Tips for 19x19 mid game

[Uberdude]

@Anthe

So when I read people “read” 20 - 50" moves in go I am astonished. Currently this is far beyond what am “seeing” … a chess GM once answered the question “How many moves do you see ahead” … “One, sometimes two… but most often they are the right ones”

I think reading deeply is easier in go than chess, see:

Go is better than chess because

I think this is also an important factor why, despite its vastly higher mathematical complexity than chess, humans can play go at a high level. Before Alpha Go a common question was “why is go so hard for computers?”, with the usual 2 answers being the big board and branching factor leading to high game tree and state complexity, and the difficulty of making a good evaluation function. But I like to flip this question on its head and instead consider it as “why is go so easy for humans?”. Given…

Also the idea of a strong player not needing to read so far, because they have a highly trained intuition and experience that makes them more likely to read the good moves applies in Go. A strong player can read deeper than a weaker if they need to, but if you have a pro playing on 1s instinct so barely reading at all, and a 10k being allowed to read 20 moves deep the pro will still destroy the 10k. Bots are similar, their instinct is superhumanly strong, but there are some positions (e.g. complicated capturing races or ladders) where instinct isn’t enough and you do need to read, and these are the kind of positions where a human with lots of time can play better than a bot with little time/resources. They are getting rarer and rarer though as the bots improve.