A friend of mine and me are both roughly equally strong but our styles are completely different from eachother.

My friend is very strong at reading long and deep sequences, but I'm much stronger at direction of play.

So I was wondering, what do you think is more important?
Reading deeply, or direction of play?
(and please don't say both, that'd be pointing out the obvious)

I would say direction of play, if I have to choose. It's impact is always global and deep reading very often have only local implications.
However, IMO if you're very bad at one of this two, no matter how strong you're in other, you can't expect good result.

I'm somewhat surprised by the question. I thought direction of play was reading long deep sequences (in the opening or early middle game, rather than in a L&D).

Well, according to "The Direction of Play," direction of play is about the stones that are currently on the board. You look at what the current stones imply about which part of the board is most important then you play in that area.

Deep reading is the exact opposite. You envision what stones will exist on the board and where the game is progressing from there. This requires educated guesses, but direction of play is only based on what already has been played, so there is no guess work.

If you use these together then you become very strong in the opening and mid game, but the OP is asking which is stronger on its own.

In my mind, deep reading is stronger. I read "The Direction of Play" and now am decent (for my rank) at that, but from my understanding only practice and patience will make your reading better.

_________________
"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

Reading.

Did you look at the diagrams in Direction of Play? When Kajiwara says that the stones "imply" this or that, he's talking about reading out sequences up to forty moves deep.

I read exactly the opposite. The forty move sequence is mentioned merely to prove the idea.

The whole point of direction of play is to understand what is going to happen or should happen - without reading.

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Reading and strategy are equally important. Direction of region to play in and direction in which stones move or cooperate are specific strategic concepts. There are many strategy concepts. Reading applies to each of them and to other aspects. Otherwise, strategic concepts are mainly part of strategy. For these reasons, reading is much more important than direction.

There are high amateur dan players whose direction of play is below average, but whose reading is superb. AFAIK, there are no high amateur dan players whose reading is below average.

This suggests that reading is more important than direction of play. But what do we mean by reading? If we mean the conscious calculation of variations, then, IMO, it is not so important. Reading, as I understand it, involves also seeing and judgement. Unlike Monte Carlo gobots, humans do not read games to the end, but stop before the end and evaluate the resulting positions. The better you are able to see possibilities and to evaluate them, the better your reading will be.

Also, IMO, the payoff from learning direction of play is greater than that from reading, for the effort invested. Bruce Wilcox's EZGo concepts have allowed kyu players to advance up to 4 stones in a couple of weeks. When Sakata was a little kid, his teacher, Masubuchi, would set up whole board problems and ask him where he would play. He would tell her and she would pat his head. Not that Sakata never studied hard reading problems, but he started out with a good understanding of the direction of play.

The following is from John Fairbairn's translation of Jowa's Advice. ( viewtopic.php?f=15&t=7508 ). It seems to me to tell against spending much time calculating variations.

"There are both right and wrong ways to study. If you aspire to the right way you will improve. If you aspire to the wrong way you will deteriorate.

"The wrong way refers to being profoundly greedy. Greed refers a way of playing which arises by trying to discover moves that are hard to see and thus drawing things out. They are moves you will not see, unless you know them, no matter how much you think about them. Therefore, the more you play this way the more you deteriorate.

"The right way refers to not being profoundly greedy. That skill lies in concentrating on a way of playing in which you play faster. When you play quickly, there is no time for greed to emerge. If greed does not emerge, the way you playing will be better and you will progess to the next stage."

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Reading long sequences is primarily useful in the endgame. Lee Changho has said that he reads "hundreds of moves deep" and is very strong at the endgame. Cho Hunhyun his teacher eventually adopted strategies to end the game early with big dead groups to try to compete and Lee SeDol is well known for his early endings, of course they were all at different stages in their careers, so it is difficult to say one strategy(of reading) was better than another. Though Cho Chikun seemed to think that Lee's style wouldn't last.

Reading.

Modern pro: You are dragging things out. Play 10 minutes absolute. 10 games in 3 hours!

Jowa: You are dragging things out. Try to finish your game before sunset.

My answer is 100% reading.

If you can't punish overplays, you aren't strong. If your opponents can cut with impunity, you aren't strong.

This is why kyu KGS'ers find Tygem so uncomfortable. Those kids are literally playing a different game. "What happens if I cut here?" Not, "Well go theory tells me to play here."

Finally, a disclaimer: I think my reading is plodding and below average.

