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 Post subject: Tsumego concepts
Post #1 Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2022 4:55 pm 
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Among other things, the thread
https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=18569
has encouraged me to think about concepts on tsumego, one of the most fuzzy and difficult parts of Go to play correctly.

The below is a draft of some ideas. It might not make that much sense.

There are general proverbs sich as hane, vital point, cut. And I tended to just memorise shapes to know their status and correct move.

Probably there isn't much better, but there should still be a list of some tactics from level 0 onwards, even if we know the full list is infinite. Tactical reading tsumego is probably the area in Go most like Chess.

I may add diagrams later.

Board positions (neighbours and type based)
0. Combinations of the below where one type is a follow up to another type.
1. An entrance point where both sides have solid stones adjacent. In general, a cutting/connection point for both sides. (The attacker can connect to defender's eyespace thereby breaking it, the defender can connect two boundary areas)
2. A cutting move that isolates at least one chain, thereby ensuring that other spaces adjacent to it cannot become an eye.
3. A cutting move that reduces the liberties of all adjacent opponent chains (both current and potential future chains).
4. A ponnuki (or other capturing shapes) isn't connected without the centre point and it takes several more moves to turn it into a solid eye. If the ponnuki must be connected, that costs a liberty.
5. Atari seal and variants are when a group is almost connected to another group (or just the outside) but only via one stone in a bottleneck. The opponent can cut that stone from the group even if the cutting stone dies and use the shortage of liberties to atari block the bottleneck from the other group. Due to 4, the bottleneck remains unconnected, and though it is ko, the opponent capture the bottleneck tends to still be a big move, making it a heavy ko.
6. Diagonal moves tend to help both notches at once. The centre of a farmers hat or cross five tends to be very big even if not all the arms are complete yet since it sets up multiple options. Claiming a bottleneck allows conquer and divide. When attacking, even if you can't save the bottleneck stone, you might still get seki.
7. Instead of playing solidly, adjacent to your support, if you have two close enough supports, it may be more severe to jump in the middle with a miai connection to each support.
8. If your opponent has a weak chain, you have additional influence over its liberties since they eventually threaten to capture the group, giving you more liberties. These can act as supports to allow you to play more deeply.

Strategy (goal based)
0. If your opponent is threatening your weak point with a weak group, consider attacking their weak group before defending.

Semeai (maxims)
0. Block your opponent from playing where there are more liberties and strengthen your weaker surrounding stones by driving them against your stronger groups until they have nowhere to run (or you have gained enough from the forcing). Attacking with diagonal moves, one space jumps or knight's moves is often the fastest way to seal and the cutting points won't be an immediate problem if your opponent's group is weaker than your own. If you have enough liberties and local support, elephant jumps and larger loose nets may be playable.
--
Can the complexity of a go problem be measured in terms of such concepts rather than just the raw variation tree?


Last edited by dhu163 on Mon Feb 14, 2022 2:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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 Post subject: Re: Tsumego concepts
Post #2 Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2022 11:42 pm 
Judan

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dhu163 wrote:
Can the complexity of a go problem be measured in terms of such concepts rather than just the raw variation tree?


As I have explained in [17] for go problems that are capturing races and cannot be solved only by the theory of numbers and types of liberties, the frequencies of problems are as follows:

66% Tactical reading (its method, submethods and decision-making)

17% Tactical reading + Liberties

7% Tactical reading + Techniques

4% Tactical reading + Liberties + Techniques

5% Tactical reading + Counting points

In non-semeai problems, the Liberties (theory of numbers and types of liberties) hardly occur but otherwise I expect similar relative percentages.

Most of what you discuss belongs to Techniques and is most of what traditional teaching disucsses while the omnipresent Tactical reading is often hopelessly under-represented compared to the actually NECESSARY and MANDATORY numbers of tactical variations and their decision-making.

Tactical reading has two major types: a) Yes / No problems (such as "unconditionally alive in sente with maximum points difference"), b) different possible outcomes (including sente, sacrifices, more local points versus more influence or less remaining aji, seki, ordinary ko capture-first Black, 1-step approach ko, bent-4 etc.), which must be compared and of which several might be correct depending on the global context.

