After wrestling with this decision for a long time overnight, I have decided to end this thread now. I do not blame anyone but myself, for being overambitious or overoptimistic. I'm sorry. It doesn't mean I'll stop contributing - in fact I have a biggish item on the stocks now that I can give more time to.

For those interested, I'll explain my decision. As I indicated in the very first line of the first thread, I had a strong hunch this would run into the sand. Sure enough, I started getting tennis umpire's neck, watching the ball being swatted back and forwards by the experts, with the added complication that I hate tennis. In addition, related threads sprang up and so the project was already spiralling out of control, in the sense that the non-numbers people were getting left behind.

I don't mean to imply that the comments or other threads are in any way negative, or unwelcome to me personally. I'm actually glad if I have had a part in inspiring this extra discussion. But I started this particular O Meien thread for the benefit of people like myself who find the standard quasi-mathematical approaches to the endgame daunting or mystifying. I had hoped that the combination of my own clumsy efforts to grope my way through OM's book and expert comment would somehow or other lead to some form of illumination. But what I noticed is that the experts soon started talking only to each other and that the mystified among us did not contribute much with questions. I suspect the mystified may also have been intimidated by 140 mph aces served by the experts to each other, or maybe they just don't read L19 (that I don't know, but I certainly do believe there are many of us out there). In addition, putting together the diagrams and the sumamries in a subject I barely understand is quite hard work. I can use my time more fruitfully. In all those circumstances I thought it best to "cut my losses" early in the game.

Life is full of almost polarised groups who never seem to be able to get even to first base with the other side, even where there is a will. Republicans and Democrats, religious people and atheists, games players and non-game players. There is also the group of numbers people and the rest of us. You often find that there are certain words or approaches that instantly switch off the lights in the brain of a person who is trying hard to understand a person of the polar opposite. The L-word in American politics is one example. With numbers, if you are a numbers person and are trying to explain something to the opposite side, I can tell you that you can know instantly you have failed, with people like me, if you hear yourself using words like, proof, logic, obvious, elegant, or if you are using phrases like "Another method is to ..." or "This is also called ..."

These are just ways of justifying or restating the numbers approach. That is the problem. What we need is a new approach altogether. It can be done. The book Freakonomics shows how it can be done and its huge success suggests there is a massive audience of people like me. The success of the series of XX for Dummies books is another indicator.

People like me are not very interested in the methods of handling numbers per se. It is not necessarily lack of ability, but often just lack of interest. In fact, we may even be able to cope reasonably well with numbers in a mechanical sort of way. In terms of grades, I did well in mathematics at school, and I even took extra qualifications in engineering mathematics once I was employed (as a way of helping me as a technical translator). But mathematical methods have about as much passion for me as the equally mechanical act of brushing my teeth. That is not meant as a criticism, nor am I trying to pick on numbers people - they just happen to be the relevant people here. Elsewhere I am, for example, bored stiff by conjurers but I can sense how skilled they are. I can't understand what goes through a wine connoisseur's mind but I'm gald he's happy when he's pontificating. In art "I know what I like" and it's often not what other people like.

I happen to believe that OM is a numbers person and that he too was unable in this book to communicate with a non-numbers audience. I understand all his words but understand little of his meaning. You may recall that I began the thread by quoting a position from near the back of his book before going into detail about his counting method. That is symptomatic of my belief that, if, as I suspect, a large portion of his intended audience was meant to be non-numbers people, he got the structure of his book completely the wrong way round. I was hoping that discussion here would help me do some re-structuring.

As I say, I have decided I was too optimistic. I apologise again to those who began the brief journey with me. I hope the other resulting discussions will continue and bear fruit. I will continue to read them. I understand little of them, but one of my passions is seeing how other minds work. If someone else can come up with a Boundary Plays for Dummies, I will be first in line to read it.

The aim of the game depends on the score. Therefore the minimally necessary effort is to count the score when the endgame is over after an imagined move-sequence. A more modest approach is to imagine a short move-sequence leading to a more or less stable endgame position and to count the score for it with assumed peacefully average border lines at the then remaining boundary play regions (like nobis to the edge in the middle of a mutual hane-and-connect shape).

To find better endgame, you need to test several likely move-sequences, count the score after each of them and choose the move-sequence leading to the greatest counted score (in your favour).

This is about the least number-involved method (except for intuitive guessing of who might be ahead after some imagined move-sequence).

In practice, mentally storing and reusing scores of fixed parts of the position while only altering dynamic scores of still active parts might provide a shortcut but already involves the effort of calculation sums of natural numbers, i.e., more than one number per imagined move-sequence.

I am sorry to hear that, John. I hope that you will reconsider, and go at least as far as OM's treatment of sente. In terms of concepts, that was the most significant aspect of the book, IMHO. )



I regard the related threads as supplemental. If they are mostly for numerical types, that does not take away the value of the OM threads for the non-numerical types.



Except for a few papers, my intended audience on these matters has always been regular go players. For the most part, the math is middle school math: Add, subtract, multiply, divide.

I am reminded of my efforts to bring some mathematical go ideas to regular go players on Sensei's Library. Things seemed to me to be going pretty well, until mathematically minded players noticed the lack of rigor in my material, and either edited it to their satisfaction or asked mathematical questions that I felt I had to answer.

The thing is, this material always has two audiences, at least in the West. It is a challenge to satisfy both. But I think that it is important to do so.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Bill, we're still waiting for you to write the comprehensive endgame textbook...

I'm sorry to hear of John's decision to abandon ship, and I don't really get it. Despite the banter among the number crunchers, it doesn't seem to me as if the discussion has got off the topic of O Meien's method. It seems pretty clear that numbers and their kin are going to crop up when discussing boundary plays and I've enjoyed many of the attempts by the numbers crew to present them palpably.

As far as go wisdom goes, I reckon myself to the piglets. I would rather learn to sniff than calculate what the biggest endgame moves are, but I did also make a few squeeks, and I'm certainly willing to listen to what the wols have to say.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I was definitely learning from the book, but I understand that you may not want to continue, as it did seem like a lot of work to put each thread together.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Same as Dusk Eagle. Still, the thread did point out to me that I have been miscalculating even very simple endgame moves.
If I wasn't asking question it's cause I already understood.