You can think of “don’t play aji-keshi” as saying “leave actions which will close down your future options as late as possible”, which I think can be a useful lesson for real life (though of course the tricky part is working out how late ‘as possible’ is).
Go teaches that sort of intuitions that are useful but really vague compared to LW-type of stuff. Overall you can get really strong at go if you simply decide to avoid emotional mistakes typical to zero sum game, actual reading and position analysis and planning is of much less importance.
The last part of the sentence I doubt. When I once played Go regularly, I plateaued at 15k (KGS, years ago), simply because I was too lazy to read. Beyond simple improved experience in opening and life-and-death, reading situations out is one of the most important skills to improve. In Korea schools usually heavily concentrate on reading (in the sense that compared to typical Japanese and Chinese schools they do not force “good shape” that much on pupils, but reading out the situation). This has lead to a quite aggressive style of Korean play, even at amateur level—they play out of “shape” and “intuition”, and than beat you with comparatively enormous self-discipline and speed in reading.
Which may point to another lesson. More than once, after making a move, I have had my opponent say with a frown, “I was afraid you would play there. Now I have to read[1]. This may take a while. Why don’t you take a smoke break, or buy coffee, or something.” An important skill in Go is to recognize when intuition becomes insufficient, and careful analysis essential.
[1] “Read” is Go jargon for careful analysis—what the computer geeks might call exhaustive tree search.
You can think of “don’t play aji-keshi” as saying “leave actions which will close down your future options as late as possible”, which I think can be a useful lesson for real life (though of course the tricky part is working out how late ‘as possible’ is).
Go teaches that sort of intuitions that are useful but really vague compared to LW-type of stuff. Overall you can get really strong at go if you simply decide to avoid emotional mistakes typical to zero sum game, actual reading and position analysis and planning is of much less importance.
The last part of the sentence I doubt. When I once played Go regularly, I plateaued at 15k (KGS, years ago), simply because I was too lazy to read. Beyond simple improved experience in opening and life-and-death, reading situations out is one of the most important skills to improve. In Korea schools usually heavily concentrate on reading (in the sense that compared to typical Japanese and Chinese schools they do not force “good shape” that much on pupils, but reading out the situation). This has lead to a quite aggressive style of Korean play, even at amateur level—they play out of “shape” and “intuition”, and than beat you with comparatively enormous self-discipline and speed in reading.
Which may point to another lesson. More than once, after making a move, I have had my opponent say with a frown, “I was afraid you would play there. Now I have to read[1]. This may take a while. Why don’t you take a smoke break, or buy coffee, or something.” An important skill in Go is to recognize when intuition becomes insufficient, and careful analysis essential.
[1] “Read” is Go jargon for careful analysis—what the computer geeks might call exhaustive tree search.