Then Tactical reading of type (a) has two major types of decision-making: 1) it is sufficient to find at least one correct answer, 2) it is mandatory to refute all options as failures. Depending on which variation subtree is explored, iterative decision-making can result in different numbers of variations whose reading is mandatory because both types of decision-making are involved and some subtrees allow other pruning of optional variations. Nevertheless, for all subtrees one can conclude the minimum number of variations whose reading is mandatory. In type (2) problems, these numbers are much larger than traditional teaching conveys, also because lazy traditional teaching shows much larger percentages of (a) and (1) problems than occur in real games.

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 Post subject: Re: Tsumego concepts
Post #3 Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2022 4:06 am 
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dhu163 wrote:

Strategy (goal based)
0. If your opponent is threatening your weak point with a weak group, consider attacking their weak group before defending.



I'm not sure if these fit in within your list, or if they are too broad because they are about tsumego in a game context, but additional tsumego strategy concepts in addition to "kikashi before living" might be:

Defending:

- is it bigger to save the group or play elsewhere? Can I use a threat to save this group in another way ?

- Is it dead cleanly if I tenuki? Is there a ko? What are the ko options?

- What is the best way to defend? Is it better to play at a vital point, or defend by making an option to connect to another group, or cut a surrounding group, or another move that is better for later reducing my opponent's territory?

Attacking:

- Is this the right time to kill? Is it the biggest move?

- How big a commitment is killing this group? Is there an existing or potential ko where this may be a large source of ko threats for my opponent?

- Is it a clean kill, or ko (or seki) ? What are the ko options?

- Are there moves that my opponent can make later to threaten to revive the group that may be problematic (e.g. moves with a double threat that can't be answered simultaneously)? If so, how quickly can I remove the group in an emergency (e.g. possible neighbouring semeai)

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 Post subject: Re: Tsumego concepts
Post #4 Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2022 5:43 am 
Oza

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Quote:
Can the complexity of a go problem be measured in terms of such concepts rather than just the raw variation tree?


That seems to me like the approach of a numbers guy. Experience tells me that people on one side of a dividing line are very rarely willing to contemplate looking at things from the point of view of the other side. But let me risk that, and give a words guy view of it.

You probably read that paragraph and understood it almost instantly. We all do that all the time, on both sides of the divide. But if I ask you now to close your eyes and repeat the words back to me, I'd expect almost everyone to fail miserably. I would, and I wrote it. But it goes further. Tell me whether the word 'try' appeared in it. I'd expect you to be rather unsure (you might remember 'risk', or was it 'try'? Or did try come somewhere else?

But did you understand it? Yes. Well, more or less. I'm certain you got the gist of it, but you may have put more weight on a portion of it than I intended, and you almost certainly made associations that I wouldn't hope for (e.g. is this guy a plonker on his hobby horse again?). And despite that, I don't think we would normally say we have mis-communicated with each other.

Now join me in the assumption that a tsumego problem can be likened to a paragraph of text. After reading it, you will not have a single point of view. You will have the gist of it with lots of associations (it's probably dead, but there's a ko if I want it, and it's not all that big so I might not play it in a real game - in fact it's so weird I might never see it in a real game; but can I grab it anyway in sente?) I suggest that something like that is the likely (and best) form of answer in real life.

But what about the apparent perfection reading it out move by move? Well, I think everyone accepts that in most of the really interesting cases we can't do that. The human brain doesn't work that way. Even bots have their limits on that way of working. Yet, on behalf of the human brain, take the word 'set'. We meet that with very high frequency in all sorts of sentences, and in virtually every case we read and understand it instantly. But "easily?" Jellies set, dogs set, I set the table, you set an exam, I dance in a set, I set to my partner, she's one of the smart set, the doc sets the bone, the carpenter adjusts the set of a saw, a rock star performs his set, Nadal wins the final set, the custard is set off, we set off on our journey, we are all set, they are setting themselves up for a set-to, does a badger live in a set or a sett, set the alarm at a set time every day at sun set. And so on and so forth. This is a level of complexity far, far, far, far greater than the level of complexity of a typical tsumego problem, where you get typically a choice of just one to three or four moves at each branch.

Yet we humans cope instantly with a sentence with 'set' in it (and bear in mind that almost every other word sentence will also have a similar range of complexity). By 'cope' I don't just mean understand, for we instantly also dredge up a huge range of useful associations.

