What are the Skills of Go?

[Tami]

More important, perhaps, even than the "basics", which have been discussed recently

In my study journal, I`ve just been writing about my opinion that your strength depends on your skill much more than on your knowledge. If you`d be kind enough to allow that notion to stand, may I ask what you would identify as the "Skills of Go"?

My list would be as follows:

* Reading
* Positional judgement - i.e., knowing what is happening, who is ahead, what is strong or weak, what possibilities linger, what is big and what is small. In other words, being able to assess the State of Play.
* Strategising - being able to form and execute plans appropriate to the State of Play.
* Applied Knowledge - i.e., it helps a lot to know certain things, and above that to know when and how to use that knowledge
* Meta-skills - positive attitude, emotional control and perception, self-respect and respect for the opponent, enjoyment, respect for go, concentration, perspective, learning from experience, humility

I don`t know how best to call "applied knowledge", save that there is a difference between simply filling your head with useless and pointless knowledge, and knowing what to do and when. Analogy time: precocious kids know a lot of words, but do not always use them properly; the wise often speak simply, but can employ the difficult words with precision.

Have I forgotten anything?

Anyway, I am nailing my colours to the mast: I believe most people are concentrating on learning the wrong things (accumulating knowledge), but that there is a better way, and I`m going to follow it. Come with me!

[gowan]

More important, perhaps, even than the "basics", which have been discussed recently

In my study journal, I`ve just been writing about my opinion that your strength depends on your skill much more than on your knowledge. If you`d be kind enough to allow that notion to stand, may I ask what you would identify as the "Skills of Go"?

My list would be as follows:

* Reading
* Positional judgement - i.e., knowing what is happening, who is ahead, what is strong or weak, what possibilities linger, what is big and what is small. In other words, being able to assess the State of Play.
* Strategising - being able to form and execute plans appropriate to the State of Play.
* Applied Knowledge - i.e., it helps a lot to know certain things, and above that to know when and how to use that knowledge
* Meta-skills - positive attitude, emotional control and perception, self-respect and respect for the opponent, enjoyment, respect for go, concentration, perspective, learning from experience, humility

I don`t know how best to call "applied knowledge", save that there is a difference between simply filling your head with useless and pointless knowledge, and knowing what to do and when. Analogy time: precocious kids know a lot of words, but do not always use them properly; the wise often speak simply, but can employ the difficult words with precision.

Have I forgotten anything?

Anyway, I am nailing my colours to the mast: I believe most people are concentrating on learning the wrong things (accumulating knowledge), but that there is a better way, and I`m going to follow it. Come with me!

I like the skills you listed. A lot of what people study (fuseki, joseki, tesuji, endgame counting, etc.) could be seen as subsidiary to the skills you listed. Strong professionals know whether a sequence of moves is joseki because of their high level positional judgement and their reading skills, not because they studied it explicitly. And I recall that James Kerwin, shortly after he became a pro at the Nihon Ki-in, said in an article in the American Go Journal, that in his opinion what distinguishes pros from amateurs is the ability to see what's actually there in the position, the realities rather than a lot of hopeful (or dismayed) fantasies.

[gasana]

I don't know if it is a skill, but i would also add something like "intuition" or "good sense", i.e the ability to feel the flow of the game and act accordingly.

[SoDesuNe]

I'd say, there are two core skills:

First, positional judgement and second reading.

Then there comes knowledge like common shapes (L&D and Tesuji), Joseki, Fuseki and such, which help to faster execute the above mentioned core skills.

[Redundant]

I agree with Sodesune, but I usually prefer to break down reading into two components. One is what I'd consider "intuition", which is the generation of candidate moves. The other is the ability to visualize the variation you're reading.

[RobertJasiek]

* Reading
* Positional judgement [...]
* Strategising
[...] the wrong things (accumulating knowledge)

Reading, positional judgement and strategising are NOT only skills - they rely also on knowledge!

The better your knowledge of what and how to read the better you can apply your skill aspect of reading (reading fast, correctly etc.) The better your knowledge of how to make accurate positional judgements the better you can apply your skill aspect of positional judgement (making the relevant calculations etc.). The better your strategic knowledge the better you can make strategic planning.

The ability to recall, create and organise knowledge well is another skill.

[Loons]

More important, perhaps, even than the "basics", which have been discussed recently

In my study journal, I`ve just been writing about my opinion that your strength depends on your skill much more than on your knowledge. If you`d be kind enough to allow that notion to stand, may I ask what you would identify as the "Skills of Go"?

