Perfect analysis, absolutely correct.
Now, how many points is (a) worth?

3 points for White I think. 1 point for Black. I suck at counting though.

First rule of counting plays; it's always worth the same for both sides. Whatever b gains, w loses, and vice versa.

So 4 points then? Or am I estimating this all wrong?

No, perfect, as far as I can tell. It's worth noting, though, that t3 is gote for w and t2 is sente for black; so it's as big as an 8 pt gote.

Where does that halving if it's gote rule come from? It's always confused me a little.

Do you want an explanation or a demonstration?

If you play a sente sequence, and get 4 points, then you get 4 points AND get to play the next biggest sequence, which you can assume generally to be near that in value. If you play gote, your opponent gets the next sequence, so if you play an 8 point gote and your opponent plays a 4 point sente, it's as if you played a 4-point sente, a 4-point gote, and it's then your opponent's turn.

Basically the gote is half as valuable because your opponent makes points back on his move, though half is an approximation.

At least that's my understanding of it, but I could be wrong.

Edit: This is very poorly explained. Please disregard it.

Just an explanation. I've just wondered about it being half because it assumes the next sequence after the gote sequence is of equal value which seems somewhat an inaccurate way to count something as vital as endgame moves. I'm hoping I'm very wrong here.

No, you're right. The value of sente depends on the value of the next best move, so ending the game with a sente sequence, for example, is cold comfort. Double is a rule of thumb, based on the assumption that there are lots of endgame moves. The rule of thumb that modifies the rule of thumb is ".... But play the gote before reverse sente," which covers the cases where you can get the last gote before the board cools down by a point. If you need it more exact than that, you need to read out combinations and see which works best.

Thanks jts. That answers my question perfectly. I guess at some point I'll get stuck into endgame theory but I feel and have been told, that right now the yose is the least of my worries.

The Rule of thumb "play Gote before reverse sente" only applies if you halve the gote play, and not the reverse sente play when you count. To answer your earlier question, the above position is considered 4 points in miai counting, and it is not halved (because it is sente for one side and not the other).

If the two moves are of exactly equal value and they are both gote, then they are miai and you can safely ignore them until your opponent plays one, when you take the other.

It is an abstraction, and breaks down in cases where the value of this gote (say 5) is more than the value of your opponents' sente (3) and the only other remaining play (1). Having just looked it up, though, it's because a gote move costs two plays (the first one and the last one, regardless of sequence), while a sente move costs 1 (since the opponent plays an equal number of times), so a gote move of 8 points / 2 stones played is the same as 4 points / 1 stone in sente.

Thanks skydyr and speedchase.

First, T-02 is the right play for both players. If White plays at T-03, Black has a throw-in at T-02.



As for the halving rule, it is easy to explain. You have to realize that taking sente that belongs to you is like cashing a check. It gains nothing that you do not have a right to. It is the reverse sente that gains something. (By convention we say that the size of the sente is the size of the reverse sente. It actually gains more, but the reply takes that gain back.) For a gote, each player gains something. On average, each player gains the same amount. To calculate the average gain, you take half the difference between the result after Black plays gote and the result after White takes gote.

For instance, if a Black gote moves to a position worth 7 pts. for Black while the White gote in the same position moves to a position worth 1 pt. for Black, the value of the original position is 4 pts., and each player can gain 3 pts. in gote (which is half the difference between 7 and 1).

¿Es claro?

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Whew, I did not mean to start such a big side-track. But while we are on the subject ...

I was taught to count the traditional Japanese way, where the value assigned to a move is the difference between "B plays gote" and "W plays gote". Since this is a difference of two moves, some people like to divide by two to get the value per move. Instead of this, I prefer to multiply by two in cases where the difference is one move rather than two, which happens when one side can keep sente. Another way of saying the same thing is that a reverse-sente move has twice the value of a gote move.

In the example here, the B hane is likely sente, while the W descent is gote (reverse-sente), so the difference in end positions is one move. The difference in territory is 4 points, so for counting I consider this an 8-point yose play.