So, it seems to me that we should be looking for ways to simulate that process in 'reading' tsumego. It can be done. I have witnessed numerous occasions where go players (both pro and amateur) are presented with a problem they have not seen before, but they solve it instantly. They are clearly not solving it by brute force. They are seeing 'simple' components like 'set'. By the same token, there have been cases where even a pro is stumped by a short problem simply because he's never seen anything like it before. I'd likewise expect most readers to be puzzled if I say 'latitudinarian.'

The keys to profound learning of tsumego techniques seem to be like native-language learning. Foreign-language learning is a very different and inferior beast, but most adults actually follow that route in go.

The main characteristics of NLL are, initially, massive repetition and not worrying about mistakes. We further teach children a small sub-set of the basic language and provide lots of extraneous clues such as hand gestures.

Has this been done for go? I think not. Adults don't like repetitive work, so don't do it or buy books that contain it. They hate making mistakes, and many hate even more having their mistakes pointed out. Many hate having tsumegos with hints. The books that are provided are, it is true, a sub-set of tsumego, but totally the wrong sort - under the stones, flower six and double kos.


So, making the probably wild assumption that a decent number of adults can be persuade to try the NLL approach, the first task in tsumego seems to be to establish what the basic go language is. My contention is that that cannot be done properly by adults making lists based on their own adult experience. I'd argue that the only way to do it is to get the probabilities for each type of tsumego technique from real games. This has been done to an extent in traditional teaching (so, for example, we learn about nakade moves and L shapes). But there are two problems with traditional teaching. One is that it stops after a very few basic techniques, then jumps straight to under-the-stones and the like. The other is that there is next to nothing that allows us to practise basic techniques over and over again. There are some honourable exceptions. Magazines like Go World often have a few pages of easy problems of the same type, and the Meijin Inseki wrote a whole book of just this type (most of it sadly lost). But, for the most part, go teaching is treated like adult food: beef today, chicken tomorrow, fish on Friday, etc. But in go we adults are really still toddlers - we need to be suckled on milk, milk, milk.

If we can be taught this way, we don't just absorb the techniques themselves but also the context and probabilities of their occurrence. Once that is achieved, we can 'read' problems instantly and reliably (enough), just as we read threads like this.

Being clever humans, we can then even become adept enough to read the go equivalent of sentences like "Pas de l'yeux Rhône que nous."

ADDENDUM
A grandson of mine is learning to read using phonics. I've been quite impressed with the results, and so looked the topic up. Here is one brief description.

Quote:
How is phonics taught?
Words are made up of just 44 sounds in English. You may have heard your child or their teacher use particular words that form the core of understanding phonics. Here's a quick explanation of some of the key concepts.

Phoneme - the smallest unit of sound as it is spoken.
Grapheme - a written symbol that represents a sound (phoneme) that's either one letter or a sequence of letters
Digraph - two letters that work together to make the same sound (ch, sh, ph)
Trigraph - three letters that work together to make the same sound (igh, ore, ear)
Split digraph (sometimes called 'magic e') - two letters that work together to make the same sound, separated by another letter in the same word. This enables children to understand the difference in vowel sounds between, for example, grip/gripe, rag/rage, tap/tape.

Rather than memorising words individually, children are taught a code which helps them to work out how to read an estimated 95% of the English language.


What I take away from this is that: (1) for even the task of reading English, a task vastly more complex than for tsume go, the number of basic overarching concepts can be very small; (2) the results apply to 95% of what we meet in real life.

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 Post subject: Re: Tsumego concepts
Post #5 Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2022 9:53 am 
Judan

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John Fairbairn wrote:
what about the apparent perfection reading it out move by move? Well, I think everyone accepts that in most of the really interesting cases we can't do that.


You convey it as if each move must be read but, usually, this is not so because the theory of tactical theory permits consideration of only (the) relevant moves.

Quote:
I have witnessed numerous occasions where go players (both pro and amateur) are presented with a problem they have not seen before, but they solve it instantly.


You convey it as if "solving a problem" were "stating the correct answer". Such is NOT the solution, but is only part of the solution. A solution of a problem includes all necessary decision-making. (Decision-making can be explicit or sometimes implicit, such as in techniques.)

