Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn.
It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most important and other such details.
Seems like a reasonably good tutorial in terms of layout. But just pointing out: joseki and direction of play is "more important" in terms of winning. Its just damn near impossible to teach so maybe its best for beginners to ignore this incredibly important (and difficult) subject.
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To put it in perhaps more concrete terms: playing a "tactic" position may net you +10 points across a sequence of 5 moves or so. (IE: One well placed tactical move, and ~4 followup moves may capture 5 enemy stones + 5 territory simultaneously from your opponent). However, every single early-game move is worth nearly +20 points of territory if played correctly. I'm serious.
That's why when you watch top-level Go play, there's a lot of "teleporting" across the 19x19 board, searching for the most important positions. And there is also very, very loose play and possible sacrifices / aji. (Maybe its not a true sacrifice, but you'd be willing to sacrifice if the opponent over-extends).
I disagree. For very high level play, yes, opening theory matters. For beginners, rote "reading", i.e. playing out moves in one's head, matters much more.
This is an unintuitive aspect of go because it is different from virtually every other strategy game. In most strategy games, "macro" (large scale logistics) is what determines winners at all levels of play, and then at higher levels where logistics skills are similar, small-scale tactics start to discriminate winner from loser. In low-level go, you'll find "micro" (small-scale battle tactics) determine the outcome of most games.
This is because of the "teleporting" you mention. When the opponent can materialise units and start a battle anywhere they want -- including inside your base -- small-scale tactics becomes important. (I once read the analogy that "if you were able to drop a siege tank into the opponent's main base at the start of the game, micro would end up determining low level StarCraft games too" -- only players that excel at local tactics would survive to see the end game with any base worth mentioning.)
For each hour of training, exercises in reading and local tactics is what will improve your rating the most. At least for the 20 or so first grades. Someone who is good at reading will obliterate all positions of someone who only knows the more subtle aspects.
> This is an unintuitive aspect of go because it is different from virtually every other strategy game.
No, it isn't. As a decent chess and go player I can tell you that they're both just tactics until you approach the master/dan level. And what is strategy if not just a longer form of tactical play?
At the end of the day, strategic play is just play that sets up tactics later on.
Or, to quote Fischer: "Tactics flow from a superior position"
The Fischer quote sounds like the opposite of what you're saying, i.e. it's a suggestion to prioritise macro over micro: "from good logistics, tactics will sort itself out".
You could read it both ways. I would say tactical opportunities flow from a better position. If you're a good enough player that exploiting your tactical opportunities is automatic - and this doesn't apply even to most grandmasters - then you can afford to spend all your energies on creating those opportunities. If you're not good enough, creating strategically better positions is of limited value.
> No, it isn't. As a decent chess and go player I can tell you that they're both just tactics until you approach the master/dan level. And what is strategy if not just a longer form of tactical play?
You cannot tenuki in Chess.
In Go, especially at the 15kyu to 10kyu double-digit dan level, the opponents are full of opening and middle-game mistakes. The best response is often to ignore your opponent and play the most powerful move elsewhere on the board.
Knowing when to tenuki (ie: ignore the last move, play elsewhere) is a HUGE point in Go strategy. Its exceptionally difficult to play sente / forcing moves. Playing a sente vs gote sequence is what separates the 1-dan (experts maybe 1800+ Elo equivalent players) from the rest of us mere mortals. But recgonizing that the last move was gote (non-forcing) is maybe a 10kyu / 1200-Elo kind of thing.
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Chess is almost all tactics. Go on the other hand, is Strategic, as the concept of sente/gote/tenuki allows you to validly ignore the opponent's plan and work out your own plan.
You still need a solid tactical basis in Go. You cannot just run away from the opponent forever. But you might be surprised at how "valid" tenuki moves are.
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For me, the growth from 15kyu (maybe 1200 elo in Chess) to 9kyu was a strong focus on sente, gote, tenuki, strategy, joseki, direction of play, strong vs weak. All "strategic" play that often sacrifices local tactics for greater point gains elsewhere.
