More on the skill of evaluating the resulting positions of reading

Also on reading everything out, including "silly" lines of play

One advantage of tsumego problems is that the goal is generally given, so that the leaves of the game tree can be accurately evaluated. (That is true for a game of go, as well, but what a game tree! ) Does that mean that the skill of evaluation is not necessary? I don't think so. Having that skill means that you don't need to read variations out to the bloody end.

Here is the problem that Thofte found difficult:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . X . .
$$ | O O . . . O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

No goal is given, but it is (ahem) obvious that White to play can live, so we may take it that Black is to play and kill or make ko.

What about reading everything out? Well, there are 10 open points in the corner, so there are potentially millions of variations. However, many of those include illegal moves or end at a shallow depth. So the true figure may be only a few hundred.

Are you kidding? Yes, reading out hundreds of variations could be a bracing exercise, but doing so ten times a day?! Even twice a day is too much, IMHO. Twice a year, maybe.

However, the figure may become manageable with proper evaluation of non-final positions. For example:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . X . .
$$ | O O . 2 1 O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Now, I consider a silly play, but reading out the variation is not particularly a problem if you stop after . My evaluation is that White is (obviously) alive. Not that this positions is devoid of interest, but we do not have to explore this branch of the game tree any further.

If you asked me to defend that assertion, I might point out that White is alive just in the very corner.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------
$$ | ? ? ? . . . . X . .
$$ | O O ? O X O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

That is, with the indicated four point eye.

Really? Let's see.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . 4 3 6 5 . . X . .
$$ | O O . 2 1 O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

plays within White's indicated Lebensraum and secures the one point eye in the corner. But then after cannot secure the second eye because it is self-atari.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . 4 3 . 5 . . X . .
$$ | O O 6 2 1 W W X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

is correct, OC. Black cannot save . (She can capture the stones in gote.)

So I was right, but maybe it is not so obvious. OTOH, if you do not already know about , isn't this problem too difficult for you?

Anyway, looks pretty silly, itself. Wouldn't it be better just to take ?

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . a 3 7 4 6 5 X . .
$$ | O O . 2 1 O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Yes, but. In this diagram is a disaster. OC, it should be at "a". delivers the coup de grace.

So, yes, there are lessons to be learned from playing out silly variations, but is that why we are doing this problem?

Edit: There is another lesson here.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . . 3 . 4 6 5 X . .
$$ | O O 7 2 1 O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

is a cute way to kill.

Edited for clarity.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thank you everyone for your replies!

So the main question was how much time I spend on a problem. Well that really depends: I have heard about that 3 minute rule (If you can't sove it by then, move on). So now about 30 minutes for 10 problems seem correct, but before that I'd spend an hour on 10 problems.

But with the 3 minute method I don't see any progress. Sure I won't be that frustrated anymore about a difficult problem, but the ones I skipped last time I still can't solve now...

From what I read most of the people seem to advice acctually looking at the solution after trying for some time. So do we have a consensus that Tatsuki acctually isn't that great of a resource?

And also some people adviced to just learn solutions for problems by heart, if I got that correctly? So no reading just knowing then?

To the original questions I'd like to add two points. First, when near or at dan level, for instance improving at a rate of 1 stone a year is not bad at all. In two months, that would be about 0.2 stones. It would be something very hard to notice, but still meaningful.

Another thing, when I used to do very intensive go study for some time, I did not feel any improvement immediately. But then maybe 4 months later, after dropping the tsumego study I felt I'm stronger than I thought. One can imagine different explanations why this could be a real effect. Maybe you need to separately learn to apply the new skills on the board. Or maybe your brain keeps processing something over months, growing new synapses or whatever, and it takes time to actually realize the reading power.

Did you miss them because they were too difficult? At the right level you should miss about half of the problems. (As I indicated, I think that one I just talked about is too difficult for you right now. Too many options.)

Why are you missing them again? I assume that you remember what doesn't work, and so you try other things.

It may help to forget about the three minute rule and follow Segoe's advice to set up the problem on the board and try to solve it by playing variations on the board. Then, if you still fail, look at the solution.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I'm also a new beginner like you, but I may offer advice from my own experience. I initially did some problems, but ended up rejecting them (for now). I felt that I was not ready for it.

