How do I get a rough estimate of my score, fast, without AI help?

[Ravindau]

Any suggestions? I frankly have no idea how to estimate my score, even at 9k!

[benjito]

Have you tried guessing?

[Ravindau]

Ha ha. Unfortunately my guesses are even worse than the bad AI estimate.

That´s why I am asking. What do the Dans do? They must have a method of estimating their score. Or are they doing a precise count every couple moves?

[jlt]

You don’t need to count every couple moves, but only when you need to make a strategic decision like invade vs reduce.

[Groin]

There is a book on this, by kiseido/ishi press.

But to summerize a bit:

Count only sure territory. (To be very minimum size)

Count 2 by 2 is easier (a prisoner is 2 points btw)

Then to have a more fine evaluation you need to study the endgame, there are books on this too.

[Animiral]

The answer is in your question. You need to estimate and you need to be fast.

Just to find out which territory will be black and which will be white is a challenge. If there is an isolated border section, you close it off in your mind in a “balanced” way. For example, if it is gote endgame for both sides, you assume that both just “drop down” to close it off with an equal amount of stones, even though the real endgame will go one way or the other.

If you have a framework, you use your judgement on where to close it off. You can use the “sector line”, or assume the most severe sente reduction where the defender always responds passively.

Having made up their mind on the borders, most strong dan players count in pairs. Territory usually comes in shapes where points are right next to each other, so you only count half and then double it. I personally use block shapes of 15, 10, ~4-6 and singles, which is a bit slower.

If there is just one very uncertain section, you can skip counting that, call it X and use this approach: “X needs to be 20 points to be equal”. If both have frameworks, you can also use a formulation like “X needs to be 10 points bigger than Y to equalize”.

Also use your experience to tweak the result. For example, if there is a weak group under attack, count it as 2 points, but assume that the player under attack cannot invade or reduce like normal.

Most importantly: practice counting a lot! Don’t put it off until you are 1-dan. It will improve your Go.

[Tesujitarian]

You can compare territories by size visually to get a rough idea. It would go like: “this black’s corner is similar to this white’s corner, white has this big side but black has these two territories which combined approximately equal to white’s big side territory.” Make your guesses on who’s ahead by how much, write them down. After the game compare them to ai graph. If your guess differs drastically from ai’s try to find where your judgment went wrong. Then repeat. With practise you’ll become better at it.

Counting is a very strong tool, but I think you don’t really need to worry about it until you reach 4-5 kyu. Before that judging by eye and comparing sizes is sufficient enough.

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Also not using score estimator is best to grow your estimation or counting skills.

[teapoweredrobot]

A little game I made to practice counting quickly

Try it out here: https://count.4tc.xyz/ I mainly made this for myself, but hopefully some other people will find it useful too! Counting a real go position (in an ongoing game) involves several different skills, this is just for practicing the purely mechanical part of counting the territory on the board. I believe that by getting quicker at this part, counting becomes more fun, and you’re likely to start doing it more often in real games. Let me know if there are any issues with the page, or…

Also another thread like this one

Very naif question: do you count your points during game?

Playing on a computer it’s great because I can see at any moment how many points each player has. But on a real physical 19x19 board, that seems a daunting task to me. And sometimes the point difference is small. What do players do? They look rather at the big picture? or keep track every move? or in the end is strategy+chance that makes you win? Or maybe it’s me that I’m slow in counting because I’m a beginner?

[Uberdude]

@Ravindau

That´s why I am asking. What do the Dans do? They must have a method of estimating their score. Or are they doing a precise count every couple moves?

I don’t actually count as much as the received wisdom suggests you should. My rationale is:

• In middle-game when there’s still a lot undecided, let’s say my counting accuracy is +/- 10 points
• there’s only value in counting if the result will make me change how I play, e.g. am I ahead and I can play a gentle reduction, or am I behind and I need a deep invasion?
• if I count and the result is me +5 then with +/- 10 error bars, I cannot reliably act on that information to decide how to play as maybe I’m actually -5.
• if I count and the result is me +20 then I can trust that, but if I am ahead that much I would know that just form the game flow feeling and not need to count, so counting is pointless.

Of course my ability to judge who is ahead from game flow feeling is itself a skill which will be better than yours. This is positional judgement, knowing what fair results look like and spotting inefficiencies in the resulting shapes and basically like inertial-navigation: the game starts even, I make a small mistake, opponent makes a small mistake => still even. I make 2 big mistakes, he makes 3 big mistakes => I’m ahead.