Indeed, "weak" play in Go (ex: a 2-point jump) is WEAKER in terms of tactics. You are explicitly making an area weaker and easier to kill in exchange for moving faster on the board. A 2-point jump will ALWAYS be the worse tactical choice than a 1-point jump or solid connection.
This isn't like in Chess where a sacrifice immediately becomes apparent either. It can take 50+ moves before a position is played out and the difference between strong-connected play vs a 2-point jump shows up.
In any case, even 20kyu beginners can improve their games if they play 2-point jumps (or other weak / loose patterns) appropriately. Yeah you need the basics of tactics there otherwise the 20kyu player just loses all their stones at all. But protecting your stones / strong play is actually very very weak and will trap you as a beginner. You MUST play faster (but weaker) connections if you want to break through double-digit-kyu. Players just get too strong by 9kyu or 8kyu to rely on tactics alone.
> You cannot tenuki in Chess.
You absolutely can! If it's during a tactical sequence we might call it an intermezzo. If it's not during a tactical sequence we don't usually have a name for it in chess but it happens all the time. The mainlines of the KID are famous for having theory where white goes for a queenside attack and largely ignores the kingside and vice-versa for black, just as one example.
> Chess is almost all tactics. Go on the other hand, is Strategic I used to think so too but I think this is a meaningless and superficial comparison now. Each go move is simpler by itself but to counter balance that you get a much bigger board and generally much longer games with much longer tactical sequences (I'm sure you've had games where you spend over 50 moves in a long tactical battle over a mojo, for example).
> For beginners, rote "reading", i.e. playing out moves in one's head, matters much more.
In Go, I think everyone feels like they're a "beginner" for years.
In my experience, absolute beginners (30kyu or weaker) should study tactics. You have nothing else to study after all and need a baseline. But even by 20kyu or 15kyu, you _WILL_ stall out and be unable to continue if you're unable to recognize when a 2-point jump, horse move, running on the 4th line vs 3rd line is appropriate.
And you probably should be studying joseki theory in any case, because you need to start the game with _SOME_ move. And then you need to connect your opening theory with different, strategic level moves somehow.
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Is it not strange to you that there's a 50+ set tutorials with not a single one discussing the 1-point jump, horse move, or 2-point jump, or diagonal move?
This set of tutorials gets to Tiger Mouth (they call it a "hanging connection, section 3.11) before it gets to diagonal moves (ie: never).
There's no discussion on the appropriateness to sacrifice stones to gain momentum or territory. Etc. etc. This is perhaps more of a 10kyu level concept. But seriously, some of this stuff (ex: 2-point jump vs horse move) is simple enough for a 25kyu beginner.
Highly disagree.
Fuseki (opening) doesn't matter much for most players. AI confirmed that a wide variety of openings, even weird ones far removed from the usual credo, work very well. At worst you may lose a couple points in doing so, but unless you play at a high level that's negligible and will never be the reason you lost.
Joseki (corner sequences) is also not that important, and certainly not something any beginner should spend time on. In fact, a common Go proverb is to "learn Joseki and lose two stones" (get weaker). We often see beginners learning Joseki, getting confused when their opponent doesn't follow the sequence they have in mind and ultimately blundering their corner. Or they ask "how to punish that?", without realizing that many moves are good even if they are not Joseki, and there's nothing to punish.
These tutorials don't even teach horse-move, 1-point jump or similar movements though.
With so much emphasis on cut and strong play, anyone completing this set of tutorials is going to be an absurdly strong tactician and then lose 20 points as the opponent horse-moves around the board.
Surely you've played the beginner who favors tactics and capture at the expense of easily captured territory? Given this set of tutorials, do you think any beginner will understand sente, gote and tenuki? And even if a beginner somehow understood it, what basis of play will they have? There's literally no tutorial or discussion on walls, influence, 2-point jump, 1-point jump, strong vs fast play (etc. etc.)
Sorry if I'm missing something but are you responding to the right comment? Your answer doesn't seem related to what I said.
I'm also not sure how that relates to your earlier point about "Joseki", which I was disputing (like many others).