Some problems can be solved immediately by stating the correct answer and all necessary decision-making. E.g., this is so for most players if a problem shows a nakade. Very many real game problems cannot be solved immediately. I have seen many players thinking they would have solved a problem immediately but when asked showed their unawareness of the solution.

Quote:
They are clearly not solving it by brute force.


Who cares? Brute force is improper in almost all cases. It is proper to apply the theory of tactical reading etc.

Quote:
there have been cases where even a pro is stumped by a short problem simply because he's never seen anything like it before.


No. Such a pro does not fail only because of not having seen anything similar before but because the pro has also not applied tactical reading to solve it.

Quote:
The keys to profound learning of tsumego techniques


Good, but, again, techniques are relevant in only a small fraction of all practically occurring tsumego problems. The key to profound learning tsumego problem solving is first tactical reading, second tactical reading, third tactical reading, fourth other means including counting and techniques.

Quote:
I'd argue that the only way to do it is to get the probabilities for each type of tsumego technique from real games.


First, study the 86 ~ 89% of tsumegos without applicable techniques. Second study the 11 ~ 14% of tsumego with applicable techniques (and there the more frequent ones before the less frequent ones, if you prefer).

Quote:
This has been done to an extent in traditional teaching (so, for example, we learn about nakade moves and L shapes).


The point of nakade is not so much the technique of playing on the vital intersection but to create a known position with known outcome as a submethod of tactical reading. Likewise, the point of L shapes is not their shapes but to create a known position.

In reading, techniques (if they occur at all) are more relevant before reaching known positions.

Quote:
milk, milk, milk.


Ok:)

Quote:
Once that is achieved, we can 'read' problems instantly and reliably (enough)


No, but then we can only read those problems with techniques well. Milk, milk, milk is, foremost, needed for practising tactical reading.

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 Post subject: Re: Tsumego concepts
Post #6 Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2022 12:46 pm 
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Some diagrams to organise and present my thoughts.





General opening concepts:

Other than "play in corners", "develop your areas", "attack your opponent's weak groups", "play moves that work well with multiple stones", let's try to list some beginner concepts that are slightly more advanced.

I focus on the opening, drawing inspiration from PETC games.

Basically these are all variations of "don't play near thickness".

  1. Live inside opponent's area if it is almost a large territory and you can live cleanly. Living inside will reduce the efficiency of all the moves made there previously. This is especially true in the opening, when there is so much space to fight for.
  2. If the opponent plays on the sides, play on the corners first before working out whether to use the side weaknesses to reduce from the outside, centre, get a larger corner, or invading. Plays on the sides are less about side territory and much about using a moyo to attack centre groups that come near. In contrast, corner stones are more biased towards the corner territory and eyespace, meaning that if your opponent takes the corner even after you have spent moves there, then your efficiency is questionable.
  3. Depending on opponent's response.
    1. If the opponent plays high, prepare to invade by undercutting. Hence, don't make the opponent solid in the space where your invasion has potential eyespace.
    2. If the opponent plays low, they are more solid already. Either threaten to live cleanly anyway (actively), or prepare to sacrifice and reduce from the centre with a shoulder hit. Such a move can work with either a large scale attack (if you get two moves in a row there) on the side, or just a reduction, so you can consider blocking the side from the corner first.
  4. Consistent play means that if you play from the centre, you aim for local severe follow ups (+liberties) to keep the opponent low and contained in sente. You don't aim to make 3rd line territory on the side where the opponent already has a living group. If you play from the side, you aim to attack weak points on the side of the board, and supporting moves can help your attacking stones. Avoid mixing these plans.
  5. Even if an area looks big to reduce, don't randomly throw a weak stone in too close to thickness unless it works with follow ups.

Tesuji meaning.
NB 20220514. My understanding is tesuji are ways to attack/defend in surprising ways. Mostly common they play inside what looks like an area of strength, attacking a shape from an unusual direction because one side is strong enough to kill or severely attack the other side. There are still rules and patterns in that perhaps you don't attack from the usual direction, but perhaps you attack from the 2nd most common direction (or 3rd if there is a double attack). Attacking (or or making territory) is such a tight rope that you can lose a lot if you fail, so consistency of plans is more important.

When both sides are weak, the order and choice of attack is even more important. Decisions about sacrificing arise.