[Groin]

@Animiral

If there is an isolated border section, you close it off in your mind in a “balanced” way

I prefer counting only the secured points for both sides , it will help next when refining by adding endgame sequences. And it avoids some overestimations.

[Uberdude]

If an endgame follow-up is (truly) sente for one player (say black), but gote for the other (white), then you should count the points with black getting the sente endgame, and counting only the currently secured points will lead to an underestimate for black. It’s quite possible for these sente endgames to not roughly cancel out around the board, but one player to have the privilege to get lots of such endgames (usually the one with fewer groups who played a thicker game), so counting only secured points can easily lead to being tens of points wrong in a count.

[Groin]

I didn’t say it’s enough, it’s just the right base to start evaluating the endgame then. Yose is complex with assessments of the value of the threats vs sente/gote, a crude picture is to compare what each owns exactly and assume a balanced endgame between both. If you start to integrate apparently sente sequences then you have to go all the way for each spot to be fair.

[LetMeUp]

I never count, I don’t think counting is necessary.
Almost 99% of my games, I either win 50 points or lose 50 points.
What’s the point of counting in these games?
I rarely come across a game where the difference is within 10 points, so I don’t think it’s necessary to spend time studying it.
I think knowing how to kill your opponent or survive yourself is more important than counting.

[Groin]

@LetMeUp

I think knowing how to kill your opponent or survive yourself is more important than counting.

There should be something wrong in the way you manage your games.

If you take games played by experts, it’s not working like that. To kill or not be killed is surely kind of essential but you won’t see this happening so often, it’s used more as a threat as really happening. And then with these you get a numerical advantage for a win.

[stone.defender]

@Groin

If you take games played by experts, it’s not working like that.

Experts? you mean dans?
in sdk, groups still often die for no reason…

25k - 9d

[Groin]

O I’m not talking about immunity but how their games are following a general pattern.

[shinuito]

I had a recent tournament game with super long Fischer controls where at some point while fighting the last ko, I wanted to know (a) do I need to fight this ko, (b) do I need to try and make the ko bigger, or is winning the ko enough.

I took some time, counted the game slightly incorrectly it seems, in that I thought if I win the ko I win by 0.5. I miscounted a move I thought white would need to play defensively later. In any case I knew the game was close and I needed to win the ko.

My opponent also counted the game, but rather than have a numerical value, they just thought “it’s close, I need to win the ko to be safe”. I think I also had this kind of thought, but I wanted to count more precisely because I had the time, and also if I was just losing by like 5 points maybe we could just finish up early

In any case it turns out white was winning by 0.5 even with black winning the ko, but White played a non working ko threat in the black area. Black connects the ko, and gains one extra prisoner. I thought I’d win by 1.5, because of the miscount, but actually won by 0.5.

In any case with a more precise count white could’ve even passed and won by 0.5.

I think that might be most useful bit of counting I’ve done

In other games I did try to make some decisions based on counts, but depending on the time settings, and limited by my own abilities, it sometimes just didn’t work out.

Some other recent games however in a separate tournament I was able to estimate a rough lead and then just make decisions that seemed safe enough to reduce areas, play for endgame, and turn certain areas into dame and be happy with that.

Counting can be useful, but accurate counting and accurate play also need to accompany it in some cases.

[Ravindau]

Can you remember the title of the book?

[Ravindau]

Thank y´all for your insight.

Follow-up question:
Being lazy, I use this method to estimate who is ahead:

This is not advice. I am not nearly good enough to give advice. It´s just a description what I do.

I count a corner as 20 points, every sideline as 30 and the center as 40 points.
So if I control 1/3 of a sideline I estimate this as 10, half a corner 10 again and one quarter of the center another 10.

If I think I am ahead by 10 or more, I play defense. If I am behind, I try some dubious experiments to confuse my opponent. If about equal, I try to make the best move.

So, am I a genius or an idiot?

[Tesujitarian]

I think that that’s important not to count more territory than you actually have. If method you describe is as vague as I think, then you should not play “defensively” if you assess 10 points lead and instead you should play normally, because margin of error might be around 10 “points”. If your lead is smaller than you assess, then playing defensively(as if you’re ahead by a lot) might easily lose you a game.