The process of playing the move is not important, it is what future moves it enables (or disables). That is, we don't play something because it creates a keima, or windmill, or table shape, but because it enables us to enclose that group, to connect this or that way, or ensures that no opposing move can prevent us from forming an eye.

That is, yes, the board has no memory (almost, modulo ko rule), but the point is not the configuration of the stones but what follows from it. I think that this is not a question of absolutes (dynamic good, static bad) but of emphasis.

I believe conscious emphasis on the dynamic nature is important because static pattern recognition is easy. At least for me, in my development as a go player, it was quite an epiphany when I recognized where my disappointment came from when my static shapes didn't hold what I thought they promised: that I was running in almost pure pattern recognition mode and neglected to actually follow the future.

"yose" also refers to approach moves (on the boundary) in an approach ko. [...] it should be obvious that "yose" is not "endgame" because yose plays can be made at move 80 of a 200+ move game. And something the endgame devolves into a fight rather than peaceful boundary plays.

If that is all yose is about, then I agree with Bill that there is no difference between yose plays and endgame plays. Two phrases for the same.

However, in the course of reading some of these other opinions, I did have a feeling (a strong one actually) that number-itis was coming up again, and that was reinforcing my impression that numbers guys really are missing out on something useful.

Although I'm stepping into a minefield here, I'm also trying to get on the same wavelength, so I'll venture this analogy. Static go is rather like the "static" mathematics of algebra and geometry and trigonometry (AGT). Dynamic go would be like calculus.

It is dynamic because it uses verbs, that is words that describe function and change, i.e. go's equivalent of differentiation. It is my contention that the Oriental countries, through the function-stressing nature of their languages, have a head start on the "calculus of go", and that western players could help themselves bridge the gap by using a more function-stressing vocabulary.

"Bending round and keeping the opponent out of the centre" is implicit in the term magari for a Japanese-speaking go player - and VERY useful for thinking about the game both tactically and strategically. But for the average westerner, "magari" is not much different from saying "raspberry jam" or "gefurtel". It's just a label. So they miss out on the mindset that leads to go calculus.

I'm struggling to understand the supposed distinction between static and dynamic shape.

"Bending round and keeping the opponent out of the centre" is implicit in the term magari for a Japanese-speaking go player - and VERY useful for thinking about the game both tactically and strategically. But for the average westerner, "magari" is not much different from saying "raspberry jam" or "gefurtel". It's just a label. So they miss out on the mindset that leads to go calculus.

Sabaki サバキ

This is a verbal noun derived from the verb sabaku, meaning to cope, handle, deal with. Many go dictionaries do not recognise it as a go term. For example, Hayashi Yutaka, in his large encyclopaedia does not list the term, although he does give two proverbs: sabaki wa tsuke kara and sabaki yurusanu burasagari. The Seibundo Igo Annai glossary also omits the term.

The Nihon Ki-in's book of terms simply says: "Coping deftly so that one's stones do not stagnate." They give an example:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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

White, it says, needs a move at d4 to repair his thin shape. Simply playing there is gote (too slow). He does this best by playing b4, then if Black b5: d4, a4, g4. Coping deftly fits this perfectly. Note that White is playing in an area which he dominates, and is not really running away or playing lightly.

The Igo Club Go Encyclopaedia repeats the Nihon Ki-in definition but does not bother with an example diagram.

Books, or even book chapters, devoted to the topic are rare. However, in Hayago ni tsuyoku naru ho (How to become strong in fast games), Otake Hideo devotes a third of its space to a section headed "Techniques of sabaki." It is about moves such as White's b4 above rather than any grand concept. But as an introduction he says the following:

Sabaki is written with the character 捌き. It is a noun from sabaku but nowadays, as a technical term, it seems to be written only in katakana. Sabaku basically means "handling things well" or "resolving something disordered", and so in go too it is understood to mean similarly coping skilfully when stones are contending with each other.

Otake then goes on to say that it is an important aspect of playing fast games because it helps one (typically by handling a situation in sente, as in the Nihon Ki-in example) control the flow of the game.

So the Japanese seem ambivalent as to whether this is a technical term or not, let alone a major concept. Even if it is a concept, it is one on the vague level of (say) invading rather than aji - it is something you do rather than something you create or exploit. The basic meaning (coping deftly) is really rather simple - it is the array of techniques that is important.

Western players appear to have created a concept of their own, perhaps by confusion with shinogi (saving weak groups). The Go Almanac definition of sabaki, for example, is "Making light, flexible shape in order to save a group." More specifically, shinogi is (according to Hayashi) "making life, without incurring loss, for stones that are under attack". the Nihon Ki-in book uprates this to "without incurring loss or detrimentally affecting one's adjacent stones".

