No, not really, because he actually defines his particular use of atsumi by using the word 'influence' (seiryoku). It's more that his purpose that is different from yours (moyos rather than josekis).

Your question about counting territory: "I wonder how clearly aware they are of a maintained sente condition." I don't realy understand what you are talking about, but if you mean that the boundaries are marked about by assuming that the outside player plays everywhere in sente (except for the usual gote-gote exchanges on the edges), then that is standard. There are, however, other elements, the most important of which is that areas with aji are not counted. The White area above would not be counted for territory for that reason. In the diagram below, for example, Black's corners are not counted (by a pro) as confirmed territory because of the aji at A and B which results from the nearby White stones. Without nearby White stones the shimari in the upper right would be marked up with 11 points but counted as "approximately 10". The lower left in isolation would be marked up with 17 points but counted as "approximately 15".



You are reverting to the sort of language that has weakened your case immeasurably before. 'Lack of courage' is a silly phrase to use. It is not even accurate. In the examples above (due to O Rissei) he (courageously?) marks up a precise number of points in a diagram. He just counts them as an approximation, and this is in line with countless pros who advise that approximations are all that are needed (and also that even such approximations are not needed if you can use the method of offsets). Precise counts are, of course, used at the endgame stage, but even there an adjustment will always be made for thckness.



For you to make this remark, I have to assume that you have only ever seen the method once, in a book in English by Cho. I feel sure it's been used in several other English texts, but in Japan it's mainstream, and goes back a long way. I think I first saw it used systematically by Kato Shin, Kubomatsu and Iwamoto in the 1920s with sporadic uses before then. Neither of the terms 'confirmed' or 'current' is ideal in English but in Japanese, incidentally, where there is no tense in the verb, the phrase appears as 'confirm territory'. The phrase can thus be interpreted as e.g. 'territory that can be regarded as settled' or 'will be settled', etc. This flexibility is a characteristic of the language and has been missed, for example, by those who pore over Japanese rules.

I'm not going to hunt through my library for old references I've gven before, I'm afraid, but the O Rissei book is on my desk at the moment so I can give you the ISBN of that: 978-4-8399-5590-8. There's not a lot of text, but in this case do note that the words are crucial and very interesting (e.g. new terminology: 'adding pith' (芯を入れる) to a moyo as being the correct way to create the right rhythm for building the moyo - and no, reduction is not taking the pith).

Lack of awareness of "stone difference", even in the elementary form of who will end a joseki in sente, seems to be a weakness even at shodan level. So you have a point here.

<snip>



From a pedagogic point of view, I'm always looking for both halves of "what to teach", and "at what level", in order to help players improve.



Precision is a 5 dan ama concept, really, so unfortunately "over my head". Mathematics I can handle, generally speaking. Those ideas are in tension, clearly.

That is intended as a helpful remark. Being strong is apparently about being fuzzy about the right things.

For example, for joseki in practical play, "context" is extremely important but fuzzy, while local analysis can be pushed to precision, probably, in counting territory. The general value of influence may have to be proved in fighting, as well as in framework terms. We know there are verbal confusions prevalent in this area.

I don't dispute that you have some heuristics here. The next (Asian) step is probably examplars from which to extrapolate.

Sente condition: Current territory is the territory remaining after the opponent's SENTE reductions. Sente enables successive reductions from all sides and in all parts of the board when determining the player's current territory. Without maintained sente, different parts of a territory region and different territory regions do not add up because they may not add up because the reductions would give the opponent rights to more plays than he may have according to the alternation of moves implied by the rules. Therefore, I ask whether the professionals marking or counting current territory have been well aware of maintained sente. Sente must be maintained both within a local region and when switching from region to region.

Not counting regions with aji has some relevance. When assessing current territory, I am more tolerant to allow counting of regions with minor aji or determining a global territory count when the position has minor ajis but is reasonably quiet. When aji is great, I agree, that current territory yields too optimistic values. Therefore, I am working out theory of judgement when exploiting aji has a great effect on territory counts. This also applies to options, big reductions, invasions, exchanges and relevant uses of influence.

If the exact territory count of a region is known and stated or marked by a pro, then OC I do not criticise him for being imprecise. If, for a global positional judgement, the exact territory count of a region is known and rounded for this region by a pro, then I criticise him very strongly for making this mistake of a) needlessly replacing more meaningful information by less meaningful information and b) creating possibly great rounding errors when rounding the values of several regions separately instead of rounding the total value for the whole board. Rounding can sometimes be good enough (such as rounding the total value of endgame kos during the middle game to the nearest 0.5 multiple, or when "This variation leads to a clear loss." is good enough for a decision-making that should offer some winning variation). Unless a game simply depends on a huge life and death fight, rounding territory values for a global positional judgement is always inferior to having not rounded values. It is not asked too much for any intermediate to strong player to recall one reasonably precise value (say, rounded to the nearest integer) of a global territory count. Replacing an already calcuated precise value by rounding to the next multiple of 5 or 10 is what double digit kyus should overcome on their way to single digit kyus.

No, because you are confusing precision and accuracy. Just because a calculation can be made repeatedly to reach a value predicted by your theory - that's only precision - does not make it accurate. The theory has to be proven to be accurate first. You have not done that yet. Nor have pros. Their workaround is to use fuzzy approximations. They appear then to get better results than you do.