In case people missed it.

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Although efficiency is not equal to sente, it does allow you to take sente more often. The basic definition of efficiency is something like "to achieve as much as possible using as few stones as possible". When you manage to achieve the same aims using fewer stones, the stones you didn't use were played elsewhere, and thus you got sente more often.

Robert: not a trolling question, but a genuine enquiry. Why do you repeatedly try to tell native speakers of English what English words mean (when they don't mean what you think they mean)? In the posts above you can see that several native speakers disagree with you on 'efficiency'. You also mistakenly use 'best usage' when you mean 'best use'. You (as so often) use 'mighty' when you mean 'powerful'. These, and other examples, just point up the unreliability of your linguistic assertions.

The analysis you gave above looks potentially interesting, but I can't see that it will make much progress with other people when expressed like that. I can understand that you don't want to write everything in German for an even smaller audience, but it seems better to me that if you do write in English you would make more progress if you were more tentative. Maybe ask the forum for the best word first? Maybe you should add the German word you have in mind when you try to redefine an English word? Just provoking people with strong assertions may eventually elicit some feedback for you, but it irritates some people and hardly strikes me as the 'efficient' way to do it, or 'best use' of a discussion forum.

Even in English, of course, 'efficiency' is not cast in stone (pun intended - sorry). Context matters. E.g. is 'efficiency' the same as 'effectiveness'? Also, if it occurs in a go context that derives from Japanese usage, there are different kinds of efficiency there. The most common reference would probably be to 'hataraki' which is almost always used as a property of a concrete thing such as a stone, group or shape rather than an abstract concept like a strategy. The idea of efficiency here is, as in a steam engine, the 'work done'. 'Best use' would often fit here, as it happens, but is harder to flag up as a technical word than 'efficiency'.

BTW I second your query as to the appropriateness of the premature admin interjection.

daal, golem7, Uberdude, let us, according to what you appear to suggest, suppose for the moment that efficiency should be used a) on the global and long-term scale or b) on any possible combination of scales from local and short-term to global and long-term. This would have the following consequences for our terminology and its usage:

1) Efficiency = haengma = best use =? most beautiful shapes =? natural flow of all stones.

2) Whenever efficiency is determined, one would need to state or have given by context a) the assumed scale of space and b) the assumed scale of time.

Since efficiency, haengma and best use all are not particularly well understood concepts yet, we might take the freedom and implement a common concept (1). However, I am not at all exited about always having to take care of (2). E.g., something can be the most efficient on the local and short-term scale but can be not or hardly efficient on a (more) global and (more) long-term scale. To be sure which aspect of efficiency one is speaking about, one would need to declare explicitly "efficient only on the local and short-term scales". Currently, I call such "efficient" but "bad haengma and missing best use".

There is a historical reason why my definition of efficient refers to only the local and short-term form: every usage of efficient used as a go term in literature I have seen was related to some local and short-term movement. Mostly it described an extension, a movement by a next stone leading a running group to the center or the absence of overconcentration of a local stones formation.

Contrarily, haengma came with references to local to global scales, but often without explicit time scales. Haengma books, AFAIC, tend to show more examples for local stone development, apparently because their discussion is easier for book authors or because they feared that more global examples would not be understood so well by beginners or kyus.

With the exception of trivial beginner examples of the type golem7 shows, I have not seen efficiency used for global scale. For every such global usage, AFAIC, 'efficient' was used in an informal sense of the word (presumably related to cited English dictionary meaning of the word) and not apparently used as a go term. Therefore and because 'best use' examples are either rare or express the intention informally, I overlooked the relevance of best use (or, as you might prefer to say now, efficiency on the global and long-term scale) as a strategic concept (or as the global and long-term form of your apparent suggestion of the efficiency strategic concept) entirely until earlier this year. The concept has been hidden so well in Western literature that, according to my observations, hardly anybody has had an explicit awareness of it, but only ex-inseis and professionals show their implicit, subconscious awareness of it. When I asked ex-inseis what they had learnt as inseis, they could not or hardly tell me anything else than "frequent playing with other inseis helps". Only once I had discovered best use by myself, I would then become aware that the ex-inseis must have learnt that concept subconsciously. Therefore, daal, best use is more than just another phrase. It is the understanding and awareness of this strategic concept or alternatively of the possible global and long-term scopes of what you still want to call efficiency. It is very much more than making fun of a local-only usage of efficiency and of a usage of 'best use' as a concept of its own right. That global and long-term concept, whether called 'best use' or 'efficiency viewed at its global and long-term scale', is of a very great importance (about as important as connection or life-and-death). Burying it under the name efficiency and then forgetting about the possible variety of space and time scales would be bad. If you prefer to call also it 'efficiency', then I suggest that you avoid using that word informally but, in go context, always use it as a term and that you declare the space scale and the time scale whenever they are not obvious from the context.

