In the practical context placing a stone after your opponent places a stone is a key aspect to becoming a pro player.

Maybe I should write a book.

There are at least two ways in which connection is a factor in thickness. One has to do with the influence of the thickness on other stones. As a rule, in a fight the possibility of connecting to thickness gives the player with thickness an advantage. The thickness is a safe haven. The other has to do with the formation of thickness in the first place. Stones that are easily disconnected do not form thickness. Again, with rare exceptions, for instance, where some of the cut off stones may be sacrificed for even more thickness.

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Sure, but as a point on its own it's not very useful. Well connected stones can be heavy not thick, and previously thick stones can become heavy due to a change in circumstances that does not affect connection in any way. Connection is a necessary factor, not a sufficient one. Just as playing games is a necessary factor in becoming strong but far from being a sufficient factor.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you though.

Thickness is determined by its degrees of connection AND life AND territory (potential).

In go not much is useful on its own.



If thick stones become heavy, it is the result of error.



No one is claiming that it is.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Sorry my point is unclear. My thinking is that saying X, Y and Z are necessary (yes not sufficient) isn't very useful until you can show why X, Y and Z are necessary as a group and insufficient with one element missing and even then you run into the problem of of X, Y and Z being necessary for Concept 1 yet X, Y and Z does not exclusively consist of situations where Concept 1 applies and ends up being "You need X, Y and Z and then you need to judge if it fits within the Concept or not."

Defining thickness specifically this way just strikes me as very problematic because of the latter issue, we can probably agree on a bunch of necessary factors but then find these necessary factors are all present for shapes or groups which we'd never consider as thick, rendering the definition not that useful.

My weak players 2c.

Maybe you should write one about key aspects in Go...
Perhaps you could name it the Fundamental Key Aspects of Go or some such, maybe in the vein of Funakoshi's 20 precepts.

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Thickness:

In a general consideration, thickness can have various degrees of connection, life, territory, but we are impressed only if the degrees are good. So connection and life alone do not suffice, because thickness shall achieve territory; territory is necessary.

Territory alone is not sufficient, because territory surrounded by badly conected, hardly alive stones can be attacked by the opponent. So (good degrees of) life or life and connection are also necessary.

(Good degrees of) connection and life are both necessary, because there can be different kinds of thickness: e.g., such with a) a modest degree of life and a modest degree of connection or b) a modest degree of life and a great degree of connection or c) great degrees of life and connection. If we considered only life, we would be overlooking the variety of thickness.

Connection, life and territory are sufficient to describe thickness, because every other aspect traditionally attributed to (or known verbally about) thickness follows from these properties: generating influence, (preferably) good eye value, thick shape, little aji, creating board division lines, [informal] territory potential.

In contrast to influence, thickness is a property of stones, while influence is a property of affected intersections. Therefore, it does not matter that influence is defined also via connection, life, territory (but from both players' view).

Is there anything else that is characterised by good degrees of connection, life, territory, but not thickness? Why? By definition, it IS thickness!

EDIT:

There can be efficient or inefficient thickness.

I was a dan player before I was fairly confident of distinguishing between heavy and thick, between light and thin. These concepts are important, but fuzzy and difficult to define.

Robert has not convinced me that he has good definitions for these terms, but I applaud the effort. Besides, it is not like anyone else has come up with good definitions, either.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Bill, I think you major objection is that you want to define a different kind of thing:)

Bill generally discusses the terms as currently used. Your definitions tend to attempt to change the terms which is why you're better off creating new words and terminology than trying to create confusion.

Do you recall his suggestion about influence? It was not as currently used.



See my earlier message: my definition keeps all earlier characteristics valid by implying them, but a) simplies by using fewer, and more basic, aspects in the definition and b) generates optional precision by specifying degrees that can be determined.



Confusion is replaced by clarity by having mentioned the simple aspects (connection and life) at all and having added precision. Describing the same deserves using the same word.

Wrong.

You change the meaning to get the precision you desire and add confusion when discussing these terms with you.

So keep trying but you should keep making up your own terms like connected-5 and capturable-2 with the precision you desire.

The question is: in practical context - do we even need a definition more precise than what we have?

Here is my thinking:
Lets say we have a perfect definition. This definition lets a 30k unerringly decide what is think, what is thin, what is lose, and what is weak. Now, what can he do with that knowledge? I suspect - unless he knows how to handle each of these shapes - not much. This knowledge comes with skill and experience and time, and no other way, I think.

So what I would say, in this particular case, might even be the opposite - the 'type' of the shape (think, think, whatever) might be defined by the way we handle it, and as our skill in handling it grows, so do our understanding of how to tell those concepts apart. The 'definition' is itself defined by our ability to handle the particular concept. In other ways - the understanding grows when it needs to grow, not before. Cramming down definitions before we are ready for them is like putting the cart before the horse - and might even be damaging (I know at least one practical example in which I think it did a lot of damage I am trying to undo now.)

This is why we so often say "i did not understand this or that before I was X level" and then later "when I was Y level I realized I did not understand it fully even at X level" and so on... Our understanding of the concepts is not bound to how well they are defined, but to how well we can handle it in practice. And if we cannot handle it at all, no amount of perfect definition for 'thickness' or 'influence' can mean squat to us.

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- Bantari
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My view of all this term nightmare is that go itself is a language. We are just trying to translate it to another language (English, Spanish, Mathematics), whereas pros and high ranked amateurs have varying (and higher) degrees of fluency in it. They don't need a definition of honte, thickness, influence or ko because they can "think" in the target language without barriers.

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Yeah, I'm not sure if it will be amenable to definition, or at least very precise definition due to the nature of the concept, similar to trying to put a precise numerical value on something like the value of influence.

Shhh! That's one thing I am working on.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Bantari, a good definition can give much more than a player at his level needs for his ability of application. A definition considered alone has little value, because it also needs accompanying strategy and tactics or related principles of application. Such as "Use thickness to build territory, fight or build new thickness elsewhere.". IOW, also go theory (not only skill and experience) generates knowledge. BTW, that's why there is go theory at all.

A good definition provides knowledge itself: My definition tells how to build good thickness: build good connection, good life potential and good territory potential. The first lesson of using thickness well is to build it well, so that then it can be used well.

RBerenguel, the "target" language consists of terms, read partial game trees and choices. E.g., we use the term 'territory region', so that we can make the choice to use partial reading elsewhere on the board for the sake of creating more territory there.

Not sure you are right on that.

Or do you redefine the word 'definition' to also mean all the applicable time and learning and skill and effort to be able to apply it? You cannot just say what you said above without understanding that you are also including all the years of playing and experience and honing your reading ability and intuition and whatnot - to be able to make proper use of precisely distinguishing between 'thickness' and 'influence' (for example.) And this long learning process is independent of how you word the definition. Not to mention - I think this process of refining your understanding is ongoing, you hone your skills throughout your Go 'career' - there is no 'end', there is no "that's it, now I understand what it all".

What's more, at the point of the process, when the student went through all the years of learning - the formal definition you wrote might be redundant to his strength.

Either way - what I am trying to say is that the more skill you have, the more you have to delve into the finer points of both distinguishing between thickness and influence (for example) and making use of this distinction. At low levels, I doubt it is very useful to have this distinction defined very precisely, since the skill to make use of this distinction is simply not there. All you need is some vague ideas which compliment what you can actually do with it for the moment. As the skill grows, the ideas need to crystalize as well, but they do regardless, I think. Its just the nature of the beast.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

If you were just slightly farthest from what I meant you'd overflow the distance meter and be back at square zero.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net