Positional judgement has often been cited as a skill that certain players have, Cho Chikun and Yi Changho for example. I wonder if there have been any specific strategies to counter positional judgement skills, much as there have been many strategies to counter strong local reading. Also I expect that a player who was good at counting would intentionally obfuscate and make counting harder, are there any especially good ways to make counting more difficult?

I would have to guess that one of the hardest to count is when there are many groups which are not completely alive but almost impossible to kill. With such groups it is really hard to know how much territory they will final cover.

So I think that if you don't settle shapes and have lots of small fights it will be very difficult for most people.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Do you work from a template for these posts, Smooth? Have you noticed that every time, people just scratch their heads and say "that doesn't make sense?"

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Occupy Babel!

I would think you want to attack this from the other direction...If you make a position that is hard to count, then the person who has better counting skills will be better off (because they will be more accurately counting a difficult position). Instead if you make a position that is easy to count, you can both count accurately, and their skill is not a major advantage.

Sure, I agree that complexity would play into the hand of the better counter.

It's kinda the same with reading... If someone read better than you, instead of trying to make the situiation too hard for him, it's a better idea to just make it easy for you

My impression is that SmoothOper has a healthy portion of skepticism that walking the beaten path is the best way to get somewhere, and although his shortcuts may lead him deep into the woods he seems perfectly content with what he finds there. For every beehive he steps in, there's probably some honey, and when he comes to a river, there are probably some fish.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Wrong. Every player do a positional judgment many times through a whole game. So marking Cho Chikun or Yi ChangHo as examples (which means you think it is something extremely rare) is just showing how strong your ignorance is about the subject.



No. Positional judgment is just a judgement you do during a game. This groups is weak, this is strong, there is a weaknes, there is a wall, ok then, natural flow of a game is right there, I should play in that direction, and in this kind of position I can try to achieve that. End of story. How would you like to interrupt your opponent's thinking, hmm?



Boom! The wheel discovered again!
This is the proof that you should play more, get stronger and than think again about all thing you write about.
It is so obvious that any player will complicate things if he see it as a chance to win a game...

"(...)Are there any special good ways to make counting more difficult?" Yes. Put a stones in a special order...
And more serious answe would be: Complicate a game. How? Invade. Fight. Cut. Read as far as you can. Threat five groups at once. How to do it? Play more games, watch pro games, do tsumego, do tesuji, gain experience, become stronger. This is the way.

SmoothOper, please answer what do you think a positional judgement is? What is a definition you use which force you to ask such strange looking questions?

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Tsumego/Tesuji apps for iPad, iPhone & Android devices:http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7511

No player who is good at obfuscation would wi||ingly reveal his tricky tactics. However, perhaps this post may prove enlightening should you have the mental fortitude to plumb its depths and decipher whatever crypts may lurk!

Do you think is possible to convolute a position without actually knowing how to properly calculate the positions value, if so I imagine at a certain level of convolution, no one could count the territory, until very near the end. Maybe this is the risk aspect that Yi Sidol, is so famous for.

It does not become much more complicated than requiring (partial) quiescence of the active fights: read to get a quiet position, for which a count can be determined.

I think the issue is that any inability to count the position comes from difficult reading the position. And the advantage is not that your opponent can't count, but that he can't read the sequence of moves that he needs to avoid losing ground.

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Occupy Babel!

I was thinking more along the lines of combinations of sequences leading to a scenario where even if they were read correctly, someone may miss a sente point here or there.

...then they're not reading correctly?

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Occupy Babel!

See if you don't count then you read wrong