It's like any human skill... calculate as much as you can (or as much as is useful) and then use your knowledge to make your best educated guess.
As for why not calculate more, it just depends on the position. Imagine asking "why did you centralize your queen in the queen and pawn ending? If you had calculated 50 moves you'd see it didn't quite work." Well sure, but that's not practical. When there are a million variations you play based on principals.
Well, in chess, I don't even think a beginner would need to calculate if one side had five or six more pieces out than his opponent, that at least, that side is much better. But in Go, can you really say there is something nearly as visually clear that can let you make intuitive judgments like that?
Even to beginners, it's almost self-evident as to why you would want piece development. And even getting some of the basics of why you move your central pawns is easy. You don't have to calculate to appreciate that stuff.
Yeah, there are shapes that are definitely "alive" and totally not able to invade. You can tell just by looking at a small group exactly what's off limits to you and what's off limits to your opponent.
Sure at lower levels, people invade anyway, and then you have to prove you can defend it. That's why you solve puzzles.
But what about the opening though? Where is the guidance on what shapes to try to make, especially since you don't know what your opponent will do? With chess it seems much more straightforward: you want good development, a safe king, and active pieces.
Ok so, I'm really bad at the game lol, I can only repeat to you what I've heard (and from talking with my brother who was interested for a few years only).
Ok, so first of all, imagine trying to make a box in the middle. Needs 4 sides. Box on edge? 3 sides. Box in corner? 2 sides. So to start, you play in the corner and expand along the edges.
Now, the closer you play to the edge, the more defended it is. Play on the 2nd line and even a beginner wouldn't invade... but you'd be using something like 10 stones to surround 8 spaces. So as you start to go along the edge, you play on the 3rd (more defensive) and 4th, or even 5th (more greedy) lines.
Similarly how closely are you placing your stones? With zero or one space in between all your stones, your opponent wont challenge it... but you'll have very little space too. So you play 3 to 5 spaces apart and that small group of spaced out stones is like pseudo territory. If you're conservative the opponent will probably leave it alone. If you're greedy (with really far spaced out stones) they'll invade early.
Now, also in the opening there are standard patterns of claiming territory in localized area called joseki. Like in chess, there are different options depending on how aggressive or conservative you are (or how well you're doing in the other 3 corners).
Ok, thanks for giving me a little more insight :)
Am I the only one here who thought that "Go" was referring to Pokemon Go?
Am I the only one here who thought that "Go" was referring to Pokemon Go?
Probably yes.
I've played Go (with little serious study on my part, like with Chess) for several years now, and I'd estimate my play at around 15 kyu. Binary nailed the description pretty well as to the complexity of it all and for the ideas behind opening strategies. It's all finding the right balance between aggression and defense. Likewise, there can be a lot to figure out on the board as far as groups go, and how one group might affect another down the road. It sort of plays like art as much as mathematics. Like drawing or painting, you play in different areas with an intuition for the composition of the whole board. I rarely think more than a few moves ahead, but I have a decent feel for how things play out.
One of the biggest difference between go and chess is that in chess it's easy to say whi is ahead in a quiet position.
In go however if you ask relative strong players who is better then about 50% vote for white and 50% for black :)
Only from professional strength you can expect the right answer to this easy looking question.
One of the biggest difference between go and chess is that in chess it's easy to say whi is ahead in a quiet position.
In go however if you ask relative strong players who is better then about 50% vote for white and 50% for black :)
Only from professional strength you can expect the right answer to this easy looking question.
In chess, a common question for trainers and just peers analzying a game together is "which side do you prefer in this position?"
In many positions it's not clear who is better, and different pros will give different answers for which side they'd rather play.
Unfortunately I heard a similar sentiment from that American go guy during the Lee Sedol match with Alpha Go, saying that chess you just count the pieces... obviously he had no idea what he was talking about. Funnily enough, often he would say something like this about go too (make some simplistic statement), and the professional go player doing commentary with him would disagree about that too lol.
In chess, a common question for trainers and just peers analzying a game together is "which side do you prefer in this position?"
In many positions it's not clear who is better, and different pros will give different answers for which side they'd rather play.
If different pros choose a different side to play then the position seems to be even.