_________________
- Brady
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Heh...

I am not strong enough to answer this with any authority, but my current line of thinking leads me to the statement that it might depend on what level you ar at. If we assume that for weak(er) players general strategy and direction of play trumps reading, and for the strong(er) player the other way around, there should be a level at which it 'flips'. I am not sure exactly what level it is at (probably stronger than european 5d, judging by what RJ says) - but I really have no clue.

I would assume that, since you ask this question, you must be well below that level - which makes me suspect that the answer for you is: direction of play.

Which conveniently brushes aside the whole issue of 'learn the right way to begin with and you won't have to go through the pain of unlearning' - since this depends on your goals and abilities. Do you think you will ever reach the level at which concepts like 'direction of play' will become obsolete? If not, you might be safe just learning it.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

In "The Direction of Play", Kajiwara clearly looks to the stones first, decides which direction (area) to play in, or from which side to play to take advantage of a weakness indirectly, etc.

However, the moves he chooses are always backed up by at least some reading, usually quite a bit of it. Principles are important, but they are heuristics. The more you can use your reading skills to 'prove' the heuristics in question, in actual play, the better.

There are examples in the book of mistakes made not in direction, but in placement. The reason is always insufficient preparation (reading) and anticipation (more reading).

On the other hand, you can read out a perfect sequence in the wrong direction and still come out at a disadvantage.

Despite my obsession with this subject, my vote goes out to reading. It truly is the basis for all go tactics and strategy, and all the proverbs in the world will not help you win if your opponent is proficient in it, and may even lead you astray.

That's not an exaggeration, especially if one is starting at plodding bumpkin level. The more time goes by and advice I see, the more I think Wilcox was underestimated. Maybe because of some politics because he was not a pro.

When I say stuff like, "all of modern go theory is worth maybe 2 stones" I'm really thinking post-Wilcox EZGo level. It is as if I am taking it as a given that all players should have Wilcox's tools in their bag whether they learned them from Wilcox or some other equivalent way. Unfortunately, not all do.

Seriously, you can pick that stuff up in a day. It's well worth the time and money. Bill's two weeks is so you can get in the games to practice it...

The only drawback is that it's kind of a 1-time bump. That and things like getting ahead (which Guo Juan claims is worth 5 stones if it's new to you!) are great, but then the easy gains start to dwindle as one faces the spectre of limited reading...

As your friend and you are both roughly the same strength, have you answered your own question?

_________________
be immersed

Why didn't I think of that?

_________________
"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

Reading is the most important skill in the sense that if your reading is strong enough, you don't need other skills. (That's not my phrasing. It comes from Yuan Zhou, but I like it.) But no one's reading is perfect. Even computers can't exhaustively check all variations in anything but the very late endgame. That's why we have proverbs and joseki books and other lore. It's to help us make some kind of choices in situations where reading is not possible.

Most beginners can barely read at all. So for them, big benefits can be gained by using proverbs and understanding some rules of thumb. Direction of play is one of those things.

But as Bill pointed out, there aren't exactly a lot of 7-dans kicking around that struggle with 10-kyu tsumego. (But there are 10-kyus that can answer 7-dan opening problems.) Most of the gap between 10-kyu and pro is reading. But human reading is not like computer reading. We don't consider the following and then read out bazillions of variations to the end of the game:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W Read it out...?
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . X . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
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$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

You never know. This might be the best move.

So reading includes choosing better candidate moves, and so it assumes some knowledge of go theory. For that reason, it's possible to argue that reading is inseparable from knowledge, at least in humans. Studies in chess at least show that stronger players choose better candidate moves when reading. They prune the tree better, so much better that they often don't even have to go deeper and would rather spend time judging the end result of some options.

But they can go deeper if it's needed.

Brute-force reading is helpful or even necessary in some constrained situations. Ladders, enclosed life & death, some critical cuts and connections, for example. Because of the nature of go, it is often the case that mistakes in those situations are especially costly.

So when I say reading is more important, I can only say human reading, which is informed by good knowledge and infected by bad knowledge at the same time.

To me I think reading is more important, but fundamentals are the most important. Fundamentals like good shape, attacking and defending, solid play, and the direction of play together are most of go. You combine reading and fundAmentals to play. Fundamentals is what seperates humans from bots, we can effectively play good moves without reading, or reduce our reading to many times less branches. Imagine reading 1000 moves for each move, but having no clue about what lines to start with. Compare that to a pro who reads 100 moves.