In case it wasn’t clear, that sentence beginning “Stronger players do better” was not purporting to describe all the things that make stronger go players stronger, but to describe specifically how I think they are stronger in joseki.
I didn’t take it as if it was all they did.
(1) they have a better sense of the range of possible outcomes once those sequences of moves have been played out and (2) they have a better sense of how the state of the rest of the board affects the desirability of those various outcomes.
With (1) it seems like your describing the skill of reading, but not necessarily reading with the understanding of how to play so that you have a good outcome, or reading and assessing the variations of a particular position, and with (2) your describing reading how local play affects global play. I think if they are truly strong players, they also (3) understand the importance of getting and maintaining sente, and (4) also see joseki (or standard sequences) from both sides, as white and as black.
I don’t think joseki are the main reason why professional go players spend so much time studying, unless you define “studying” more narrowly than I would.
I was talking mostly about studying in preparation to become a professional, like daily study for 8 hours a day, the path from say 1k-9p, although Joseki are usually an important part of study at any level. I think the term also applies more loosely to ‘sequences with a good outcome’. Coming up with new and personal ‘proprietary’ joseki I think consumes a lot of study time for professionals, while going over other peoples or AI games and exploring the different variations.
There are other things to study, but I still maintain that Joseki make up fair amount of Professional knowledge. Some people study openings, others life and death problems, end game scenarios, but they all rely on learning set patterns and how to best to integrate them.
I didn’t take it as if it was all they did.
With (1) it seems like your describing the skill of reading, but not necessarily reading with the understanding of how to play so that you have a good outcome, or reading and assessing the variations of a particular position, and with (2) your describing reading how local play affects global play. I think if they are truly strong players, they also (3) understand the importance of getting and maintaining sente, and (4) also see joseki (or standard sequences) from both sides, as white and as black.
I was talking mostly about studying in preparation to become a professional, like daily study for 8 hours a day, the path from say 1k-9p, although Joseki are usually an important part of study at any level. I think the term also applies more loosely to ‘sequences with a good outcome’. Coming up with new and personal ‘proprietary’ joseki I think consumes a lot of study time for professionals, while going over other peoples or AI games and exploring the different variations.
There are other things to study, but I still maintain that Joseki make up fair amount of Professional knowledge. Some people study openings, others life and death problems, end game scenarios, but they all rely on learning set patterns and how to best to integrate them.