In my go example I meant a position in which every pro thinks the same side has a big advantage.
Haha, so you're saying if one professional says white is better, and one professional says black is better, that they're both wrong and it's equal!
Anyway, yes, I misunderstood your first post. You're saying very strong players will be unsure, but professionals will know who is better.
This is also the same for chess of course. There is one funny story of a tournament when some grandmasters went to the next room to analyze an endgame. After a long time they couldn't make progress and thought it was a draw. Then the world champion comes into the room, and looking from the doorway across the room, he sees the position and says "I see 3 ways for white to win" (or something like this) and they were amazed.
"saying that chess you just count the pieces... obviously he had no idea what he was talking about."
Haha, wow. But I actually like getting some insight into how a Go player might perceive chess, just like how I'm perceiving Go as a chess player.
"Funnily enough, often he would say something like this about go too (make some simplistic statement), and the professional go player doing commentary with him would disagree about that too lol."
Haha, a self-hating Go player? :)
But yeah I dunno, like it's just so weird to me how they have any idea what "shape" to make in the opening, given that the board is so big and you have no idea what will be needed to acquire the territory until like 30 moves later. I could see in the middlegame, you might only need to look ahead a little bit, things are well established, but the opening?
I never perceived chess quite like that when I was learning that, although at that time I was a very young kid to be fair. In fact as a kid I always just liked to make a move in chess, make my statement in the position, (literally) not looking ahead at all :) I was like, screw looking ahead, this move looks good, and if you refute it, you're a jerk, I liked the move :)
Maybe it's like how in chess after, say, 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 you already get some sense of what the struggle will be about just by looking at the pawn structure? I guess the thing that freaks me out is that the early game in Go has such an empty board, like you have no guidance.
Maybe it's like how in chess after, say, 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 you already get some sense of what the struggle will be about just by looking at the pawn structure? I guess the thing that freaks me out is that the early game in Go has such an empty board, like you have no guidance.
Like in chess, people didn't always agree on what was best. There were competing schools of thought on which openings (and general approach) were ideal. After a few 100 years, through trial and error and a few geniuses, humans built a pretty good knowledge base. Pretty much just like chess... i.e. it's not supposed to be intuitive 
I had a family member who doesn't play chess at all ask me some questions, like: "how do you know a move is good when the opponent might do something you didn't plan on?" which is hard to answer in a way that makes sense. I eventually gave up and said "they have options, but you try to make all their options bad" hehe.
Maybe if you knew a little more than the rules... like what makes a group "alive." Some space is guaranteed to be yours, and no matter where your opponent plays in that space you can completely ignore it. Maybe the fewest stones possible needed to make a 100% invincible arrangement is only 6. So at a certain point, the threats are very concrete, and at that point only a few types of responses even make sense at all... and the better the players, the more... proactive they are. Like in chess, it might completely confuse a beginner who opened horribly if you told them your position was winning by move 5.
Yeah, it's funny because I get asked literally the same thing about chess -- "how can you look ahead if you don't know what the opponent will do?" Haha. Keep in mind, I'm just inquiring not because I actually think Go is like I'm saying it is (of course not!). I'm just curious about how the reality of Go is different from my impressions of it :)
I guess I'm kind of fascinated at this because sometimes I wonder what it was really like when I was a novice in chess. I wonder how many things that are dead obvious to me now I'd have to spend 10 minutes thinking about and even then maybe not understanding it. It is so crazy how once you know something well, you can use all these loaded concepts as if they are a single entity, yet to explain it to a beginner, you'd first have to explain the 12 other concepts that make it up, lol. And it might even take a while to remember that your concept is made up of other ones because you're so used to treating it as just one :)
So now with Go, I get a chance to be ignorant again, I get to be a kid again :)
When I was a new player, I remember being amazed at how some people seemed to be able to organize their pieces in any scenario. For example they'd move their rook to c1, then 10 moves later it turned out the c file was really important... how did they know that?! That sort of thing.
Don't they say that Go is even less about calculation than chess? It's weird because to me it seems like it would be the opposite, that it's like, you're either going to get the territory or you won't, and you need to look far ahead to get any sense of it. It seems like it would be more mechanical and counting based.