How about an example or two from the book? That would help us know what you are talking about.

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If it's a book translated from Lee Changho, there could be some desire to not use the term 'joseki'. Lately Korean books seem to just use jeong-seok, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it used that way.

I don't know what else 'pre-calculated' could mean otherwise.

Maybe the book review will give you a better understanding:

http://www.gobooks.info/y26.html

I don't know about the book, but I think he's referring to my post when he talks about discussing it in other threads: (viewtopic.php?p=116825#p116825).

And no, there's no hiding. How could there be?

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OK, so it's a joseki book about new plays and lines of play. In that case my guess is that the phrase might mean a prepared line of play. You still have not given an example.

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The Adkins Principle:
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— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I think pros do eschew worn paths, which isn't really topical but I think is true. After all, someone lost those games, probably for reasons. There is some kind of relevant chess quote here.

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Well, the game consists of hundreds of moves, and they only really need one move to give a point or two edge.

I think you are misunderstanding, often times pros make mistake in games that cost 10 points or so. Even top pros that are 9p like leechangho make big mistakes sometimes, or don't play the best move on purpose but rather the best move to win.

The games are usually close and endgame moves that are worth a point can of course be important, but pre-studying anything for a point or two is worthless usually unless you mean like in a corner joseki you do a tigers mouth instead of connecting for a few extra points which does help in certain joseki...

but mostly even pros don't worry over a point or two but they will try to take the better path of course. So basically a point or two= nothing but they will of course play the point or two way better. Does that make sense?

This is clearly the answer. Bill won the thread, we can all go home.

If you're saying that pros sacrifice points in order to get another advantage or a position that works better with the rest of the board then of course that's true.

Otherwise I must disagree. Pros fight over every point on the board. That's only natural because the difference in strength between pros is very small. My favourite quote from Ishida (Vol.1 ch.4 diagram 15): "An unconditional loss of two points is unbearable."

What you are referring to is not joseki but the research of professionals into new variations. The research of new variations implies that when it is used the opponent will not have access to the information beforehand so why would there be a need to obscure such plays?

A historical look at how this happens can be found by looking at the Blood Vomiting Game where a secret variation of the taisha joseki developed by the Inoue house was unleashed on Jowa.
http://senseis.xmp.net/?BloodVomitingGame

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Hmm interesting. I think the idea is that in a modern setting original research becomes assimilated very quickly so developing such research will be less productive.

I suppose another technique to prevent amateurs and lower ranked dans from discovering the variations, is for the variations to depend on life and death that they aren't able to solve, IE the variation to be easy to refute unless the antidote to a life and death problem is known.

I think the idea of pros trying to hide secret variations from amateurs is just ridiculous. Why would they do that?

Anyway, if you study variations for yourself, unless you actually use them in your game, you can't profit from it. And afterwards everyone can see your game and study it, so there's just no point. On the board there is no hiding. At most I guess it can be used to get a bit of an edge for a game or two. But pros can read very deep and adapt quickly to new situations, especially the top players, so the advantage you can get is probably not very big.

Also pros often study in groups and discuss variations extensively. That alone makes the idea of secrecy rather pointless.

I didn't say amateurs, I said lower ranked dan's.


It is like public key encryption, anyone that can factor large primes can hack any computer all the information is there.



Again maintaining personal edge or the edge of the study group is exactly the point.

Once it is in a public game, other groups of pros will study it and come to understand it. If one pro (or one study group) has accumulated a truly great deal of knowledge (i.e. many variations in a specific opening), it might not all be discovered immediately. But the parts that are played will be analyzed, and discovered quickly. There's no way to hide it.

Really, the only recourse is to discover new things quickly so you can stay ahead of the competition.

P.S. Low ranked professionals often study with stronger pros. You might consider them akin to the lab techs or grad students who work for a top professor, if you know anything about that environment.

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That is sort of how I imagined it. The top dan says I need you to solve this problem so that if my competitor uses this play I will be prepared. However, I think in grad school their is also a fair amount of blind work. IE lets see if lab monkey with limited skills can perform this experiment.

Um, your post says quite clearly "amateurs and lower ranked dans".


But you don't need a major mathematical breakthrough to study someone's games.


You have to keep in mind that study group members are also at the same time competing pros that could be opponents in the next game. I also think it's hard to discover superior variations by yourself, a study group will always have a better result, as long as they work together.

Of course I agree that pros study to stay at the top of research and improve their game (as they should), I just don't believe there is much secrecy going on, if any at all. I also fully support hyperpage's last post.

I'm not very familiar with top levels of go, but in many other individual competitions, groups of people will still collaborate in secret to gain an edge.

For example, in Magic: The Gathering teams of players will often show up to major events with nearly identical decklists after having prepared for an event. Also in StarCraft teams of players will practice with each other and will play particular matchups very similarly as a result.

I don't see why a group of 4-5 pros wouldn't keep hidden a new fuseki move in some popular fuseki only to use it in an upcoming tournament. Even if they only gain an edge for a game or two, that can make a difference at that level.

nothing is hidden. how can it be? the board is open, and anyone can see it.

there may be some unexplored variations, but even these aren't hidden. given enough time, anyone can read through the variations to find the best responses.

That's what we all agree on. Smoothoper is asking if there's some way they can use their results and still keep it hidden.

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