Uberdude, since you are making so much fun, surely you can provide us with lots of whole board examples and show us what efficiency is in global and long-term scale.

daal, golem7, Uberdude and gogameguru, do you really want to unify efficiency with haengma and best use or do you see aspects of haengma and best use that then would be ignored?

Unification of these concepts has the advantages of consistency and agreement with English dictionaries and the disadvantage of regular necessity of stating space and time scales explicitly. As somebody having used explicit scale statements before, I could accept such a unification. Can you accept it, i.e., are you prepared to regularly state or be careful about contexts for scales?


EDIT: replace best usage by best use

FWIW, so do dan players. I'm not sure when this particular habit is supposed to disappear

When English words of common language are used, then I use what I think is correct but I am happy to be corrected when I make mistakes.

When go terms are used, then usually they have meanings DIFFERENT from common lanuage English words, regardless of which meanings common English words might have. E.g., "stone" as a go term has a meaning different (more specific) from what is understood in common language. A common language stone can have various shapes and functions. A go term stone always is a playing device, and all go stones (of a game set) look alike.

In case of efficiency, I have seen it used as a go term with a meaning different from or more specific than the common language word efficiency. I do not try to force upon English speakers a change of the meaning of the common language word, but I try to describe the meaning implied in the typical go term usage of 'efficiency'. (Also see my other messages.)



It is not about knowing or not knowing English as a native speaker, but it is about best identifying the meaning as a go term. And no, that meaning is not just that of an English dictionary of ordinary language. Efficiency as a go term has more specific meaning. The closest agreement of the word in go texts to the ordinary language meaning occurred when the word was not or not clearly used as a go term but was rather used informally. Now, that we having this thread, suddenly the prospect appears that usage of efficiency as a go term could start to agree with the common English language word efficiency.



This is very much possible. For years, I have tried to understand well the difference between usage and use. In particular, I have been aware that I did no know which would be correct in the best-u. phrase. I still do not know when to use usage versus use. Could you please explain this to me?



How would they be translated into German?



After clarification of the linguistic semantics, chances are greater:)



IMO, this was a major reason why Western literature overlooked best use as a strategic concept. After naive translation, it would just come out as ordinary English words in different phrases such as "has used this stone well".

IMX, sente aji keshi disappears around 4d - 5d level. However, the talk in Western countries / forums about this topic during recent years is starting to have an effect: quite a few players 3d- avoid it much more often than players 3d- did in earlier years.

This is interesting. So you are saying that if you have efficient plays and don't use as many stones to say live or make territory, then you will have sente more often, without pushing the issue. What a concise concept.

Not necessarily. Playing efficiently means also leaving behind more weaknesses (or less strong shapes), which possibly let the opponent get more sente later. (Unless your play is so efficient that efficiency involves eternal sente... However, usually one would then call your play 'thick' rather than efficient. If you can play both efficiently and thickly, then your opponent must be a beginner;) )

You are right RobertJasiek, efficiency means leaving behind weaknesses.

The trick is that go terms used in English neither mean what the terms mean in a (non-go) dictionary, nor are they purely stipulative terms, explicitly and precisely defined without any prior usage in the way that a term like n-connected would be.

For that reason, you can't just say "efficiency" means what I say it means. You have to be cognizant of how people actually use the term. You can try to get them to think of it in a better way, but that has to be connected to how they actually already think of it.

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Occupy Babel!

Reading Lee Sedol's commented games book last night, and he had a hard time deciding if he made a necessary sente play or aji keshi...

So I'm guessing never.

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Sente forcing or aji keshi?:)

joseki

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

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"An amateur would think of as unimaginative and inefficient. Those who are forever trying to play efficiently place their stones as far apart as they can. That is one reason they miss so many key points." -- Kageyama, "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go"

Not really. In CJK singular and plural are rarely distinguished, so 'stone' can be, and very often is, 'stones' which is further used as the standard word for 'group', as in the famous 'large groups never die' proverb (大石死せず). Not understanding this has led some people to malign Oriental rules unfairly - but let's not go there: the point is again simply that not everything about language is, er, black and white.



