daal: Yes, O's book is only in Japanese, but I've talked about it enough here that people who don't read Japanese beyond a few basic go characters can probably glean a lot from it.
I think you and I may be the type who lose the will to live when we have to look at numbers - I certainly am. But if you ignore all the excitable froth that the numbers people emit when they engage with the topic, there are some useful elements there. I just ignore anything that's not basic arithmetic and reduce everything else to couch-potato go. I only want people to show me how to operate the remote.
But just as you need to learn how to switch the tv on, to know where the spare remote batteries are, and to sit in the right place, e.g. out of the sun's glare, so there are a few pointers that couch-potato go players need to bear in mind.
1. When we count a position it's useful to see it all from one side (usually Black's). So we count + for Black's territories and - for White's. That way we end up with one figure (positive or negative) instead of two. For couch potatoes that's a 100% efficiency gain. But, while that is easy enough to understand, it can feel a bit unnatural for non-number types, so a bit of practice until it does feel natural is a good thing.
2. The value of a position ("how much territory have we each got?") is a different thing from the value of a move (what is the biggest next to play?) These are related but that's a posh level - pommes-frites go - so we could ignore the relationship. If we follow the traditional ways of counting territory, the relationship is far from intuitive for couch potatoes and so we do ignore it. But O's way of counting territory makes the relationship maybe not easy to understand but certainly easy to apply - basically divide by 2. So just as it's good for real couch potatoes to get exercise, we can learn to divide by 2 - our equivalent of the walk to the fridge.
3. We could stop there, but again with O's method it's so easy to try a few more steps. Here's one. How much territory do we count for Black in the corner?
(;AB[rp][rq][rr][rs][pq][nq]AW[qk][qm][qo][ro][so][sq][ss]SZ[19])
It's not 5. He gets 5 points if he plays t4, of course, but we've already established that we can only assume he has a 50-50 chance of playing t4. But his territory is not worth 2.5. If the white stone on t1 was at t2, the answer would indeed by 2.5. But in this position, a White play at t4, which leaves a possible move for both sides at t3. But you will notice that this is then essentially the same position as earlier in the thread, and we already know that here that Black's territory in this new position, in the extreme corner, is then 1 point. As O says, "Once that is understood, the rest is mere calculation. From the formula: (5 + 1) ÷ 2 we derive an answer of 3 points."
These are positions with a "follow-up." As you can see, the difference is just half a point here, though there are times when it could be more. You can make a judgement for yourself whether follow-ups are infrequent enough to ignore and/or, even if they are not infrequent, to ignore them anyway. Number lovers, like Syphonapterists, like to talk about follow-ups to follow-ups and so on, or as Jonathan Swift (of Gulliver's Tales) has it: "So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet, in his kind, Is bit by him that comes behind." Follow-up calculations tend to end in sixteenths and such monstrosities.
My recommendation would be to ignore follow-ups for a while until you are at home with the method, and then add just one level of follow-up. This not only saves on flea powder but it also accords with O Meien's advice not to worry about the sixteenths.
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daal
That is, you calculated the value of the move and then used that to find the value of the position. The value of the position is the place to start with understanding all of this.