Einstein is supposed to have used the term “muscular thinking” to describe how it felt to do math. I wonder whether Emanuel Lasker ever said anything about reading in chess (I have read his Common Sense in Chess, but don’t recall him addressing the question). In addition to being a phenomenal chess grandmaster, he was a mathematician of some renown. I think it was Lasker who, when asked how many moves ahead he could read, said “one more than my opponent.” But that doesn’t really help us here, does it?
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I think this is the sort of answer that I was expecting to “what does it feel like to read”
For me it feels like a strain where I mentally place a stone, try to hold the image of it there in my mind, while placing the next one to see what the board looks like with those two in place.
It’s probably like someone learning to read a book where they spell each word while trying to remember the sentence that they are reading 
Occasionally I can “see” the whole of a short familiar sequence, like the old small knight approach joseki. I imagine for dans that they see many more of these, and see “new” ones in this way, without having to spell them out mentally.
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Today is book day! 
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For this post specifically I paid some attention to my reading process when playing a game.
I place imaginary stones one at a time with my eyes. They’re transparent (white-ish???) outlines with no color. I associate each connected stone clump with an abstract b/w tag and contact moves of same color grow the clump. There is no sound at all. I see the most recent 3-5 moves most clearly and the rest tend to keep disappearing. I imagine I hold down the first move with my right hand to keep it from fading.
When I was 8k and weaker I used to keep track of a liberty counter, incrementing or decrementing it on each move. This helped me detect when a group was in atari even though I had forgotten half of the moves making up the group. Whenever a liberty count reached 0 I would remember the last stone and re-read up to the same point to verify and to support my memory. But I can only track maybe 2 counters at once, more and I would forget. Now that I’m stronger I count liberties visually in the same manner as with real stones instead of tracking (max 2) abstract counters. This makes e.g. crosscut much more manageable to read and I can also re-count without re-reading the same moves.
During 2 months of daily tsumegos my biggest improvement has been the persistence of imaginary stones. Having them disappear less has helped my reading accuracy a lot. I guess a high dan or pro can treat imaginary stones and real stones as equally stable. Maybe they even have colored stones? My b/w tag system is a hindrance for sure. But my imagination is not vivid enough to imagine black spots where I’m seeing light. Reading one single stone at a time is another hindrance. I’m pretty sure the stronger players can place shapes and groups where I’m placing just stones.
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When you say visualize/image stones on the board you don’t really see the stones on the board, right? It’s more like you’re feeling them in place with your brain.
@taatelikakku that’s insane, dude.
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Look in the mirror and imagine yourself wearing a hat. This is the kind of seeing I mean. It is different to actually seeing and hard to explain. I’m not physically seeing the stones but making some mental overlay image.
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To me, reading is like walking down the road and saying ``left, right, left, right, left, … except its black, white, black, white, black, white, etc…
I dont visualize the stones on the board, but I keep track of where they would be and how many liberties they have.
As for which moes I read, I start with the common shape moves from a particular stone, read through the instinct shape moves, and if none of hem look good to me I move to the less common shape moves, and if I can`t find anything still, I just tenuki.
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Thanks for all the fascinating responses!
I guess as a final corollary, the ability to play blindfold go (at least to some limited extent, not multiple simul blindfold games as in chess) seems to indicate an incredible ability to hold positions in the mind’s eye - at least for some people.
It seems to me that reading is the fundamental skill to build. I’ll see if over time my experience of ‘what it feels like’ changes 
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It’s a little bit hard for me to imagine the stones and eventually my head blows 
and i use a handy goban.
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Yoda Norimoto 9p described reading as coming up with various variations, each coming up in a flash, and spending the rest of the time trying to determine which variation is better suited for his game. The way he described, it seems to resemble how we choose to respond to approaches in the corner during the opening, based on various josekis that we know.
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Do you have the original source? Is it online?
Have you seen the surrounding game? I think it’s in that film where they show sequences of stones appearing and disappearing and appearing again down another variation.
Even before seeing the film that’s what I imagined reading felt like for those who could do it (i.e. not me).
My futile attempts are similar to how others have described already I guess - I try to imagine (not in a “seeing” way) a stone on that empty intersection and the next etc. but after a few imaginary stones are played and I try to count liberties say then I always miscount because I forgot an earlier imaginary stone or didn’t count an empty liberty because I imagined an imaginary stone where there shouldn’t have been one (an imaginary one).