Both these terms are misused here, I suggest. You can't erase aji unless there is aji in the first place. In normal Japanese usage there is no aji here. There is a scale of something like, te ga aru (there is a move here), aji (aftertaste), aya (complications), and fukumi (a hint of something, or something implicit). Aji is normally limited to the situation when several plays have been made and there is something there but it can only be activated by help from outside. If there is a play there that needs no outside help. you say te ga aru. Into this mix you could add nerai (target) but that tends to be limited to fuseki or higher strategy. The other words relate to tactics or lower strategy and the middle-game.

The significance of nerai extends to sente. Too many weaker players judge a sequence by whether they end in sente and mean by that that they end up with it being their turn to move. Sente in the strategic sense of initiative (which is much commoner in Chinese for some reason) means having the move AND having targets. Just having the move simply puts you in the rather neutral position of Black having first move on an empty board in an even game. If you understand this, you begin to understand honte and thick play - they leave no targets and so giving up the right to move next to the other side may be no big deal. In Robert's example above, 'sente forcing' is, I assume, a rendering of 'sente kikashi', but this phrase in my experience is an awkward invention in Japanese to try to differentiate between sente meaning simply sente (having the move) and sente meaning initiative (i.e. having the move AND targets). Therefore, asking if the move shown in the example is 'sente forcing' is meaningless unless you show where the target is, somewhere else on the board. The target is clearly not White's 3-3 stone. As MagicWand says, that is just the opposite side's stone in a joseki.

Just to expand on something that's already implicit in what John wrote above...

One thing that often seems to be overlooked in discussions of sente and gote is that playing gote can lead to sente (and vice versa).

Sometimes people talk about these topics as if sente is a synonym for 'good' and gote is a synonym for 'bad', but you have to play the move that's required by the position.

One gote move (defending) at the right time and place can deny the opponent 10 sente moves. Therefore, playing gote yourself can lead to gote for the opponent.

Likewise, a gote move can lead to future sente moves when it makes your overall position thick - either in terms of making some stones solid and difficult to attack, or in completing outward facing influence. This can lead to sente because it lets you attack or apply pressure in ways that might've been unreasonable, or less effective before.

As John said, what's it's really about is holding the initiative, or having an active position. If you don't take gote when you should, you can easily fall into a passive position, where you let your opponent dictate how the game develops. Strong players will often engineer some sort of trade, even at the expense of quite a lot of points, to avoid falling into a passive game. This, by the way, is also why stones should be sacrificed before they become heavy, when possible.

A passive position lets your opponent coerce you into playing inefficiently (on a global scale).

P.S. Robert, I'm not the one trying to define efficiency and haengma to be the same thing. From my perspective it sounds like that's what you're doing, though I know that that's not your intention. And while 'haengma' seems to be so broadly used that the only concise (though somewhat unsatisfactory) translation seems to be something like 'development' or even just 'move', your definition, "the optimal compromise between safety and speed of local movement," reads like an attempt to explain haengma to me.

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Surely it depends on which meaning one assigns to the word. Anyway, I have used :) and thought that it would clarify it to be a joke.



No. The phrase sente kikashi simply stresses that the player starting a kikashi is the next to move after its execution (incl. the opponent's reply).



The "target" is the created global black sphere of influence, in which next Black can play to develop it.

Which other consequence do you envision by doubting "local" in the definition of efficiency?



Yes, translations are unsatisfactory. Therefore I asked Korean professionals, see old rec.games.go articles.



My definition of haengma starts:

"the local to global relation and development of all stones"

and continues to work out its

"major aspects for a player's stones [...]
* Good balance between safety and thickness of connection and extension versus efficiency in speed of movement.
* This applies to all scales of development from local to global coordination.
* Good use of potential in the development directions.

The presence of opposing stones affect how efficiently and well the player's stones can work together."

(Joseki 2 Strategy, p. 146.)

Note that a) this refers to efficiency and b) refers to local to global and not just to local. A balance like in my efficiency definition occurs also in my haengma definition, which alread hints at good use, but only in a specialised form (not in the all-inclusive form, as I understand it now). But you can, from the definitions, see the drafted order

efficiency < haengma < best use

with increasing scales.

Reminds me of that commercial where they show the machinery in a diner, then a waitress has a milk shake and says, "You can't taste efficiency."