A thing I have wondered lately is if it's really necesary to give reasons to all the moves verbally while playing, I mean, when playing saying in your thinking "I will tenuki this because it's unimportant and humm... That side looks big" affects the play while you are doing it, or if playing one just has to go with the feeling sometimes or just read without thinking and if it looks good just play it.

A lot of good players say that you should give reasons of why you played something, but a lot of players really do that after playing the game, not while doing it, so it's a little weird on that side, I guess there is nobody that really plays without really thinking, but for example a lot of strong players can play blitz and still do strategy around it.

My question comes at the fact that some intuition things are easier to do if you don't think while really doing it, for example, writing on a keyboard as a typer comes as an easy thing if you do it without thinking, but if you start thinking on where is exactly every letter in the keyboard or if you write looking at the keyboard you get a little more sloppy.

Any opinions?

Usually those things involve muscle memory and rapidly executed maneuvers where the activities you're aiming to accomplish are the sort that are straightforward to accomplish once technique has been appropriately implemented.

I think it's doubtful that Go falls under that category. It may be true that you can think yourself out of making 'proper' moves when those moves really are proper. Most activities that involve elaborate planning allow for the possibility of falling into this trap. However, in Go many many situations are fine-grained in a way that makes it such that very small differences can greatly affect the optimal move. So I suspect the benefits of thinking things explicitly through outweigh the risks of thinking yourself out of good moves.

The psychology of go is incredibly comprehensive. Unlike chess, go more actively uses both hemispheres of the brain. You are doing more than just logical reasoning when you play go - your brain is also trying to be creative.

I do think there is something to be said for playing a move because it "looks right." Often times this is not a bad move to play. On top of that, after playing go for enough time, your brain will come up with moves based more on experience and previous board positions that you have seen than based on your overall analysis of the board. If you have ever studied the opening, for example, you might find that you instinctively want to play on the largest side of the board before you even consciously think "this side of the board is the largest."

And finally, you don't analyze every move on the board or even every common candidate move before you make every move. In the opening, for example, the choice to enclose vs. approach is often more about feeling at the moment than about which move is what you believe to be technically correct.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I previously but briefly tried using checklists, or verbally reasoning my move choices. Each time I aborted quickly; I ended up talking myself into bad moves that were against my instincts but fulfilled some arbitrary cache of half-proverbs.

A friend of mine had a road block around 3k for what I think were similar reasons: In a review I said: "This looks like a mistake, I would prefer to play here". He asked, "what proverb/piece of strategy advises you to play there?" And I couldn't say anything that wasn't painfully post-hoc. "I like the continuations better".

(He had a long list of proverbs that backed up his move choice).

_________________
Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Surely the problem there is having the wrong reasons?

It is not obvious to me that we can verbally reason all of our important go thinking by default.

My personal experience felt to the contrary. So- if our reasoning is happening off screen and then we are post-hoc verbalising it, why post-hoc verbalise it?

_________________
Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

In my opinion, both reasons and intuition are valid for identifying moves to consider. But these must be verified by reading out ssequences.

_________________
be immersed

Um it's important to have reasons about where you move, but don't over think it. Basically just read, choosing one move or direction over another I think should be primarily based on reading. The foundation of strategy is based on reading. I almost never verbally think to myself during games (or at least I'm not aware of it).




Intuition is good for thinking about initial moves, but once you thought of them you should tried to read out continuations especially if it's a complicated situation. "That side looks bigger than the other" is kind of a cop out from actual reading and counting. Same with thinking "my group is weak and I need another move" if you don't read how weak the group actually is. Of course I'm guilty of this as well.

Good play, whether created by reasoning, subconscious or creative decision making, reading or positional judgement, can (almost) always be explained by reasoning. If a creative choice is made among several equally good moves, then a related reasoning chooses one of the possible best moves. Reading and positional judgement do not contradict reasoning, but reading and positional judgement are an integral part of reasoning, which must verify and explain the low level decisions by reading and positional judgement.

If some players make decisions for themselves by their subconscious thinking, then other players with a profound knowledge of reasoning can (almost always) provide the appropriate reasoning for the other players' decisions. I say almost always, because of limitations of thinking time or already available research results about reasoning; where knowledge is not available, one must have sufficient thinking time to enhance the knowledge of reasoning.

Reasoning must rely on mighty knowledge of good and correct principles, concepts, values and formulas. The limitations or side conditions of such theory must be understood. Of course, half-true proverbs do not belong to such knowledge.

Needless to say, if thinking time allows it, I always decide by reasoning, which relies on mighty knowledge of good and correct theory, reading and positional judgement. Where my knowledge is still incomplete, I enhance it by further study or research.

Reasoning includes knowledge of how to dissolve seemingly contradicting reasons by applying priorities and side conditions, which specify when or when not to apply a particular piece of theory.

Reasoning and theory work despite using parameters, such as "an important group", "a valuable region" or "almost equal". As long as a parameter can be fulfilled clearly, there is no problem. When a parameter is ambiguous, check the side conditions; if their determination is ambiguous, override a piece of theory by more general theory. E.g., if it is unclear if a region is "valuable", use positional judgement to determine its value.

E.g., players inexperienced or lazy with reasoning might complain "The theory is bad because I cannot determine if this region is valuable.". Experienced players determine, or learn how to determine and then determine, it.

The question is not whether to apply reasoning but how to fill knowledge gaps for a more complete understanding of reasoning.