Also, I still been able to find a clear answer to the question
"When is the opponent's vital point also your own?"
This is based on the proverb "The opponent's vital point is your own."
My understanding is that it often isn't when both sides are weak but not yet dead, particularly in a semeai, but when it comes down to the final killing move when there is just one weak group, then the vital point is the same for both sides. My point is that the first player has an advantage, and you can often attack the opponent more strongly than just playing a vital point if your first move threatens the vital point also from a different angle. Whereas that threat wouldn't work if the opponent had already played the vital point. But can this statement be made precise enough to be proved?


Classification start
20220514

Tiger mouth: weak to peep and diagonal shortage of liberties.

one space jump: weak to cut, but a cutting move also damages the opponent's liberties by 2, so if the stones of the jump are strong enough, it is powerful.

many snapbacks can be seen as variations on the one space jump.


101weiqi thoughts
If I comment on concepts for 101weiqi along with my approximate time to solve

https://www.101weiqi.com/qday/2022/5/14/

1: (0s) two groups in a semeai and though both have cuts, B can capturing cuts independently. The important thing is to save the weak group rather than defend own cuts. This is possible by leaning on W's weakest stones by cutting a diagonal. B and W diagonals are adjacent but B has a connection and W doesn't. Both have 2 liberties, but W has two such groups one of which is near the edge.
2: (0s) All B's stones are strong except the hane (but that doesn't matter unless W captures 3 for an eye). W only has 3 liberties, but B has nothing to lean on and no useful threat on those liberties as they are next to W's other solid wall. B can push in where B is strong enough at the hane where W could have made a tiger mouth, destroying O19 with only one move and killing. We see that when breaking a tiger mouth, your own stones already have less liberties, but they gain 2 liberties by breaking the tiger mouth as well as access to space at and beyond those liberties.
3: (2s) One eye kills no eye. Attacking the outside would be sufficient, but though W has 3 liberties and B 4, trying to cut loses 2 since you have to cut two one space jumps. Instead, cut the other two one space jumps from inside the corner, which is W's weakest stone. This gains B an extra 2 liberties at 3-1 and 1-1. W's problem is that W doesn't have enough liberties to play at either and B already has an eye. Connect before cutting is a good principle when fighting in the opponent's area, especially if the opponent can also connect there.
4.(5s) The vital point is obvious, but takes reading to check. An extra large monkey jump works when W also has a cutting point. S14 is W's main attempt to cut (the vital boundary point if S15 is too slow to work), but S14 lacks liberties when T14 is the B's connection point. This is an example of an elephant jump that doubles as two one space jumps that W lacks liberties to cut both. B maintaining the S15 sente is also vital here because B doesn't have R13. (a sibling problem could be made if W had one more liberty with R15 but one less with S13. I think Q13 isn't necessarily for a partial kill. W needs a solid capture, so B needs to make every S and T point are miai from S16 down or be the first to get both (counting down from 16, 15, ...). S12 is the support required to make this possible, and S11 is too far without R13. A key point is that though S15 is too slow, it remains a vital point likely under W control to the point where W would like to throw in at T15 and force B to lose liberties connect both S15 and T15. This fails here as B S15 is double atari.
5. (70s) Approaching from the corner is too slow since an approach move is required, and L18 doesn't work since P19 is safe when B doesn't have an option of R19. Hence, P19 and Q18 becomes the only option, but does it work? We prefer ko to seki, especially as B gets to capture on the right, though W does manage to get L18. The point seems to be that Q18 is a weak point but B can't cut without lots of preparation. W never has incentive to connect unless directly threatened. And yet, it is possible to cut with enough preparation since B's inside play does threaten it, and the throw in is a direct threat. W must eventually capture the B's inside stones in order to maintain the threat of making Q18 eyespace. B also can't play Q18 as that is 4 dead stones. The situation is made more confusing since W can take time to play L18 rather than capturing since B has to approach. B must play accurately enough to throw in since W is also too weak to play at R19. The principle seems to be that when both sides have a weak point (Q18, S17), directly approaching might be too slow, since the opponent will just respond, retreating solidly. However, this is true for both, both are weak at the boundary R19, so attacking to push the opponent towards the boundary is helpful, if the attack works.
6. (7s) A standard tesuji. Knowing a sacrifice is necessary is important, but normally that is necessary when fighting get more on the other side in your opponent's area. It wouldn't work without M14 exposing the cut. Again we have one space jumps. The squeeze forces a defence of the cut (which isn't valuable at the boundary of B and W thickness), and this weakens L17 enough to clamp and connect. This also wouldn't work if W had P18. M17 is a more obvious forcing move that doesn't sacrifice, but it doesn't support connection enough to work. This also only works as W's cutting stones are weak enough. If M16 was 3 stones, there is a related tesuji, but B needs more support, getting to pro level go.
7. (30s but without full reading) Difficult as it only barely works. B getting both O18 and O17 is sufficient, and W getting O18 blocks off another eye at Q19. This is too far away from B and W doesn't have many weaknesses. B's only chance is O18 or P18. But P18 fails to O18 since W has enough liberties to make connection miai. Hence O18 is forced and B must continue at P18. B is close enough this threatens to connect, so W must block, but then B must use the chance to make an eye, since W is very low on liberties if W has to spend 3 moves capturing and connecting at O16 without any liberties. There is so much space, but that means that B has the chance to also control it with an eye by making miai of cutting or connecting.
8 (80s complete reading) Pretty much a forced line, though there are many tesujis involved. W can almost live in sente with S15 tesuji, but not really as it doesn't fix W's main cutting points. Key point is that B capturing P18 and cutting P16 will win the capture race, so W mustn't let this happen. Both B and W must commit to a side to defend. B's P17 is very low on liberties especially if aiming to cut P16. B can play simply at O18 and even connect O17, but W gets Q18 and Q17 in sente since B at O18 remains weak, finally living with T18. If B plays Q18, it turns out B can win the capture race with R18 despite S19 tesuji since Q17 is atari and W is too weak (no time to play R16 and it wouldn't help anyway). However, this means that B also doesn't have time to play Q17 since W getting R18 and R16 in sente allows S15 to live. Finally, we have a ko at the top that is flower viewing for B. The principles seem to be that with a weak stone with many cutting points in the opponent's area, don't expect to be able to save everything and still cut since the defender will get many forcing moves. The priority to break into the territory at the weakest point rather than save the stone. This could be O18 and O17 just for points in sente, but here reading that Q18 works to almost kill is even better since B is strong enough at L18 to continue attacking.