However, the pioneering English work Strategic Concepts of Go - still highly recommended - says "the meaning behind sabaki in Japanese is development" and that this carries over into go. This is an attempt to convey the implicit dynamism in the term. The examples given show that the compiler understood perfectly well what it means on the go board, but the word 'development' is perhaps best avoided because of confusion with other terms, especially nowadays when the Korean term haengma is often bandied about. SCG does, though, usefully make the point that there is a subdivision of sabaki called karui sabaki (light sabaki). Unlike shinogi, which requires no loss to be incurred, light sabaki can - and often does - accept some loss (i.e. sacrifice, which is a form of lightness).

Note that the concept is better known in shogi. Ito Sokan II was noted also for developing it as the art of opening up a game through exchanges to enhance the effectiveness of one's pieces. 'Development' might be the best term in that case.

Useful proverbs:

Sabaki wa tsuke kara - Sabaki often starts with a contact play
Sabaki yurusanu burasagari - The iron pillar descent does not allow sabaki

The English usage of make/achieve sabaki is not normal in Japanese, where the verb forms of sabaku are preferred. It is, however, possible to say sabaki o tsukeru.

© John Fairbairn & T Mark Hall (GoGoD), London 2008.

If you want to see the grassroots efforts to promote the obsession on shape go see the recent Reddit post on r/baduk where someone wants to compile a list of static shapes to make a counterpoint against beginners who prefer chess because all of the chess pieces have their own fun move patterns. https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments ... r/?sort=qa

------

And why do the Japanese get to borrow words from other languages and use them in the wrong way but Western Go players cannot do the same?

I cooked sabaki eggs this morning.

When I saw this thread, I first wanted to examine the premise. The shape page on Sensei’s Library has had links to pages about static and dynamic shape since at least 2017, so the idea of dynamic shape is certainly not unknown in the West. But John first brought up this topic, so far as I can tell, in May 2001, so he can be forgiven for thinking we’ve been slow to pick it up!

However, the idea of thinking of moves in a way that considers their “movement” isn’t new at all to the Western literature. The first go book I read was way Way of the Moving Horse, by Janice Kim, which uses the concept of haengma to introduce the reader to moving stones. And Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, one of the classics of Western go literature, talks about the way “the stones go walking.” So the question, in my mind, is not just whether Western go players have a vocabulary to talk about the movement of stones (they do), but whether that idea being part of the discussion of shape is particularly important.

And while I like the idea of “dynamic shape,” I don’t think the lack of it in the Western go literature is what’s been holding people back. Mainly because when I listen to strong players talk about shape, they clearly have the idea of “functional shape,” which I think is the most important part of the conversation. Perhaps they won’t call a move the “shape point” when it’s not a recognizable pattern (like Go Seigen), but they can still find a more efficient move when it doesn’t fit a standard repertoire of shapes. And, just as importantly, they will play a good move even if it makes “bad shape.”

Now, to the other question: does the greater number of analytical folks in Western go tend to lead to static over dynamic analysis? I wouldn’t think so. Certainly there are some prominent figures that tend to a more systematic approach than I’ve seen in book coming from Japan, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the systems they devise will only include static terms. Mathematics and other “analytical” disciplines are certainly broad enough to contain both static and dynamic concepts. I think of the relationships between numbers in a series, for instance, as an area where we see “movement” in math.

Now, where you may feel a gap, John, is that there may be some who seek a more precise definition in the terms that they use rather than the sometimes fuzzy terminology that seems to be suitable in at least some Asian uses. I think it was the same haengma discussion on SL that I linked above that mentioned difficulty in getting someone from Korea to give a firm definition of the term. What I imagine this may lead to is taking words that have unclear meanings, or sometimes do double duty, and using multiple words to describe the same concepts. That leaves it up to the players to re-synthesize the concepts that may have had some natural unity in an Asian language. This, perhaps, does affect the way that some players develop (language matters!), but I don’t see evidence that the synthesis doesn’t happen.

Well, the 80th item out of 200+ is not the final part of that series. So it is not the "end" by definition. A yose play and an endgame play may be the exact same play locally, but the difference is when they are played. Maybe this goes back to the original post -- seeing a (static) endgame play rather than a (dynamic) yose play.

But again, this is talking of yose in Japanese (boundary play) and not yose in English (might as well just say endgame).

If we were talking about Shogi it wouldn't be as much of an issue, since chess terms in the west have resulted in top-level chess. But go is a different game and it hasn't been proven in the west that our terminology can make you an igo world champion.

However, we don't just think in words but also, for example, images and I'd posit that visual thinking is more important in go than verbal thinking.