While it is certainly a useful competition skill to count the board within seconds, it is not a good argument in this discussion because
Players who quickly evaluate the board within seconds do simply not count 150 things. They have different methods that had to be specially trained. Naive counting in every game does not train these methods at all (just like I recently found out that I have tied my shoelaces completely wrong all my life and have decided to relearn it).
Counting has opportunity costs both in games and in training. My time for go is finite, it is at least debatable whether counting is a good use of this time at a certain level, especially without the methods in point 1.
As long as one does not know what to count, counting is rather useless. If I am not sure if an endgame hane is sente, then my counting will already be off and I should spend the time trying to find out if it is sente. So when I say “I know how to count 150 things”, that does not mean that I do not understand about speed, it means that the priorities are somewhere else.
I am actually not against counting, I am against making it the moral thing to do, especially if the existence of opportunity costs is not even acknowledged.
PS: This moral pressure shows up in a lot of posts in this thread that always emphasize that of course, everyone will have the same opinion on this and that issue.
I dissagree about the moral oressure on this thread that somehow dicates that everyone should have the same opinion. I for one usually have unpopular opinins.
This is a discussion thread. If anyone were to say that they objected to an opinion posted on here then that would be fine, but any objection or even affirmation is worth debate at least on the logic of said onjection or affirmation.
For example… i asked the question… is game analysis a crutch, i habe a reason… and other dissagreed so we talked about it. There were indeed holes in my thinking. So its aworth exploring those holes.
Now… when it comes to the poll… is it really worth opening another poll to ask the same question, in a place that does not have the same back log of pretextual posts in which to consider opinions and ideas?
I dont think so. And i also think that without the pretext of the posts above the result would be much the same in my estimstion. But then i could be wrong.
Now if we are talking about moral obligation to be fair to the person you are playing against… then it stands to reason thst you should always feel morally obligated to play a fair game.
I hope i managed to understand this moral oblegation thing that seems to have cropped up because to me it honestly makes no sense in it being brought up… but then im tired.
As ti counting. Its a skill a perosn can apply to working out if they are ahead or not. Depending on the result fo the count dicates how you play… agrresivly… or defensivly to keep leed or to tey and win points. It has its value for every kind of player… but even so accurate counting down to the last half point… its an experience thing and it is a specialised skill… but one that can be learned… and there is no correct way to do it as there are many methods.
i agree, knowing what to count comes first. but i want to add that the concept of territory is fluid through the ranks, so even if 15kyu might count differently from 1dan, the 15kyu might be correct for the purpose of their game.
couting and evaluating are clearly different things. i proposed that it is possible to count a game (meaning the exact score, or as close to the endgame score as possible) not in seconds, but during byo-yomi, which is quite a difference. if there is not enough time to count the game in one period, then one may count a small area of the board and continue at the next opportunity.
similarly once a count has been done, it is possible to neglect the unchanged parts of the board in the next count and only count where things have changed since.
couldnt agree more. morals have nothing to do with it.
and to answer the OPs question and not only talk about counting: i believe that the analysis tool can be more than a crutch for many purposes, but relying on it heavily can turn out to be an additional obstacle as soon as one switches focus to a setting where it is not availible.