(In the actual game, the W move was hane rather than descent, so if you are a stickler for precision, you can subtract some fraction of a point for the throw-in which Bill pointed out.)

A welcome side track and a large hole in my knowledge. Thank you.

Health: Not dealing too well with the lack of a mood stabiliser. My sleep pattern has gotten very disrupted and no amount of sedatives seems to fix it. Couldn't sleep at all last night.

Thinking on the game: I've come to trust my instincts a lot more. Whether this is going to be bad or good for me I don't know, but I'm trusting my gut on making a lot of calls and trying to feed the unconscious with as many moves and positions as possible, through pro games, watching games, going through previous reviews in this thread and playing games. Whether this works, eh I don't know. I'm slowly coming to maintain a whole board perspective beyond the fuseki, this is helping a lot I think. I still have a lot of problems, mainly not recognising influence I'm giving to the other player or allowing them to take, and of course the ever-present beginner mistakes. The strongest player at the club gave me a compliment though, that I'd made a breakthrough in my games against her. Where before during fights I left behind weakness after weakness, now I patch them up before they can be exploited or just don't leave them in the first place. I think this is true of my games with her at least, since she used to cut up my positions with ease and now doesn't.

For some reason, I've over the past month, found the games of much stronger players far more intelligible than before. I can get a sense of why they make moves a lot more often than previously. I think this is just a matter of sufficient exposure to the game for my subconscious to have picked up on the patterns and shapes a la the chess research someone mentioned in another thread. I feel that I intuitively understand more than I used to and that this is improving. Now whether I can turn this into results on the board is a separate matter altogether but I'm finding my enjoyment of the game deepened by this, especially when playing a strong player. I think I appreciate better what makes them strong, even if I do not have it myself.


I haven't been playing much with my sleep and my wife preparing for an academic conference this weekend. C'est la vie. I have been doing problems though and have started to play through pro games. I don't think either of these are a substitute for grinding out games for me personally but I enjoy them and they at least can't hurt (much).

One thing that has been intimidating me, but I think I'll surmount it, is that I'm beginning to get to a place where I'm facing players with vastly more game experience than myself who for whatever reason have gotten stuck at a particular rank for many games. This bothers me as I know a key weakness of mine is simply not having been exposed to enough situations on the board. This was noted by a clubmate when he pointed out that he'd been playing for nearly 10 years on and off and I'd been playing 6 months and even in those 6 months only actively for a couple due to depression/mania/etc. Somehow though he thinks I've a better understanding of theory than he does. Which doesn't make sense to me, the "theory" I have is mostly from just looking at the stones on the board and seeing something. It's more of an intuitive thing than a learned thing again. I don't understand why this is the case, or even how this can be the case versus someone with an order of magnitude more games under their belt.


One question I have for others, did you ever find yourself looking at a shape and just liking it but not really understand it? It's been going on for ages for me (pretty much since my first couple of games) that I look at a go board and see shapes that look good to me and look bad to me but I've no explanation for it. Especially light shapes. I was recently studying the attachment invasion to a 4,4 stone and came across such wonderful shapes being made by pros. So efficient, so delicate, each move having meaning and its place. I can't pretend to understand them, but they seem fundamentally right to me if that makes sense.


Anyway, sorry for the rambling post, I'm feeling pretty enthused about go at the moment but know better than to try to play when sleep deprived with sedatives in my system. The one thing I'm kicking myself over is not taking this game up 15 years ago when I first heard about it! Though I was far more ill back then so it's probably for the best that I've taken it up seriously when my health has been at its best for well over two decades.

Nice post Boidhre. I think you will become a very dangerous (here I mean good) player very soon. If you can see those shapes so early on or rather have some intuition for shape so early in your go playing career I believe you have talent for the game.
I personally have rubbish shape, hence reading a book about it, and trying desperately to make the "good" empty triangle in my games

Keep up the good work and hope you'll be back playing soon!

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I'll do it my way....

I second what tomukaze said. It's really impressive that you already have such a good grasp of shape. I still make horrible shapes and have real trouble telling which is which, so I think I'm going to copy you and spend more time going over pro games.