I understand it as:
If I play A then the sequence is BCDEF.
If I play A’ then the sequence is B’C’D’E’F’.
I try to compare positions F and F’. If F looks better than F’ then I’ll play A, and vice-versa. But in practice it’s often hard to keep track of several sequences in mind for me. Sometimes I only have fuzzy pictures of F and F’ in my mind.
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Ya, straight-up reading with one-way is often much easier. However, I often had the problem not in the end, but more in the middle.
In most cases, I had a pretty clear picture of what I was aiming to achieve like creating a certain influence in a certain direction or killing a group or a semeai fight required playing at certain key points. I know those key stones need to be there, the issue is the sequences. There are many ways to reach there, but not always possible, and we need to adjust for that and swap out some of the intermediaries. Sometimes your mind will just be filled with “ideas” and “images” of these patterns and have to redo them (like taking a break) and “clear things up”.
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I saw some very impressive edition (big format, hard couvertures in many volumes, bit like an encyclopedia in a few bookstores ( Chengdu Guangzhou). They were local and not seen anywhere else. Inside was mostly reproduction of old weiqi books pages, like a picture book. My opinion is it was to fill some shelves in some new rich people with a bit of interest in weiqi.
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Do you mean like this one 圍棋文獻集成?
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From the pics not really. Inside was no diagrams and commentaries but full page pictures simply reproducing the old books
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I would love to see those ones. Sometimes the detail isn’t just about what is written, but the pages themselves, even how they are bound. The fonts themselves are also clues since different eras have different printing styles (even the gaps and how these words are printed, let alone the words themselves evolved through the millenniums). Even how the stones are marked and printed tell the story of eras and the technique (and can be used to determine how trustworthy some sources are, or they had been reprinted at a later date).
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I’m more curious how the chess and shogi players visualise the moves with just the coordinates and no board nor images
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I think it’s different when all the pawns are not the same?
I played a bit of Chinese chess as a kid. And there are some common openings and the “checkmate” patterns that lead to winning (and more draw or cannot play loops patterns which is the really hard part). And they all have different names and some of the commonly used “strategies names”. In Chines chess, we would mark differet sides with the Chinese numerals (一二三四五六七八九), and the Arabic numerals (123456789), hence it is easier to tell which side is currently moving, and with forward(進) and backward(退) or move horizontally(平) to indicate the movement. The most difficult one is the knight, which moving forward or backward needs to check the final numerals to see if it’s two spaces or one space. If you get used to it, it is really not that hard to visualize honestly (especially when you have anchors like the names of those open moves, strategy names, and end-game patterns, those names often make some sense and related to the situations themselves)
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If you have the opportunity to pass by Guangzhou, the bookshop is the huge one in “new” part in the east of the town, not far from a subway station. That was years ago so I hope they still have one collection.
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Pieces plus “takes, takes, takes , takes…”
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I like to do puzzles and challenges on a lichess fork that has other boardgames.
They also have the lichess coordinate trainer
One weekly challenge involved getting a high score on that, and after some grinding but not getting at all close to the eventual winner, I did find that knowing the coordinates helps to shape a lot a mental picture of the chess board.
Then picturing something like 1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 isn’t as bad as I would’ve thought.
I imagine the pattern recognition kicks in a lot. A go player being able to imagine a joseki they’ve played hundreds of times, is probably not too different to replaying an opening you’ve seen hundreds of times in chess.
How the top players do it, probably very different question 
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A go position is “bigger” than a chess position. Storing a full go position (19x19) efficiently on a computer takes about twice as much space as a chess position (~68 bytes vs ~32 bytes). I suppose this also holds for “storing” full board positions in a human brain.
It becomes especially difficult with go as the game progresses and there are like 100+ stones in a configuration that is likely unique, while with chess it starts easy, because the initial position is fixed, and towards the endgame it becomes easier again as fewer pieces remain on the board.
Also, I think the number of plies required for strong reading is typically higher in go than in chess. I think 10 plies is aready pretty deep for reading some tactics in chess, while 10 plies is not particularly deep when solving some tsumego or reading out a semeai.
You can also observe that strong chess players can still play strongly while blindfolded (even simultaneous games), while I don’t know of strong go players who can play even a single full 19x19 game strongly while blindfolded.
I don’t know if strong shogi players can play simultaneous games blindfolded, but I assume shogi is somewhere in between chess and go, as to how difficult that is to pull off.
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I wonder could Jonas do it. He did win 10 out of 12 simul games in one colour go
I think that requires an awful lot of memory ability to keep twelve 19x19 games in your mind, and I think if you forget at all, the scattering of white stones won’t help that much. That is unless you have some very strong memory techniques.
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I think one colour go is significantly easier than blindfolded (without a tangible board). With some practice, some mid SDK players already seem to be able to do it.
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The world records for blindfold Go. His record is 1 vs 5. And I think if he played with fewer opponents, he could play strongly.
I think I will be able to play 9x9 blindfolded, and 19x19, probably pass the early-mid-game fight, but beyond that I am not sure, reading during mid-game probably will mess up. Although, with enough practice, probably could be done. I mean I can remember a lot of ancient games and if I close my eyes I can recall those famous board patterns (like the ear-reddening move, not sure of the whole board all at once, more like I can sort of reconstruct them when I pay attention to them locally, like I remember those exchanges).
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Interesting, thanks.
Final paragraph auto-translated:
In an informal challenge match, Bao Li had previously tried to play blind Go against 10 players, and in his opinion, 1 against 10 might be the limit. Bao Li once said: “According to my understanding of blind Go, it is not good if the opponent’s level is too high or too low. If the opponent’s level is too low, the opponent’s moves will lack logic, and it will be difficult for me to play. What I mean is that if all 10 opponents are amateur 3rd or 4th dan, I can handle it.”
At least good to hear that 3d amateur play tends to make enough sense to him 
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Ya, playing against weaker players with moves that don’t make sense probably will mess up quite easily, and personally, I think it has more to do with that if those moves are simply at nowhere or useless places, they just got forgotten, if they play like overplay and unreasonable moves, they would also easily get confused. Those opponents when you can easily predict their moves that get “pushed around” by you (but not so easily they give up and just tenuki) are most likely the easiest I’d imagine.
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Yes, when comparing the positions below (AlphaGo Zero self play at -3000 Elo rating vs AlphaGo Zero self play at 2500 Elo rating), the 2nd position is definitely easier to accurately hold in my mind, even though both positions have 50 stones on the board.
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Ya, we do not remember the stones, but remember the chunks. The josekis and the groups and their exchanges.
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