Calculating the wealth/value of moves - which method do you use?

General Go Discussion
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I would like to ask, if you calculate the ‘wealth’ of a move, which method do you use?
I came across the Miai counting, which seems to be very solid, especially during the endgame, but can be a bit complicated. Then there is the swing approximation, which can also be used.

Do you use different methods? Are there any different? Maybe you use different methods in a different state of game (middle game vs end game)? Maybe you even have your own method?

Im aware that most people play with very little or even no calculating, but Id be very interested to at least take a dip in this topic and would like to know if you know more about it.
Kind regards ^-^

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Can you elaborate?

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Miai counting at Sensei's Library

Deiri Counting at Sensei's Library

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FYI the usual term is “value” not “wealth”.

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Approximate deiri counting should be enough at (y)our level in a live game. In correspondence games if you are patient enough you can practice miai counting which is more precise.

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Two well known teachers on counting …

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Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

There’re 3 books that I know of with Engame as a subject for beginners.

and

Vital Endgame
The Shape of Things to Come

by Janice Kim 3 dan

I almost finished reading Jasiek’s book, so I can only comment on that one. I think the only flaw of that book is that it tries to cover too big of a range of go players, 18k - 1k, so that as a 2k ogs I just ended up either flipping through majority of pages or reading topics just to be sure that I won’t miss something, but not learning anything that I didn’t know about before. Oh, also I should mention that book is written as, or in style of, a mathematical proof rather than a regular book, which might be a deterring factor for some people. If you’ll be buying this book, then PDF is much cheaper. Free sample is available on Sensei’s Library page.

I think that I’ve seen Jasiek mention Rational Endgame somewhere, thought I might be wrong, so I tend to believe that that’s a good or at the very least an Ok book.

Janice Kim? I’ve never read her books, so I have no idea. You can download a free sample of her book on Go Books • SmartGo

If you want to know more advanced go theory in English then probably Jasiek is the only option out there.

P.S. Funnily enough, there turns out to be a review by Jasiek on Rational Endgame. Line “The book is, among others, for strong kyus or dans interested in a specific topic and spending the book’s price regardless of only needing a few pages,” can be applied to Endgame 1 Fundamentals, imho.

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I use miai counting. I haven’t taken the time to understand the theory behind it, but it’s not any harder than deiri counting in practice imo, and you get more meaningful numbers out of it

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For gosauriers there is also Ogawa & Davies book “The endgame” (1976) from the Elementary Go series.

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Thanks for the Videos! ^^
Do they really cover up the theory tho? It would be great!
Right now I dont have the means to wach videos, but the Go-magic Video seems rather short while I dont rallye like any Nick Sibicky videos for different reasons (which wouldnt be any problem if the topic is covered up properly).
I have a few doubts but hope for the Best!

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Thanks for the suggestions!
I try to avoiding buying books as much as possible (I’d look smart if I read them ;)), but if there is no other good way to study, I will take a proper look at them!

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There is another book that goes a step even further, but its methods only make a difference in very late endgame analysis for securing the last point

I have this book, but understanding it has eluded me.

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Interesting!

Intimidating!

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Perhaps not. You may be overestimating my abilities

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I actually don’t think I know enough about your maths background, so it’s a bit hard to judge.

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You me and @Jon_Ko book club is what I’m hearing when I read this :slight_smile:

I’ve picked up a bunch of yose books, and at some stage will need to at least get better at estimating, when calculating is hard :slight_smile:

Myself and @Jon_Ko had a look at Anttis book and vol 3 from Robert Jasiek among other things the last few days.

Maybe sometime in the future Stanislaw will also realease an endgame app that calculates endgame values in local positions :slight_smile:

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Here is Stanislaw’s repository:

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Oh cool. I think he said it’s gets around 55% of his course correct

but it sounded fairly good since Katago and that other a0-bot thing were more like 20%.

I think he mentioned that even in katrain when you ask/force Katago to pick a local move by drawing a region to pick from, it’s still technically thinking globally, like it suggest playing a certain atari with the intention of tenuki after the response by the opponent.

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Nice, I knew Stanislaw was good at Maths from when I first met him at the Polish Go Camp back when we were both 4ds (me a weak one, him a strong one, I did get 1 win of 4 IIRC; now I’m an even weaker 4d and he’s 1p!), good to see him doing interesting work combining that and Go.

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I discovered the value of endgame in a game I played against a strong 5d friend long ago. I was in the sdk range and well I had the feeling that my game wasn’t so bad after all. Yes of course they were still a bit of unsolved, some heaviness here and there.

But then the endgame started all smelted. I felt hard all my weaknesses and the submission I had to follow, seing the unavoidable end coming step by step.
That was an impressive lecture on something like “prepare your endgame”.

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