q8 20220513, I didn't solve this, the move inside is subtle, but it is needed to connect to the last point of the bulky five that B needs.


Attachments:
Tsumego concepts.sgf [7.31 KiB]
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Tesuji list.sgf [6.64 KiB]
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Last edited by dhu163 on Fri May 13, 2022 6:44 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Post #7 Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2022 11:04 pm 
Judan

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dhu163, the subject is Tsumego concepts but now you (and others) also talk about strategic concepts. Fine, no problem. I just wonder what you are aiming at. Concepts of go theory in general or do you have a more specific goal focusing around tsumego, where all strategic / global considerations are somehow related to local tsumego?

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Post #8 Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 4:27 am 
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"words guy": When I think about encoding, words are an alphabet, just as numbers are too.

No real clue. I don't think I have the energy to push it much further. Just a collection of ideas.

edit: 20220514. Associations.
My current impression is that you imply all ideas for games are borrowed from more general ones, especially for beginners. What is complex for some may be simple for others, with different perspectives. Whereas maths tries to find absolute answers to popular abstract structures, and applied maths builds concrete ladders and models to guide understanding and decisions. We would like measures and metrics rather than fuzzy associations, but perhaps all new endeavours for understanding start fuzzily.


Last edited by dhu163 on Fri May 13, 2022 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #9 Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:19 am 
Gosei

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dhu163 wrote:
Among other things, the thread
https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=18569
has encouraged me to think about concepts on tsumego, one of the most fuzzy and difficult parts of Go to play correctly.

[...]

Can the complexity of a go problem be measured in terms of such concepts rather than just the raw variation tree?

I have had the same sort of thoughts over the years. It feels weird that so much of my life-and death-thinking, except for capturing races, mostly comes down to "does this move work?".

If you have access to the Go Books platform, you might be interested in the Tsume-Go Strategy books by Thomas Redecker (Cassandra here on L19), which attempt to break down tsumego problems in this sort of scientific way to a degree that I have not seen elsewhere.

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