I put aside all books/problems, found a friend who was better than I am and just cranked out 100 games as fast as possible (aka 100 losses). I feel like this improved my reading more so than solving problems. What I did memorize were all the joseki that I could get my hands on. Went on Eidogo and ran through all the joseki and memorized all the common ones.

I recently went back to problems and everything made a lot more sense to me. Everyone may be different but just my two cents.

Seeing potential eyes

One skill for life and death problems is identifying possible eyes. There is research that compared the eye movements of good life and death solvers with the eye movements of others. (The usual research design would be to divide subjects into two equal groups, based on their ability to solve the problems.) The eyes of the weaker group focused on potential plays; the eyes of the stronger group focused on potential eyes. (OC, it is unlikely that there was no overlap.) Let's take another look at the problem from that standpoint.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W Where are the eyes?
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . X . .
$$ | O O . . . O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Well, there certainly seems to be an eye in the corner. The rest of the eyespace is fairly amorphous, though.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W Potential eyes
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . X . .
$$ | O O C 1 C O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

But if White plays the marked points are potential eyes.

Which did I see first, the move or the eye points? Hard to say.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Sub-problems, chunking, and other problem solving strategies

As the research on eye movements suggests, simply building a game tree is not the only way to solve go problems. Still using our example problem, let me discuss some other strategies.

It looks like there is an eye in the very corner, but let's take a closer look.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Corner eye?
$$ ---------------------
$$ | C 2 1 . . . . X . .
$$ | O O 3 . . O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

After encloses the marked point, making an eye, but White cannot hold onto it because puts the White stones in atari. OC, Black can only do so because and have two dame. So the original impression of an eye in the corner turns out to be something of an illusion. That eye is not secure.

Is this one of those silly variations? Not really. is not played as the first move of the solution. Rather it is played as the first move in the attempt to take away the potential eye at the 1-1 point. And it succeeds, under current conditions.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Corner eye? Var. 2
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . 3 1 4 . . . X . .
$$ | O O 2 . . O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

That is, even if and are captured, as in this diagram, so that White gets an eye, it is not the distinct eye on the 1-1, and enlarging it may not allow White to live.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Corner eye? Var. 2
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . X X O 6 7 9 X . .
$$ | O O O 8 5 O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

In fact, the throw-in, , kills. After or at 8, and take away any potential second eye.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Corner eye? Var. 3
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . X B O 8 6 7 X . .
$$ | O O O 9 5 O O X . .
$$ | O X O O O X X X . .
$$ | X X X X X . . . . ,
$$ | . X . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

To prevent the second throw-in, descends to the second line. However, that play succumbs to the atari, , because of damezumari. As I used to joke, was played with great foresight.

Well, it's late at night and I will have to pick this discussion up later. The first four moves of these variations, especially , may be silly, but seeing the kill with is pretty cool. Oh, yeah! does not have to be a throw-in, as you may have noticed, because of damezumari. One little factoid to file away.

It is a common problem solving strategy to break a problem down into subproblems. Here we have seen two subproblems: first, to take away the distinct eye on the 1-1, and second, to kill in the position after . Neither of these arose as part of reading out a game tree. And, in fact, it may turn out that neither is relevant to the solution. However, both help us to understand the problem position better, to see its possibilities. And in general that will help us to solve the problem.

Another question arises, OC: Which is more important, solving the problem or understanding the position?

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Bill, how do you use your three diagrams to solve the problem without tree reading? In particular, please explain this for different white replies. OC, White dies if he helps Black to kill the white group.

We know that there are different ways of solving problems, incl. e.g. guessing a successful move already achieving an aim within one move. Research on human eye movement is not needed to come to this conclusion. However, the question remains what ways do always work (in principle) and what ways do you apply when you use a way that does not always work as soon as you find out this when analysing a particular problem? Answer: you must fall back to a way that always works, such as Regular Reading. All talk about other ways is incomplete ALA you do not also specify some default, general way.

What does the mentioned research say when other observed ways do not work?

JFTR, a solution consists of the correct answer and the verification why it is correct. The process of solving might also go through unsuccessful analysis before. How do the other ways provide the necessary verification?

Robert: In your effort to show that Bill was wrong, you failed to even understand the broad points of his message.
You don't need to disagree with every post you read.

uPWarrior, I ignore the meta-discussions about no necessity of disagreeing with every post, your claim of my failure to understand parts of Bill's post and your claim of my effort to show that Bill was wrong.