This is a discussion about the linked tutorials, is it not?
Look at the tutorials. Do you not see the lack of strategic discussion? Its evident from the outline.
There's no strategy here. There's no Joseki theory. There's no movement tutorial. There's no middle game, direction of play or other such tutorial.
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Like read the tutorials I'm trying to describe. They're full of sound tactical advice but any beginner who only uses this set of tutorials will have difficulty on the strategic aspects of their game. I think Joseki theory would help them very much (as well as many other kinds of tutorials or discussion).
There's nothing wrong with one online tutorial to focus on tactics. But its also important that any reader (especially the beginners who come into this discussion) realize what they're missing. Joseki is perhaps the most obvious missing element from this set of tutorials.
IE: Every beginner coming in here won't know what to do for their first move of a real game even if they complete this set of tactical tutorials.
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What's your idea of the readers coming into here? My mental model is that this is Hacker News, and that very, very casual beginners on the order of ~30kyu are going to start reading these tutorials and maybe start playing Go.
I think my advice from the first post is helpful to them. If you complete this set of tutorials, definitely study something like Joseki (or other ignored topics).
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Go isn't a game like chess. In Go, 80% of your pieces will often survive into the endgame. You don't need "strong" tactics because in the vast majority of cases, you can survive. The difference between "strong" tactics vs "weak" tactics is only a few stones or points of territory.
In contrast, the difference between playing in the correct direction of play and not is easily worth 20+ point moves, as you capture large swaths of territory. Maybe you as a ~single-digit-kyu or low-dan player have forgotten these kinds of mistakes. But I assure you that double-digit kyu / beginners will make these mistakes all the time.
> Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn.
Nah, they aren't the most important (you can do without), not are the usual ones particularly difficult to learn.
Source: I'm a European 4 Dan.
(To expand on this: if you're a beginner, joseki don't matter. When you become a strong player (several of my friends are professional players), joseki is something you can usually come up with, or you come up with a similarly good non-joseki move, which is also ok. Practically, the game is usually decided in middle game fighting.)
Could you look at a few examples from the example tutorials under discussion?
https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/6
https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/9
I'm saying that this "correct move" is a middle-game error. Maybe its my 9kyu brain being bad here, but there's nothing about this tutorial (and many others like it in this tutorial series) that strikes me as a strategic error.
And I certainly think that nobi is a bad concept to teach if the tutorial hasn't covered diagonal moves, horse moves, 1-point jump and the like. Its not that "nobi" or "stretch" is a bad thing to teach, but its just one option in a sea of valid middle-game options.
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If the tutorial is going into things like this, it really should be going into at least the basic 3-4 Joseki and why various moves are considered good.
Agreed, no point in learning these nobi in the tutorial.
The first one is indeed probably just a little bit worse than a jump.
The second one, I'd extend too: it strengthens white and black has to come back to live. You could think about the hane instead, but at worst black can play the cuts and come back to live at 2-2.
> To put it in perhaps more concrete terms: playing a "tactic" position may net you +10 points across a sequence of 5 moves or so. (IE: One well placed tactical move, and ~4 followup moves may capture 5 enemy stones + 5 territory simultaneously from your opponent). However, every single early-game move is worth nearly +20 points of territory if played correctly. I'm serious.
I'm baffled by this comment. Both professional commentary and AI evaluation confirm that most joseki mistakes are very small, often on the order of 1-2 points, because the temperature is low. There are specific joseki that turn into fights (e.g. Taisha), and it is possible to lose 10-20 points in those, but first of all, it's typically possible to play conservatively and avoid those joseki, second, most errors in them are smaller, and third, mid-game fights end up being even bigger (an error in a capturing race can be an almost unlimited number of points, having 40 points at stake is common).
I'm curious what level you are? As a 4kyu (European), I can confidently say joseki is less important than reading up to my level. I believe stronger players say the same well into the amateur dan level.
I'm about 9 Kyu, at least back when I was practicing and reading every day.
I'd say that at 9 Kyu level, my main gains were playing and abusing Tenuki. Refusing to respond to the opponent's (weak) early game moves and instead playing significantly stronger elsewhere on the board.