Seems very likely that is one reason he was stuck (there are probably other reasons, too.)
Out of curiosity, did you or your friend get a high-dan or pro opinion on that move (and the variations)?

I parenthesized "verbally" as it is optional.
We can also approach this question from another angle:
if someone asks you (during the game or in the review),
"Why did you play here?" and you cannot give a reason, any reason at all,
then I think it's not very good.

Currently I'm teaching a lot of beginners. And during teaching games I often ask them why they played a certain move. When they can't give me reason, they have to take back the move. But I won't judge whether the reason was good or bad (only after the game).

So even if you decide on a move by intuition/shape/joseki memory/etc, you should be able to give a proper (in-game) reason when asked.

I see two problems with this:

First, I see no problem with playing moves based on feelings when you are first starting out. When teaching someone I will often ask them for reasoning on their moves, but I never ask them to take it back unless the move was a blatant mistake (usually I even wait for them to realize it themselves) and I never demand that they do - if they want to keep playing I really respect that. Sometimes even if the move was a mistake I don't ask them to take it back, but if they want to I will let them.

Second, this process would seem to have a lot of selection bias unless you question every single move. Do you only question moves that you wouldn't play? What if they are playing strictly in imitation of you and they have no idea why a move is good or bad? For example: Would you ask them about this move?

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . W . . . . . , . . . . . 1 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . 3 . . . |
$$ | . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

And if they said "I don't know, I guess I just felt it was good..." would you seriously have them take it back?

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Well, I don't ask them on every move. When they tenuki in on a local fight, make awkward attachments or so. And often I ask, when they play good moves. And of course I don't force them to take the move back. Mostly I ask what their move does and wait until they find any reason.

In your example I might ask if it's one of their first games expecting the answer "I want the corner. Territory is easier to make in the corner."

Example 1:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . O . 1 . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . O . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ --------------------[/go]

Me: "Why did you play ?"
Sudent: "To seperate your stones."
Me: "Ok."

Example 2:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ | . . X . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . X . . . . . .
$$ | . . 1 a . O . . O .
$$ | . . . b . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .
$$ ----------------------[/go]

Me: "Why did you play ?"
Student: "To secure the corner."
Me: "And why not 'a' or 'b'?"
Student: "..."

I'd agree for the most part, but what struck me about what you said was that he was stopping at the point of "proverb says play the hane at the head of two" and not doing the reading to confirm or deny this. Outside of what's being discussed, this would start seriously limiting your go after a while I think.

There is a difference between feeling a move is good and then searching a reason for that or if you first search the best reason and then decide the move.

I'm sure a stronger player could convince a weaker player with a good *sounding* reason that a bad move is good or that a good move is bad.

All in all there are proverbs and knowledge for everything. Which of those applies depends 100% on the concrete position. The "only" value of all the strategies is caused by the fact that people cannot read out the concrete situation good enough.

I think it's different to evaluate with the language itself, verbalizing the situation, to evaluate the situations with a go mindset, without speaking really, just by looking or reading what is going on, like using the go experience to evaluate what's going on. I think a lot of people can give reasons about the moves in a very verbally mode, but my question is if that verbally process goes on while playing or one evaluates without so many words by just intuition (for example one can say that the cut may affect the other group while explaining, but one may have readed that the cut makes the other group encircled and without really saying "Oh that cut looks bad, because i don't have eyes and I have few liberties, and I can't sacrifice it to gain that because it cost much more" he will defend it.)

For example, in fightings a lot of people counts liberties, I'm finding myself most of the time trying to read the fighting rather to count liberties, but those are two aproaches, one more statiscally than factually, the thing is that if you do both you may improve i think.

Anyway, today teaching a guy Atari Go, he set up a ladder with his first move after a few plays when he was suggested that he needed to reinforce first before trying to capture (it was awesome seeing such a new player extending from a crosscut), the proverb says "From a crosscut, extend", but we all know that is not true everytime, in this situation it was good because he set up the ladder, my observation was that as he did made that move without knowing the consequences but it was the proper move... There are a lot of moves that we also make that have strong consequences and we don't really know them, we just make our reasoning without words or by reading (the language of go itself), so maybe verbalizing is a important part on all that (this is for sdk players, not dan players ).

Personally, I play better when I keep a running narrative in my head. Something like: "If I approach, white will have to defend or run out. Hmm, I don't have much room to profit in a chase. Ok, let me try to build up the other side first...my group's a little weak, but it should be fine, let's go back to the other corner. Oh! He defended! I thought for certain he'd run out. Do I seal him in? No, that area still isn't the most interesting, let's reinforce the other group, that's bigger..."

As others have noted, tactics deserve reading, and your subconscious seems rather adept at finding moves, but semi-verbal thought helps me stay focused on the whole board. It isn't even necessarily explicitly strategic musings, just keeping track of why we got to the board position so I don't get caught trying to save sacrificed stones or running out in a way that hurts another group.

It usually annoys my opponents, and gives away my plans that I was hoping they might otherwise overlook.

There's certainly evidence that the process of recalling and verbalize traits of crime suspects by witnesses can affect their memory of the event, and that they have a more accurate recollection of the event and perpetrator prior to verbalizing it. It wouldn't surprise me if the act of verbalizing a reason for a move changes your perception of a move for better or for worse. I know I have certainly talked myself out of moves that are the best move in a given position and were my initial feeling in exchange for inferior ones in the past.