If you know whom is playing whom and how much handicap there is you sometimes can tell who is going to win pretty reliably. There’s not much more information that the first two moves give you in a game of professionals.
The story I’m referring to was in relation to games played between evenly matched players, (without the use of handicaps) and has to do with the nuances of different approaches to playing the opening. It was a hard to encapsulate concept at the time of the original comment (way before modern computing came on the scene) but has to do with what would probably now be considered win-rate.
The first 4 moves of a game between players familiar with the game—most of the time—reliably are played in each of the 4 corners of a 19x19 board. There are usually 3 different moves in each of the 4 corners, and the comment had to do with literally the 2nd move of a game between 2 players of any skill level, sans handicap I’m sure.
This comment of course came from a very well respected professional player who had devoted his life to the study and play of Go, at a time when the only ways to play were either face to face, or a correspondence game played through the mail.
In Go you frequently change the place of the board on which you are playing.
This is why the concept of shape building is so complex and what you are referring to is the concept of ‘Tenuki’.
This frequently means that it takes a long time till the game again continues playing many more moves at a certain place and by that point other things changed on the board.
This is what is usually referred to as reading local versus global positioning.
The story I’m referring to was in relation to games played between evenly matched players, (without the use of handicaps) and has to do with the nuances of different approaches to playing the opening. It was a hard to encapsulate concept at the time of the original comment (way before modern computing came on the scene) but has to do with what would probably now be considered win-rate.
The first 4 moves of a game between players familiar with the game—most of the time—reliably are played in each of the 4 corners of a 19x19 board. There are usually 3 different moves in each of the 4 corners, and the comment had to do with literally the 2nd move of a game between 2 players of any skill level, sans handicap I’m sure.
This comment of course came from a very well respected professional player who had devoted his life to the study and play of Go, at a time when the only ways to play were either face to face, or a correspondence game played through the mail.
This is why the concept of shape building is so complex and what you are referring to is the concept of ‘Tenuki’.
This is what is usually referred to as reading local versus global positioning.