Here’s an interesting, and perhaps controversial, video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Nk9dsh1dI. It’s rather rambling, so see my comment below the video for an AI summary of the transcript. tl;dr Nate proposes another way of thinking about the game in terms of being greedy (i.e. wanting more than your opponent has) for “power" (which he tries to define) rather than territory or influence. I find it fascinating that he claims that this approach is easier to diagnose (work out what went wrong and correct it) than a focus on territory alone. If anyone else can be bothered to watch it, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Doubtless there are lots of people with their own theories of how to play go, but he’s a strong dan player, so perhaps deserves some consideration.
IIRC I have been to a lecture by Antti Törmänen 1p about a very similar approach. Nate most likely didn’t come up with this on his own.
I think Nate mentions this is his way of describing how other players of a similar level think.
gush alert
I’ve watched that video multiple times, I notice he changed the title—it used to be something like “What kyus should be hungry for”.
Without doubt this video had the most transformative effect on how I think in the game. I’ve been trying to move towards this way of thinking since I watched it over a year ago, but I still easily gravitate back to “territory goggles”. This game, move 89 (and others) is a classic example of still doing the precise opposite of what he suggests. Greedy for territory; ignoring weakness.
Triton baduk is another one who I’ve heard often say “I could play here, but it’s only territory”.
I don’t have time to watch a 1h30 minute video now, so is this “power” basically saying strength and weakness of groups is important and you should want strong groups?
Why not read the short summary of the transcript which I posted in the YouTube comments? It’s currently the first comment.
I remember watching this lesson and enjoying it.
However, I don’t see a top comment with a summary, or even in the top 20 comments, no matter how I sort it. It’s probably on top only for you.
Sort by newest and my comment is now second from the top. But hopefully this link will take you straight to my comment:https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Nk9dsh1dI&lc=UgyAQTSE1pho15OOt8x4AaABAg&si=G7JkAdWPgS_ecPKz
So your summary seems to correspond to what Uberdude says: strength of groups is important. The principle is of course well-known, the difficulty is to evaluate strength and weaknesses, and to exploit those weaknesses with efficient techniques. Motoki Noguchi wrote a book in French on a similar subject, I believe it can be interesting for players between 10k up to low dan:
Ok, that makes sense, but I don’t see why it’s seen as controversial or novel: Attack and Defence from the elementary go series (one of the best English language Go books every written IMO) also teaches this, which is why I’ve been recommending it to players around 5k to 1d as the single best thing to help their improvement around that level for the last 15 years, which also corresponds with the 4k student there.
It’s not controversial and maybe the only novelty is that it is an English YouTube video.
Ok, forget the “controversial” possibility. I was simply trying to avoid flak if Nate’s view turned out to be outlandish.
This is a very interesting discussion. I feel many strong players and pros tried to say something very similar but with different words to describe these higher order concepts that describe general heuristics to navigate complexity and emergence.
Summary of TelegraphGo’s conceptualization:
Strength vs Weakness = how far from death
Influence = Power over an area near strength. Near strength, stones are more likely to live or die.
Power = Quality of control over area (added up Influence). = Adding up strength, subtracting other strength => how likely to die.
Balance of Power = intuitive calculation for Attacking Potential (Attack & Defense book) one over another over whole board.
Balance of Power is more exchangeable then Territory which is more stale.
Zchemike’s conceptualization of “sustainable development” falls close.
“sustainable development” = moves that achieve the most of the 2 most important aspects: territory (fast & strong & safe) & thickness (not influence; allows to get territory in the future; not moyo, or potential).
But I think that the “Zone Press” conceptualization of O Meien is the closest, while being stated in very different terms.
Zone = relationship of the positions of each side’s stones → a sphere within the go board:
#1 In a favorable (unfavorable) fight, one proceeds with a judgment as to the extent of the zone. If zone is thick, fighting is favorable / unfavorable based on who’s zone is it.
#2 Due to the moves that are played, a sphere is influenced and that determines the moves that are played. There are two fundamental cases in regards to “moves played that influence a sphere.”
a. places where there are still no stones
b. places that are still not alive
Press = the power relationship of each side’s stones.
I am not going to try to explain it further here, because I think the essence he tries to convey is that it is not explainable in simple terms. What it does best though, I think is that it constructs a logical argument for the mental attitude and how to play the game with an “infinite” mindset (i.e. greedy for power, but embracing uncertainty) as opposed to “finite” mindset (i.e. territory focused, numeric evaluation, counting, objective endgame).
@klaussklau Thanks for those references. Perhaps this quote applies here:
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
— H. L. Mencken