Author: Alberto Rezza
Date: 10:54:03 02/13/04
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>You've said that eloquently. I'd like to hear your description of the >NON-tactical aspects of Go as played by professionals. In spite of being light-years away from professional strength or thinking, I'll try to answer, with the help of an example. Strategy should mean something like, for instance, choosing between two different plans which both have merit. So let's imagine a pro in the early stages of a game. He has a territorial framework, and, with nothing else urgent to do, can either solidify it (making an invasion more difficult) or expand it on a large scale. In each case he shall consider a few possible developments; but before choosing he must answer many questions like "if I expand it and he invades, what will be the size of the territory (and/or the value of the center-facing strength) which I will get AFTER the fighting is over?" Here you or me would be at a loss, while he knows without even thinking which are the most likely invasion points, and the result to be expected; but not even he can analyze so deeply as to get an exact answer, within one or two points - which would be needed in order to be really confident in his choice of plan. So even he must give an intuitive answer. Call it "positional judgment". I think most of his strategic thinking would be of this positional type; because on the other hand, whenever a tactical encounter is involved (and particularly in the case of the life or death of a group) he'll take all the time he needs to read it out COMPLETELY, for a mistake here might immediately lose the game, and not just 2 or 3 points for having chosen an inferior line. This is also what go programs try to do: I've read they spend most of their time doing local tactical searches inside of the evaluation function, for no evaluation is possible until you decide whether a group is alive, dead, killable, etc.... Alberto
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