If the opponent were stronger than me, I'd pay attention when they ignored my moves. Its actually very difficult IMO to play sente every time as a double-digit kyu (or even high-single digit kyu). Recognizing that the last move wasn't forcing and that playing elsewhere is a surprising way to get ahead.
Vs stronger opponents who can tell when the board is sente, gote, appropriate to Tenuki, and is able to count up Ko threats... well yeah. I lose. But there's significant skill in this part of the game and NOTHING in this set of tutorials that teaches it.
I think your valuing of moves is flawed. Yes, during the fuseki the best move may be worth 20 points. But there are often many moves that may be worth 19 or 18 points. So, playing perfectly only gains a few points compared to playing acceptable moves. In comparison, tactical situations often have a crucial move that wins many points - in low-level play swings of over a hundred points are not uncommon. There, missing the crucial move can lose the entire game, no matter how perfect the opening was played.
And does this set of tutorials give any idea of "best" or even "acceptable" moves?
There's no discussion of 2-point jump, 1-point jump, horse-move, diagonal move, loose play or connected/strong play in this set of tutorials. Or the value of 4th row (center-oriented influence play) vs 3rd row (edge-oriented territorial play). I'm not seeing any discussion on invasions or defense of invasions.
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I'm like 9kyu. I'm no expert. But I'm certainly at the level where tactical geniuses beat me in many positions, but I just wreck a lot of n00bs in the opening, and hold out until the ending.
The good news about opening theory or middle-game theory is that if the opponent is playing tenuki (ie: they ignore your most recent move and play somewhere else on the board), you're probably focused on the incorrect area.
On the other hand, if you're up vs a weaker player, YOU need to be the one playing tenuki. Its surprising how awful players are at double-digit kyu is at this. You will only see tenuki opportunities if you have superior opening/middle game skills than your opponent.
Nitpick: The early moves in the game are called fuseki. Joseki refers to well-studied local patterns of moves and they appear through the middle game, not just in the early game.
A couple of things I love about go is that you don't need to memorize fuseki, and that applying joseki correctly is as much a matter of judgment as it is of memory.
(I am a 1 dan go player but haven't played much in the last 15 years.)
He could be thinking of shogi (though the kanji is 定跡 where joseki from go is 定石), where joseki refers to the well studied ways to play the opening of the game.
I don’t share that sentiment.
Yes, at some point when people are somewhat able to take a decent lead home the fuseki becomes important. Before that, beginners really need to understand how to „move“ their stones, how to defend and connect their groups and how to cut and capture.
If you see a strong player win against a weak player with a large handicap it always goes down the same way: the strong player places stones all over the board such that eventually many many skirmishes appear all over the board and then she is patient to take small advantage after small advantage, manifesting groups and territories out of what looks like thin air to the other player.
At a somewhat higher amateur level and above the fuseki again loses importance and the distinguishing factor is fighting skills and judgement, fuseki and prep just becomes table stakes.
> Before that, beginners really need to understand how to „move“ their stones, how to defend and connect their groups and how to cut and capture
Agreed. Now check the tutorial series.
There's no movement. There's no connecting of groups. It is ENTIRELY cutting and capture, and life-and-death puzzles.
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https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/2
Look at this puzzle. WTF is this?
The "stretch" ("correct move" according to this tutorial) seems wholly inappropriate compared to 1-point jump, horse-move, diagonal move .... or hell just running in the other direction (to the right, escaping towards the center).
To know the appropriate move requires knowing what is going on around the whole board (and not just what's going on locally).
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https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/6
Or this one is perhaps more egregious. This is simply the wrong direction of play entirely. 20+ point mistake to play the "correct" move here. The correct move is a 2-point jump (or greater) along the 3rd or 4th row northbound.
> Look at this puzzle. WTF is this?
> The "stretch" ("correct move" according to this tutorial) seems wholly inappropriate compared to 1-point jump, horse-move, diagonal move .... or hell just running in the other direction (to the right, escaping towards the center).
