Nice video, however it gives the impression that stones only influence the region between themselves and the nearest side walls, while the situation in the center remains unaffected. This (IMHO) makes it completely useless for understanding what is going on in a real game of Go. For the latter I recommend not to rely on simplified visualizations but to dare the jump into the cold water as soon as possible.

BTW the last white move seems quite questionable for me as it is already a kind of "invasion" played close to black's strength while there are still many big and urgent open points elsewhere.

I actually wonder, after years of playing, do you actually see some form of visualization like the above? I mean obviously, it may be more nuanced and complicated, but in its' essence, is this a good approximation?

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, not really like that. It's too dependent on the stones around it, in a sense. That 3-4 & 5-3 shimari, for example, could still lose the corner territory depending on the global situation. With experience, I've found I get a stronger picture not of what's settled or claimed, but of what isn't, and as I get stronger, I see more that isn't claimed because this and that bit of aji combine to give a good endgame reduction, or a choice to invade if I can do X, Y, and Z first by using the aji on this side of the board.

Don't get me wrong, I see regions of territory influence too. However, this is pretty general, in the sense of drawing lines between the stones with an undestanding of when they are strong and when they are weak, and I don't use it much except to decide on a point to play to reduce, or to count the score and estimate who has more potential. I think it's dangerous to rely on this solely, because given a sufficiently large region (not always as big as you think), there is so much scope for action. I.e. don't count your chickens before they've hatched.

I think it's more useful to get a good sense of which groups are strong and which are not. Then follow the proverb: play away from strength.

Ah! Thanks for the feedback!

I'm just testing out this visualisation just to gauge whether it can get close to maybe 10% of what an experienced Go player sees. Maybe it'll not even get close to that, but I'll just try and share it, just in case anyone wants to have a look at it.

For a beginner, at least it's good to get them to look at the territory and regions of influences rather than on capturing stones.

Hi All,

Based on the Malaysian Weiqi association book, I created a simple video mainly for myself to visualize how the stones affect the board.

I might try to update this as I learn more about Go. Still, I think it might be useful for beginners, so enjoy.

I have no idea how to represent how the stones would exert influence in the middle

So … we need more colours, and more (and clear) definitions of the states of stones to correlate the colours to?

I’ve read the term “heat” for some Go situations, but have not yet understood what exactly it’s about … but … if we would give unconditionally alive groups one colour (shade), and then similarly and successive with those n-alive groups, even more colours (resp. colour shades) for aji, and for unconditionally dead stones, etc., would we get closer to some more realistic visualisation, a … heatmap or something?

As a beginner, first understand connection and life. Influence depends on them. To simplify even further, mark the living stones. These stones generate influence and the HOW is their life, so this is a simplified but possible way to represent it.

In principle, influence is not limited in its directions. If you really need to show impact on other intersections, apply my definitions http://senseis.xmp.net/?NConnection and http://senseis.xmp.net/?NAlive for each intersection and there for each player, but this is above your beginner level.