You say that Bill's post has broad points and apparently you think they are worth pointing out. Can you please point out them so that those of us that might not have been fully aware of them yet can better appreciate them?

For instance, you immediately disregarded the research on eye movement and underlined that one has to fallback to reading as "any other way is incomplete".

Bill exemplified two alternatives that imply that one should start by understanding the problem better:

• understanding the eye shape of the problem and understanding its key points;
• chunking the problem into smaller pieces.

Can you get this understanding if you simply read out the tree? Of course not, reading and evaluating end (or intermediate) positions won't give you that.
This is particularly important given the anecdotal evidence that good tsumego solvers DO focus on understanding the problem first (i.e., their eyes move to the eye shape) instead of focusing on reading killing sequences (i.e., their eyes don't focus on potential plays).

This means that the time we spend staring at a problem should be translated into a better understanding of the position, not on a higher number of variations discarded.

In my opinion, "understanding the problem better" (i.e. "identifying its shape issues and vital points") usually is strongly underestimated when discussing the "proper" way of solving tsume-go.

Starting with SHAPE will benefit the process of choosing candidate MOVEs for beginning your solution sequence.

_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

uPWarrior, I have not disregarded the research on eye movement but commented that we do not need a research on eye movement to conclude that there are different ways of solving problems. Research on eye movement can be useful for some kinds of studies. If it is used for tracking a visual aspect of go problem solving, there must be proof on a relation between eye movement, focus on part of the board, view of the same or another part of the board and accounting of aspects of problem solving not represented by these aspects. In particular, focussing on one particular intersection does not exclude the possibility of viewing several intersections simultaneously and possibly with an asymmetric view around the focussed intersection.

Focussing eyes can be done at a rest point while the brain performs reading possibly independent of a currently focussed intersection.

I have not said that any other way was incomplete. Besides I do not say that Regular Reading was the only way of reading (a breadth first search reading would also be possible in principle but require much more temporary storage than the depth first search of Regular Reading). E.g., another complete way would be computer-like sampling of randomly chosen move sequences without repeating any already walked sequence. Although such ways can be imagined, they have serious disadvantages: a) very large numbers of sequences might have to be studied (often extremely many more than possible within reasonable time) and b) much more temporary storage is needed. I can imagine such alternative, general ways of solving problems but I have yet to hear of any (for tactical problems with a given, then static aim) that would be as applicable in general as Regular Reading.

Referring to research on eye movement tempts one into a wow factor but there is no indication that eye movement alone would be general enough for solving all problems in principle. Problem solving is not just one-layer pattern recognition. Eye movement does not correlate as identity between focus and thought about intersections (or stones).

Starting by understanding a problem better is not always the most efficient way. For some problems, it helps. For other problems, it wastes time, and starting right away with Regular Reading is the most efficient way if understanding a problem consists of the decision-making during Regular Reading and these decisions cannot be efficiently represented by other means, such as techniques.

Understanding the eye shape of the problem is not always the most efficient way to start. More specifically, it is not always the shape of eyespace that gives useful information but it can be more relevant to identify the initial eyespace and the potential eyespaces at all. Doing so is part of ignoring unrelated intersections and sequences to prepare reading to a manageable size. This is also very useful for Regular Reading, ALA one does not overlook relevant moves; in case of doubt, include them.

Understanding key points is not always the most efficient way to start. If there are obvious key points, it can be useful to start with them. If there are too many or none, then looking for key points is a waste of time and instead starting directly with Regular Reading is more efficient.

Chunking the problem into smaller pieces is not always the most efficient way to start. In particular, there are (ca. 50%) problems that cannot be (easily or at all) split by a regional or sequence-process-local way. Instead, another way is (only!) sometimes useful: reduction of an initially difficult problem to a known kind of problem (e.g., a nakade) in a currently studied subtree.

I have not suggested that other ways (such as techniques) would be useless. They are sometimes faster than Regular Reading, provided they permit verification wihout or with less Regular Reading than if only using it.

I thought that good problem solvers are neural nets that sample so much that reading is emulated but we really do not understand in detail how the programs think... I.e., we do not even know if the NNs do understand anything - we only know if they are successful empirically.