The stretch is good shape here. I can't even tell which keima[0] you have in mind but that makes no sense here. A diagonal also just looks strange, unless you mean hane, which lets opponent cross-cut and will end with losing that stone. Similarly, a 1-point jump (I assume you mean upward) lets opponent wedge in and will end in gote, and running to the right (I assume you mean another 1-point jump) allows opponent to push you around.
The stretch is important here because it prevents opponent's hane, which is very severe. It also threatens to turn and block opponent's expansion decisively, so it may be sente depending on the rest of the board. In general it will make sense to push twice here, then make a one-point jump.
> Or this one is perhaps more egregious. This is simply the wrong direction of play entirely. 20+ point mistake to play the "correct" move here. The correct move is a 2-point jump (or greater) along the 3rd or 4th row northbound.
Per AI, on an empty board, the stretch is about 1 point worse than those jumps (establishing a base); a one-point jump in the same direction of the stretch is about as good as making a base; and best is tenuki. There is simply no urgency to settle those stones without anything else in the area. But stretching or jumping damages Black's shape and limits further expansion of that group. The point is simply to prevent Black's hane there.
Regardless, when they say "correct move", this is not supposed to be about what would be best overall to play in the position. It is supposed to be about a) recognizing the shape and its purpose and b) doing it in a sensible direction. And you really have to learn that sort of thing by example and by physically laying it out, because trying to give the rules for choosing a direction to stretch is harder.
[0] By the way, I'll spot you that Western teachers usually do use English for ikken tobi and kosumi; but "horse-move" is cringe. Most Western players who actually talk about the game will probably know "keima", but you can at least say "knight move".
Well, I appreciate the discussion in any case. I'll review the position more.
But this kind of discussion is missing from the tutorial in any regards. This is where I believe I'm stuck in the ~9kyu level and feel like its been mostly about this middle-game movement / direction of play stuff since 15kyu or so.
> This is where I believe I'm stuck in the ~9kyu level and feel like its been mostly about this middle-game movement / direction of play stuff since 15kyu or so.
Sure. But you put in the effort to get that far. You can't just put everything in the beginner tutorial. They'll get confused. And there's only so far you can go with one-size-fits-all lessons, without feedback from the student.
I appreciate the discussion as well.
After having checked the positions you mentioned, I had put you somewhere in the 4-10 kyu range. For me this was the time when I found out how important it is to play efficient and fast and play big spots. In order to improve further, I had to learn to appreciate thickness more because of the downstream benefits. As the fighting of both players becomes stronger, thicker shape makes your side of the fight much easier and prevents everything from crumbling.
Take your first example where you suggested 1-point jump or keima instead of nobi. The main point here is about 1) liberties and 2) having your group‘s „head“ run ahead. There is also this concept of a hard head or a soft head and the nobi creates a wonderful hard head ahead of your opponents stones that can not be bullied. If you play any other move, a stronger opponent will (locally) immediately and gladly play that hane without thinking, which takes a liberty and forces you to play again to defend your stones. Depending on your moves, the opponent would turn your group into a big dumpling and collect very nice stones on the outside in the process.
Perhaps you would find the games of Kitani Minoru or Lee Chang’ho inspiring.
Far from it, there is no need to learn any joseki before dan level. It's even counterproductive often enough ("Learn joseki, lose two stones") before the player can study why each move is joseki and whole-board implications. A lot of it makes little sense before beginning to understand thickness and influence. A 1-dan should have strong enough tactics to play reasonable corner exchanges without any joseki knowledge, and won't be losing many games because of that.
Opening theory might be somehwat counter-productive. But surely SOMEWHERE in this tutorial the 1-point jump, horse-move, and 2-point jump need to be discussed.
This is very different to my experience and I am wondering why. Maybe because I come from chess and can't help myself to compare it with this frame of reference. Anyway I felt that my progress up to 5k was largely driven by a better understanding of principles of plays than tactical training. As a thought experiment, I feel that its possible to adopt a very risk averse style that negates tactical complexities to the expense of many points on the board and still largely win against weaker players. It's not my experience with chess. If you suck at tactics, your elo sucks too.