My list would be as follows:

* Reading
* Positional judgement - i.e., knowing what is happening, who is ahead, what is strong or weak, what possibilities linger, what is big and what is small. In other words, being able to assess the State of Play.
* Strategising - being able to form and execute plans appropriate to the State of Play.
* Applied Knowledge - i.e., it helps a lot to know certain things, and above that to know when and how to use that knowledge
* Meta-skills - positive attitude, emotional control and perception, self-respect and respect for the opponent, enjoyment, respect for go, concentration, perspective, learning from experience, humility

I don`t know how best to call "applied knowledge", save that there is a difference between simply filling your head with useless and pointless knowledge, and knowing what to do and when. Analogy time: precocious kids know a lot of words, but do not always use them properly; the wise often speak simply, but can employ the difficult words with precision.

Have I forgotten anything?

Anyway, I am nailing my colours to the mast: I believe most people are concentrating on learning the wrong things (accumulating knowledge), but that there is a better way, and I`m going to follow it. Come with me!

In my mind, I would like to break positional judgement up somehow into constituent parts like counting and direction, though I'm not sure how to describe the sense that advises us eg. (to read and assess) "how and when will this/these stone/s settle". Maybe "priority". Or maybe "awareness".



So for me:
*Reading
*Counting
*Direction¹
*Priority²
*Specific local joseki and shape knowledge³
*Strategic Vision⁴
*Time Management⁵
*Meta-skills⁶


1 Direction for me is a strange thing but of the utmost importance, and at this stage in my go career mostly a memory of Joey Hung telling me "Approach corners, then try and get the widest side".
2 I guess this is my catch-all for positional judgement, which I was trying to avoid. Weak-group-sense. Invasion timing-sense. That fight is good-for-me-sense.
3 I think this specific knowledge is wayyy more important than it sometimes gets credit for. The number of times I want to tell myself and weaker players "playing the normal move here was probably better"... And shape is the same: Against those sente, I know I can make shape like this.
4 I added the word "vision" to "strategy".
5 I think, as a "concrete" game factor, this needs to be separated from other meta-skills.
6 Is there a good way to learn discipline in these factors? I feel like I've been told before but wasn't paying attention.

[SmoothOper]

*Time Management⁵

A think that time management is what really defines the difference between your basic player and your skilled player. I believe skilled player is player that can put the theory into practice. IE they can read out the plays or count the position within the constraints of the clock.


As for Joseki that could be considered a skill, but I wouldn't consider it necessary skill of go, since knowledge of large scale Joseki aren't really required in all styles of play, and many players Cho Chikun for example don't care for large scale Joseki. Perhaps we could consider go a game of competing skills.

[Alguien]

Precision: The dance of the stones is not supple. The minimal change breaks a branch.
Abstractness: Strategy stands on non concrete concepts.

The need of both precision and abstractness to such a large degree is what defines go. No other completely inflexible game becomes so fuzzy and no other abstract game requires such precision.

[EdLee]

completely inflexible game...

What does this mean?
Could you give an example (or 2, or 3) of a completely flexible game,
and also more examples of completely inflexible games?

[Alguien]

completely inflexible game...

What does this mean?
Could you give an example (or 2, or 3) of a completely flexible game,
and also more examples of completely inflexible games?

Completely inflexible games:
- Connect 4: If you place any "stone" in an adjacent space, you'll probably change a victory/draw into a defeat.
- Chess: The difference between moving a pawn one or two steps radically changes the game.

Flexible games (The only completely flexible game is calvinball)
- Pictionnary.
- Diplomacy.
- Dixit.


What I've not found outside of Go is an inflexible abstract game.

As a pretty example: Go is for humans what Diplomacy would be for robots.

As a not so pretty example: Go is for humans what connect 4 would be for dogs.

[EdLee]

Completely inflexible games:
- Connect 4: If you place any "stone" in an adjacent space, you'll probably change a victory/draw into a defeat.
- Chess: The difference between moving a pawn one or two steps radically changes the game.
Flexible games (The only completely flexible game is calvinball)
- Pictionnary.
- Diplomacy.
- Dixit.

I'm still not clear what you mean by flexible and inflexible games.
Could you define them.
(Did you make up those terms? I don't seem to be able to find them in Wikipedia.)

With Pictionary, there's a degree of fuzziness, since drawings are analog.
I'm not familiar with Diplomacy or Dixit or Calvinball, so those examples don't help me.

