isn't hard in my opinion - knowing WHAT to read is the problem. On a large, open board, I won't even know where to begin. But in close quarters Life and death and tesuji problems in the corners, it becomes much easier.

There's one tsumego I remember that involves a net of stones, but the solution is about 26 moves deep. I read and re-read maybe 7 times because I would lose track of liberties (Since black could attempt to atari his way out), but I eventually verified that the net did, infact, work. It's unbranching; anyone can do it, just like a ladder.

Imo, reading width and not length is the difficult part in enclosed reading environments.

Yes, this is very similar to my situation. I can read 15-20 deep in certain one-way-street type situations, yet in the opening it can be tricky for me to read just 5-10 moves ahead. Ironically, Think this is due to my bad direction of play.

Maybe it's because of the fact that in the opening, a person with bad direction of of play sees less relations between the groups, so uses up his/her 7-9 item memory limit very quickly, whereas someone who sees more relations between the stones wraps up a 10 move sequence as a single item of memory limit, leading to rather frightening reading depth.

(Top pro's can read out whole joseki's with a single magic tip of the finger! Multiply that by 7!)

[topazg]

Q: How many moves ahead you read before you play a move?
A: Usually professional players, including me, read around 100 moves ahead. But that's not the case for every move. First select 10 candidate moves and then read ahead for each of them. After reading ahead 20 to 30 moves for a candidate move, one could reach a tentative conclusion like "this is a bad shape" or simply "this is not it." At that point, I stop any further reading for that candidate move and look for another. This is a process of elimination that ususally leaves one or two candidate moves. For each of these final candidate moves, I read ahead about 100 moves. This might surprise amateur players, but the more difficult thing is not reading ahead 100 moves, but deciding which of the final cadidate moves gives a better result. .... The most painful moment is when I realize that I am on the wrong way a few move after my original decision. That gives me an agony beyond description. People call me "Stone Buddha" for my lack of facial expression during games. But you will notice some changes in my face when I am in a bad situation. You have to look at my face carefully...

Just for amusement on reading ...

[Uberdude]

For all this talk of pros reading 100 moves deep, I still see an awful lot of commentaries like "Oh I didn't expect him to answer that way" (e.g. in Tournament Go 1992 book), i.e. they fail to read 2 moves deep correctly. And these are not bizarre hard to see magic tesuji blind spots, they are just another normal choice that I could probably find if asked to name 20 next possible moves. I find the idea of pros reading 100 moves deep all the time quite simply incredulous. On move 10 in the opening? Pull the other one. For sure reading 100 moves of yose makes a lot more sense, but there it's not so much one long 100 move sequence but the combination of a bunch of shorter sequences in different areas of the board combined into one long sequence (though with many complexities of timing and tenukis and mutual damage etc.). Michael Redmond has talked about training his yose by reading out the whole endgame, perhaps move 160 to 260, but this is not something he could do when he became pro, but a skill he has developed more recently (maybe a 15 year old Korean 1p can do it already?). Lee Sedol's book of commentaries on his games shows him reading sequences maybe a max of 50 long in a complex middle game fight, but usually shorter. Now perhaps he reads deeper and doesn't include it in the book, but that insight into his reading process seems much more plausible to me.

P.S. I would of course happily change my view if Lee Changho published a book/sgf with his mental variation tree showing all these 100 move sequences, that would be fascinating .

[Bill Spight]

During a game, when believing in having read correctly, verify the reading by starting all over again and repeating the reading for a second or third time. Only if all reading sessions yield the same is the reading known to be hopefully correct.

Isn't re-reading a bad habit that wastes time and energy? I can understand the perceived necessity in a critical situation during a game, but are you not concerned about this becoming a crutch?

You know, reading has some research behind it. What is available in English is mostly about chess, I think, but I doubt if that makes much difference.

One thing that I remember from a web search a few years ago is that, despite the fact that in his classic, How to Think like a Grandmaster, Kotov advised against re-reading, it is common and does not seem to be harmful.

Sakata made the important point that reading is not just the calculation of variations, but involves judging the results of the calculations. (Tsumego makes that easy, because of a well defined goal.)

Another thing is that humans have a preference for depth first search, mainly because of lack of working memory. That is for conscious search, which is processed linearly.

Unconscious search, however, is probably processed in parallel. IMO, it is a mistake to overlook it. As I recall from my cognitive psych class years ago, training conscious search can improve unconscious search, as well.

[RobertJasiek]

Reading 100 moves deep is easy for players with suitably educated knowledge, provided it is specialised reading with a very small average breadth, such as territorial positional judgement or ladders. General reading is much harder and can easily go wrong after the first few moves because the average breadth of game trees is too great.

[John Fairbairn]

I find the idea of pros reading 100 moves deep all the time quite simply incredulous.

I don't think anyone said they read deep all the time. Certainly Yi Ch'ang-ho just referred to doing that for one or two candidate moves. I would imagine that even in the middle game it is possible to superimpose standard sequences once you reach certain positions, and when you reach your final position - which I assume is a quiescent position as in chess - it is often possible to assume a depth of significantly more moves once you reach a position you recognise. For example, if I calculate 5 moves ahead and reach an L-shape in the corner, I can fairly claim to see maybe 15 or 20 moves ahead because I know how it all goes from there. Pros will have many, many more such recognisable positions. In that sense, looking ahead 100 moves is not so implausible.

However, if we look at only the number of moves shown in very long variations in commentaries, and assume the pro wasn't fibbing when he said he considered such lines, I'd say from memory that the longest sequences are of the order of 50-70 moves, and in many of them Kitani and Sakata feature. Other top pros only occasionally display such depth. You'll have to decide for yourself whether that's humility or lack of K & S's ability or a stylistic quirk.

But one important aspect to remember is that long variations appear most often in commentaries on games with long time limits, which were the norm even for Yi Ch'ang-ho. I don't think it's coincidence that his results nosedived when time limits were heavily pruned.

[reading out the endgame] this is not something he could do when he became pro, but a skill he has developed more recently (maybe a 15 year old Korean 1p can do it already?).

For similar reasons, I'd expect the response from a Korean 1-dan as to how deep he can read in the endgame to be "What's the endgame?" But also I'm not sure that the point made about Redmond is quite true. From memory I think he said he didn't realise when he was 1-dan that this skill was necessary. Had he realised it was, I'd guess he could have developed the skill even then, or when he was 15.

The Go Consultants has a pertinent section, some may recall, in which the amateur commentator estimated that the pros were looking at up to 1,000 moves per hour when they were allowed to place pieces on the board. But did the real pieces and boards make much difference? It seems they were just for the benefit of one's partner. The pro commentator, Hashimoto Utaro, could supposedly remember all these variations days later after just watching them. Even a memory just a tenth of good as that would enable one to use current information to look much deeper at later stages of the game.