I remember InSeong Hwang 8d EGF (who runs an online go school) categorising the playing styles of his students (he put me in the “Street Fighter” category).
He had one category that he called “Don Quixote”. I think he reserved it for players whose moves didn’t make sense to him (even when accounting for their level), and possibly those players couldn’t even verbalise themselves why they played where they did. I got the impression that InSeong found it quite difficult to teach such players.
I expect such players to also be especially challenging opponents for blindfolded go.
Well, the links weren’t helpful regarding play styles I didn’t find anything on his school page, do you remember approximately what he said about each category?
I think I’ve heard this before, but I don’t remember where.
When I look at variations of kifu on the paper, I struggle to find the move if it’s something I don’t expect. Some AI variations are like that too. Similarly, if my opponent plays a move that doesn’t make sense, sometimes I struggle to recall it when recording down the kifu later.
Interestingly, I find a certain degree of this type of play/unusual moves amongst the easiest to remember and visualise in its own right so long as I have a clear picture of the board in general, and I’m a bit surprised the moves don’t stand out more to others, too.
Maybe if the moves were significantly random (like a 36k playing) by %, it’d become harder to visualise after some time, though.
I find that the unusual moves draw the attention to them, their exact location, which affects the reading, etc. and I feel that for me, it would actually seem a bit easier to blunder playing blindfolded if not paying attention to a more “standard” shape one learnt by rote.
But then, when conceptiualising I tend not to treat or visualise stones/shapes as "a clump of results of set sequences/joseki’, but rather do my best to see them as they are and affect specfics, whether in blindfold go, blindfold replaying of pro games/my games or in actual, non-blindfold games.
(I find it hard to have precise reading if I’m not doing that well where it matters – my play is less “alive” even though the effort at precision takes more brainpower, and it’s probably a part of how the style of play of some players with a strong focus on perhaps-unusual reading works.
I play with a style sometimes based on complex reading, which also naturally considers shape weaknesses and unusual shape possibilities, and notice sometimes other players discard or miss possibilities due to that not being ‘standard’ to them)
– on the other hand, I didn’t learn as many joseki/standard forms compared to what I tend to see in other mid-high dan players, and often used/use brute force to read various complex follow-ups to the best of my ability.
(though I’m aware of good shapes, etc, just also as aware that they can be very situationally dependent and “weird looking” shapes & unsual possibilities/aji can work well – so it may be a result of being accustomed to that and reading it too)
I just found him referring to those playing styles in one of his youtube videos (from 18:23 to 23:30)
It turns out my memory was mostly correct, except that he grouped those styles into technical and territorial (see 20:00 mark), so the actual grouping is a bit different than my memory.
Edit: BTW InSeong categorises himself as a Boss type player, and Politician type players tend to be his nemesis (like Cho SeokBin 8d EGF and Kim SeongJin 8d EGF). They don’t mind getting pushed around, taking gote and being humiliated a bit. They mostly just give InSeong what he wants while securing just enough points for themselves to win.
When I started to read books about Go as DDK, I had the same problem really.
I think part of why I can handle it now is, that my general visualisation ability improved and just training to read on diagrams.
I recommend to focus on short sequences and try to read 3 - 5 moves deep at most. If you look at longer sequences it might help to lay them out on a board, to really grasp them.
I think it makes no sense to look at disgrams that show parts of games, like 50 moves plus, with move numbers. It will utterly confuse you, as long as you are not used to it.
It can be a good way to train your direction of play. Lots of moves are forced or local, but timing and location of a tenuki can be subtle. Any moves that you struggle to find the next one in the sequence can be a guiding light to help your study.
Images of static numbered games could be converted to a list of moves by a computer program, depending on how multiple moves on an intersection is encoded. Does anyone happen to know of such a program? (Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to create one.)
are you thinking like a program to list what moves could be next based on the kifu, and then using ai to choose the strongest and assume that was meant?
I think OCR kifu is part of the function for Silverstar
https://www.silverstar.co.jp/02products/igo_ocr/igo_ocr.htm
They used to be sold separately, but now they are bundled together
However, it is only in Japanese, and I think it only supports well-printed(scanned 400 dpi) black and white kifu.
I didn’t find anything on his school page, do you remember approximately what he said about each category?