In general, there must be an early choice of whether to explore Regular Reading or other ways. Regular Reading automatically provides verification. Other ways might suggest a result but verification is often not automatically included; in this case, one also needs Regular Reading or highly sophisticated, specialised means as a means of verification.

Well, it's late at night again. Just a brief note.



Please note that solving the two sub-problems yields a portion of a depth first search tree.



I suppose that by Regular Reading you mean a brute force depth first search of the game tree. In practice, that does not always work. In Gateway to All Marvels John Fairbairn points out that some lines of play were erroneously believed to be solutions to some of the classical go problems for centuries before they were refuted.

Elsewhere you bring up the question of efficiency and memory usage. Chunking addresses both of those. Also, consider this little problem.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Black to play
$$ -------------------------------
$$ . . . . O . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . X O O . O O O . . X . . .
$$ . . X . X O O X O X . X . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X X X . . X . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Very easy. Not many branches of the game tree to read. Practical depth only 9 moves.

Yes, but only if Black solves the sub-problems of preventing a second eye and preventing seki. Otherwise brute force search suffers a combinatorial explosion. This is not atypical.

Also, it is efficient to do tree search in parallel. Humans are capable of that, but only subconciously. That's one reason I talk so much about seeing.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Excellent example, Bill. I've seen this sort of thing many times because I tried writing a tsumego program once. It was very frustrating because there were so many problems (the vast majority, in fact) that were trivial to my way of human thinking but hard for the computer. I was using test cases smaller than yours yet typically nothing less than 11-ply would work for brute search.

More than that, though, I think we need to hold RJ's other claims up to scrutiny. He says only 50% of problems are amenable to being solved by a known technique. I challenge that on the grounds that it can at best only be true for the start of the problem. But many problems involve techniques that are applied deeper in the tree. In fact they can't be done in practical terms without a technique. The most obvious is the visual inspection of a nakade shape. For humans that is trivial. For brute search nakade shapes add an Amazonian forest of bushes to the tree.

RJ also makes much of the argument that looking for a technique wastes time if no technique is available, and so is inefficient. That seems preposterous. That claim can only stand up for an individual problem where there is no technique available anywhere (and very, very few cases of this exist, as I have just said). The loss of time can only be very small, often milliseconds. And as you rightly say, there is a major difference here between 'looking for' and 'seeing'. But taking problems as a corpus, in the vast majority of cases a technique does exist and the saving in time and effort that makes is enormous. So even if the very questionable 50% figure is correct, the loss on the negative half is hugely outweighed by the gains on the positive half. Which means we shouldn't be talking about 50% in the first place, really. A ship that's keeling over with 50% of people on the port side and 50% on the starboard side still has much more than a 50% chance of going to Davey Jones' locker.

Interesting to see that the meaning of Regular Reading wasn't obvious to you, either. I took it to mean a Quotidian Quotient - doing a tsumego every day. A natural laxative

OC, Regular Reading is not brute force reading.

Regular Reading is tactical reading for a given start position and aim, explores variations, ignores obvious failures and obviously inferior moves (in case of doubt, do not ignore), at a branch goes backwards if a) a successful next move has been found or b) all interesting (neither obvious failure nor obviously inferior) next moves have been identified as failures, else go forwards with a not previously explored interesting next move to the next branch or a terminal position, a position is terminal if it is obvious whether the aim is fulfilled there, propagate collected information backwards, stop when the start position's branch is decided. Regular Reading can be refined by accelerating techniques, such as using prior status knowledge about non-terminal positions or identifying reversion to previously explored positions. The method and simplifying techniques I have described elsewhere in great detail.

EDIT: Answer to John: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13879

In my opinion, identifying the so-called "obvious" features of a tsume-go problem requires doing some SHAPE analysis beforehand.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Black to play
$$ -------------------------------
$$ . . . . O . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . X O O . O O O . . X . . .
$$ . . X . X O O X O X . X . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X X X . . X . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

S h a p e     A n a l y s i s

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B White's potential eye space
$$ -------------------------------
$$ . . . . O C C C C C . . . . . .
$$ . . . X O O C O O O . . X . . .
$$ . . X . X O O X O X . X . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X X X . . X . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

White's potential eye space consists of six empty points.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Dead eye shape (1)
$$ -------------------------------
$$ . . . . O T S T . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . X O O T O O O . . X . . .
$$ . . X . X O O X O X . X . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X X X . . X . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