Chess, Connect 4, and Go are all: 100% deterministic, finite (huge game space, but still only a finite number of all possible games).
Pictionary: because drawings are analog, the "gamespace" is "infinite".

Is that what you mean?

To further illustrate why I'm not clear on your terms:

Completely inflexible games: - Connect 4: If you place any "stone" in an adjacent space, you'll probably change a victory/draw into a defeat.

Cowboy quick draw: any minute changes (what the cowboy had for lunch; a speck of dust in the eye; a slippery finger, etc.)
would also change life to death -- would you say cowboy quick draw is a completely inflexible game?

Completely inflexible games: - Chess: The difference between moving a pawn one or two steps radically changes the game.
Flexible games - Pictionnary.

The difference between Dictionary with or without "sounds like" also radically changes the game -- so why isn't Pictionary completely inflexible also?

[Alguien]

Completely inflexible games:
- Connect 4: If you place any "stone" in an adjacent space, you'll probably change a victory/draw into a defeat.
- Chess: The difference between moving a pawn one or two steps radically changes the game.
Flexible games (The only completely flexible game is calvinball)
- Pictionnary.
- Diplomacy.
- Dixit.

I'm still not clear what you mean by flexible and inflexible games.
Could you define them.
(Did you make up those terms? I don't seem to be able to find them in Wikipedia.)

Yes, I did make up the classification of games by flexibility. And what I mean by it is the degree to which you can change a play (a move, an action) without significantly changing the game's development/result.

With Pictionary, there's a degree of fuzziness, since drawings are analog.
I'm not familiar with Diplomacy or Dixit or Calvinball, so those examples don't help me.

- Diplomacy is like Risk but with a strong element of secret inter-player negotiation.
- Dixit is a wonderful game (very new compared to the others mentioned) about... It's a new kind of game. Very hard to explain shorty. Suffice to say it's psychological and social.
- Calvinball is a fiction game mentioned in "calvin & hobbes" which main rule is that players create rules as the games goes on. The bottom one in XKCD classification by difficulty for AIs.

Chess, Connect 4, and Go are all: 100% deterministic, finite (huge game space, but still only a finite number of all possible games).
Pictionary: because drawings are analog, the "gamespace" is "infinite".

Is that what you mean?

No.

To further illustrate why I'm not clear on your terms:

Completely inflexible games: - Connect 4: If you place any "stone" in an adjacent space, you'll probably change a victory/draw into a defeat.

Cowboy quick draw: any minute changes (what the cowboy had for lunch; a speck of dust in the eye; a slippery finger, etc.)
would also change life to death -- would you say cowboy quick draw is a completely inflexible game?

No, because while a speck of dust could change the bullet trajectory to a degree that made it miss, it most probably wouldn't. Any "game" that implies the human body becomes flexible because of the body's ability to adjust.

Completely inflexible games: - Chess: The difference between moving a pawn one or two steps radically changes the game.
Flexible games - Pictionnary.

The difference between Dictionary with or without "sounds like" also radically changes the game -- so why isn't Pictionary completely inflexible also?

Pictionary, with and without "sounds like" is two different games, each of those enormously flexible.

I don't mean flexibility in rules, but in actions or plays.

In Pictionary, making a rectangle instead of a square won't change the result much. Changing the order of the drawing won't either. Pictionary is approximate.

In go, moving a stone a single position will change the game from radically (during fuseki) to absolutely (during a fight).

----

This kind of non-flexibility, or precision, is a quality that lots of board games have. What most lack is a quality that very few have, the requirement to apply abstract, fuzzy, shaky concepts to decide the next moves or actions.

Go has both, and it's the only example that I know.

[SmoothOper]

completely inflexible game...

What does this mean?
Could you give an example (or 2, or 3) of a completely flexible game,
and also more examples of completely inflexible games?

I am not sure how this pertains to the thread of skills, but I always thought of a flexible game as playing differently under different conditions as opposed to a powerful game which depends on imposing or maintaining a set of conditions.

For example a flexible player who may not like the Orthodox fuseki, may find a way to win anyway, whereas a powerful player may find a way to play the fuseki that they want, but lose.

[entropi]

Hi all, (after a relatively long silent period)

To me the most important skill in Go is what Tami calls the "meta-skills" like positive attitude, respect, enjoyment, etc. Otherwise, I find playing pointless unless you are pro.

If, on the other hand, the question relates to skills for improving (or being strong) at Go, then I would say it is the applied knowledge and visualisation (to my understanding reading = applied knowledge + visualisation).