> Anyway I felt that my progress up to 5k was largely driven by a better understanding of principles of plays than tactical training.
Well yeah. But look at these tutorials. They're all local tactics. Nothing on early game or middle game strategy.
Despite dozens of tactical positions, I don't think a single one of these holds a one-point jump, two-point jump, horse move, diagonal move, 4-row move, 3-row move or similar pattern.
I'd say this stuff gets extremely important around 15kyu, where your tactical knowledge is passable (maybe not great, but passable). It becomes more important to move around the board with 2-point jumps, recognize sente vs gote and tenuki vs weak gote moves from your opponent.
Tactical knowledge will only get you maybe to 20kyu or 15kyu at the best IMO. Then you're forced to learn "squishy" and "opinionated" discussions that no one really knows how to teach. There's patterns (ie: 2-point jump or horse-move), but its not like there's any ground truth to knowing when these moves are appropriate.
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I guess people's point here is that if you choose a 2-point jump as a strategic connection when a horse-move was more appropriate, you might lose 1 or 2 points. But both of these moves are likely worth 5, 10, 15, or more points.
The more important bit is knowing when to play strong and connected (often because each move is strongly sente / has momentum and forces an opponent's response), vs when a sequence is gote and the opponent (or yourself) should consider a move elsewhere (ex: possibly start an invasion).
> Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn.... for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most important and other such details.
> To put it in perhaps more concrete terms: playing a "tactic" position may net you +10 points across a sequence of 5 moves or so. (IE: One well placed tactical move, and ~4 followup moves may capture 5 enemy stones + 5 territory simultaneously from your opponent). However, every single early-game move is worth nearly +20 points of territory if played correctly. I'm serious.
Sorry, but this is complete nonsense. "Play lots and lots of games" is the only part I can get behind. I have seen tons of people get well past the beginner stages entirely self-taught and with a focus on fighting because that's the easiest thing to self-teach. A few basic joseki sequences go quite far (especially now that AI analysis has done such promotional work for early 3-3 invasions) and people who try to figure out the rest by intuition generally make smaller mistakes than those who can't read out squeeze sequences or don't understand semeai theory. Of course joseki are important to know, but emphasis on them often leads to a false confidence in having mastered the opening for students who aren't thinking about direction of play or other fuseki issues.
If a tactical sequence appears to net you 10 points against an opponent who is playing correctly, you basically already had those points. (Well, half of the points for most capturing sequences, since they'll usually end in gote; but then you have to consider the opportunity cost of tenuki.) This is as true for capturing sequences as it is for invasions and reductions. Which is why students are counseled to be very conservative in counting frameworks; they are not territory.
If a tactical sequence actually does net 10 points because of your opponent's misplay, that doesn't mean that your moves were only worth 10 points, or even that each move was only worth 10 points. It means that your moves were worth 10 points more than the opponent's were. Similarly, correct early-game moves may be worth a lot of points (compared to passing, the reference value), but most incorrect moves are worth almost as much. Even things that are marked as clear mistakes in a joseki textbook, with clear refutations, might only cost one or two points (although, yes, they can be catastrophic; and of course pros do have to worry about every point). So this is very much an apples and oranges comparison to the "value of moves in the opening".
But also, that value is about 13, definitely not "nearly 20". We know this because even now that we have ferociously strong AI players (who inherently make moves with a higher average value), they still accept a komi of 6.5. And if you ask them to evaluate the first few moves and let some of them be passes and see the change in the score, you'll rarely see 20-point swings in any opening, but you can trivially create such positions (and much larger swings) in middle-game fighting.
> That's why when you watch top-level Go play, there's a lot of "teleporting" across the 19x19 board, searching for the most important positions. And there is also very, very loose play and possible sacrifices / aji. (Maybe its not a true sacrifice, but you'd be willing to sacrifice if the opponent over-extends).
Sure, but 10 kyus can do a reasonable facsimile of this as well. They just have bad timing, or make bad choices about sacrifices, or have wrong ideas about how to use the aji.