Anyway I’m sure this makes as much sense as my attempts at reading!
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I’m a sucker for that kind of thing! Just looked it up and its easy to get online so I’ve got my watching sorted out!
All things are connected… I was listening to Lex Friedman interviewing Stephen Wolfram on his podcast just now, talking a lot about cellular automata and all the complexity that emerges from simple rules. An interesting opinion he dropped in was that from working a bit with Feynman in the 80s who was famous for his simple intuitive descriptions of how things worked, that Feynman got to them largely by his incredible ease with very complex calculations (including his own ways of doing integration)… That calculation brute force was the bedrock of a lot of his apparent simple intuitive understanding. So while we might all want intuition in go, maybe what matters most is that ability to read and read and read…
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About visual memory. There was a study many years ago (sorry, I don’t have a reference, just my aging memory) that found that visual memory was the only factor that had a significant effect on players’ skill level in chess. I doubt whether that could be generalized to go, since go has many more strategic considerations than chess, but it is worth keeping in mind.
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A website where he wrote it seems to have been shut down but I have downloaded two of his articles so you could probably google translate it.
（依田塾ブログ「塾長の言いたい放題」）
その中で、今まで、碁を覚えてから、35年ほど、自分でも実行していたけれども、言葉には出来なかった新しい発見がありました。それは、アマチュアの方からよく聞かれることで、「プロは何手くらい手を読むのですか。」 と質問されますが、それは、自分が会得した手筋のパターンで、解決出来る内容のことなら、一瞬で数十手イメージすることが出来ます。
でも、それでは、解決出来なくて、その中でどれが一番マシなのか、という判断をしたり、より良い可能性を探ることが、「読み」なのだと、気がつかされました。実戦では、中々きれいには決まりませんからね。教えるということも勉強だと教えられました。
アマチュアの方によくされる質問に、「プロは何手くらい先を読むのですか？」というのがあります。これは場面によって違います。例えばシチョウなら一瞬で５０手くらいは読めます。もっともシチョウならプロになる前のほうが早かったですね。一本道なら３０手くらいは１秒かからないと思います。
手を読むということはどういうことでしょうか？当然のことながら、盤上に置いていない石をあるようにイメージするということですよね。碁の力とはイメージする力です。碁は全てイメージで勝負するものです。読みの力は訓練すれば誰でも得ることができます。僕は今まで例外を見たことはありません。
だから、碁を知らなかった子供でも、ちゃんとした訓練をさせれば１年後に３０手以上読めるようになっても何の不思議もありません。このことは子供にとって大変な財産になると思います。イメージする力を強化するということは、他のことにも役立つことと思います。
しかし、手が読めるだけでは不十分です。他に何が必要かと言えば、判断力です。つまり、読んだ結果が、どちらが良いのか、どっちの方向に進んだら良いのか判断するということです。仮に１万手読んだとしても、判断出来なければ読みにあまり意味は無いということになります。逆に言えば、その場面で一番良い手を判断出来るなら、手を読む必要が無いということです。
この判断力をどうやって身につけるのかは、勉強をして経験を積む以外にありません。碁は人生と同じで誰も正解のわからない場面がとても多いのです。しかし答えの出るようなことをちゃんと練習していけば、必ず判断力も伴ってきます。僕は依田塾の子供のために読みを鍛錬するための問題をたくさん作っています。「鉄は熱いうちに打て」と申します。脳味噌が筋肉痛になるくらい子供たちを鍛えるべきです。
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Go is one of the few skills where I frequently hear authors warn against “laziness.” …for instance in Toshiro Kageyama’s book, Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go. This supports what I have found about reading—that it is hard work, needs to be intentional, and becomes more efficient with practice.
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Thanks - the translation is a bit wobbly but you get the gist!
I think this was a good answer:
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Here’s a gobsmacking exposition of what reading feels like for a Dan:
… that dude just sees that whole sequence 
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Most of the answers don’t give much consideration about the strategic part. Sometimes the goal is really simple and clear like life and death so you can focuse on reading as we think what that activity should be.
But let’s take some middle game fights and then you need to integrate a lot of strategic consideration, like if I can give away these stones, how strong or useful will be some emerging influence, how annoying an aji and so on… To which point can you keep this as a well organized procedure, ideas coming before processing a reading and reverse?
Doing tsumego is recognized by many as the way to progress. Exploring and then memorizing a lot of recurrent patterns may be the essence of these progress beyond the training of the reading muscles.
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