At the left, there is a dead triangle four-point eye shape visible which central point is still unoccupied.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Dead eye shape (1)
$$ -------------------------------
$$ . . . . O s S s . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . X O O s O O O . . X . . .
$$ . . X . X O O X O X . X . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X X X . . X . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

If White occupied that point, she would divide her eye space into three parts, all of which are sure eye points.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Dead eye shape (2)
$$ -------------------------------
$$ . . . . O . T S T . . . . . . .
$$ . . . X O O . O O O . . X . . .
$$ . . X . X O O X O X . X . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X X X . . X . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

A dead three-point eye shape in the centre.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Dead eye shape (3)
$$ -------------------------------
$$ . . . . O . . T S T . . . . . .
$$ . . . X O O . O O O . . X . . .
$$ . . X . X O O X O X . X . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X X X . . X . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Another dead three-point eye shape at the right.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Danger of seki
$$ -------------------------------
$$ . . . . O . S S S . ? . . . . .
$$ . . . X O O ? O O O ? . X . . .
$$ . . X . X O O X O X . X . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X X X . . X . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Occupying all (at least three) vital points of your opponent's eye potential space might not always lead to success.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Looking forward
$$ -------------------------------
$$ . . . . O . . . . M M . . . . .
$$ . . . X O O . O O O . . Y . . .
$$ . . X . X O O X O X . X . . . .
$$ . . . . X X X X X X . . X . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Black's marked stone at the right is looking forward to supporting any friendly stone at the crossed intersections.

_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

Cassandra, identifying obvious failures does not necessarily involve shape analysis. E.g., if there are several connected moves on the outside from the same direction of potential reduction, the moves further to the outside can be identified without shape analysis. Instead, it is a matter of functional analysis combined with identifying greater impact on the inside.

I still can't see what is regular about that. More to the point, I can't see anything there that strong players (or disciplined players) can't do already (they may not always do it for reasons such as time constraints or fatigue). That sort of description exists in the literature for chess, shogi and go, and is obviously well known in games programming (with many more pruning refinements, of course). Are you claiming something novel, or are you just trying to be systematic?

But the bigger question is: for amateurs who simply want to reach a modest strength (e.g. daal's shodan quest) which method is better? Brute force with pruning is unnatural and therefore hard for a human, and since amateurs usually don't want to invest the sort of time needed to train that ability to a worthwhile level, it seems obvious to me that shape and technique training is the way to go for them.

What I would add, though, is that go is a game that is very easy to play to a modest standard on shape principles alone. That is why blitz play is so perniciously bad in go compared with chess, where your mistakes are found out sooner and in a more obvious way (tactical blunders). Choosing candidate moves then doing a tiny bit of brute force (even 2-ply helps a lot) as a check makes a huge difference across the amateur spectrum. Tsumego can help with that.

Regular about regular reading is that it is the regular, standard method of tactical reading. I might also have called it standard reading.

In fact, the very purpose of describing regular reading is describing what every above-beginner player should usually be doing as tactical reading when exploring variations for the sake of a given aim.

What might be novel about my detailed description elsewhere is a) being so detailed and clear about what is the method for, AFAIK, the first time for go players (some have said that mine would be clearer than the one for chess players), b) stating and explaining the inherent and other major means of simplification clearly, c) being systematic for go players (rather than computer go theorists and prorgrammers with their different, algorithm-orientated simplification needs). Nothing is new, but having written down the theory clearly for go players is novel. Not even test reading is new, I would guess, but OTOH, I did not see it being mentioned in the go world before.

Brute force NEVER is good in practice. Regular reading is very much more restricted in reading volume than brute force with just some pruning.

Your suggestion towards shape and technique is very bad ALA you do not at least also include regular reading as central. The stronger I have become, the less useful shapes have become. For up to ca. 5 kyu, shapes are more useful as temporary means ALA knowledge and reading skill are still weak. Shapes are bad excuse not to read and verify assumptions. The major remaining use of shapes is early, familiar terminal positions with known status for known side conditions.

I do not buy it that go would be played at modest standard solely on shape principles. Those trying such all(!) fail because of making big beginner mistakes and failing to read at least the absolutely necessary simple variations.