As per my last post: I've been learning Go. It's a brilliantly rich game with some fascinating ideas. Here are a few that I think are particularly interesting from the perspective of a chess player.
Shape and Aji
Go players strongly emphasise the importance of good shape. If your stones have good shape, they are efficient and strong: hard to poke at, cut apart and kill.
This shape idea applies to some extent in chess as well. Harmoniously placed pieces defend each other, and are flexible and mobile. Misplaced, awkward or loose pieces are prone to falling into tactical problems, and can be labelled poor shape.
Here are a couple of positions from my recent online games where material is level, but one side has an enormous shape advantage because their pieces are so much more harmoniously placed:
Example 1: All of white's pieces look fantastic, and black's position looks like it is on the verge of imploding. Black's pawns are a mess, with weaknesses everywhere. The bishop on f8 is entombed, which leaves black underdeveloped with a king stranded in the centre. Compy evaulates this as +2.2.
Example 2: White's pieces are horribly misplaced and white is almost completely paralysed. On the other hand, all of black's pieces are defended and beautifully active. The black rook can simply invade and eat all of whites pawns, so Compy evaluates this as -4.4.
Poor shape can also leave Aji ("ah-jee") for your opponent to exploit.
Aji literally means "taste", and in a go context, sort of means "potential for bad stuff to happen". If your position has bad Aji, then there are some moves in the air that, even if not an immediate problem, might come back and bite you later. Finding opportunities to cash in aji to get something tangible out of a position is a delicate matter.
This position is an example of a chess position with Aji. White's pieces are very vulnerable to getting kicked around by blacks pawns, and the rook on e4 is seriously short of squares. The computer says that things are about level and everything is OK, but it's very easy to imagine white making a slip and running into f4->f5 problems.
The value of a move in Go is very high, so correcting past shape mistakes is very expensive. You would much rather that a formation of stones placed on the board in the early game is able to fend for itself, rather than obliging you to go back and add defensive moves to it later in the game.
Chess is a more tactical game, and sometimes positions sometime call for concrete moves that look like precarious nonsense. Nonetheless, an intuition for "good shape" is crucial in for both chess and go.
Sente, Gote and Tenuki
Go has some very clear concepts around the urgency of moves. English doesn't really have words that captures the exact meaning, so western Go players borrow Japanese terminology. Chess players will immediately regonise the ideas, but it's rather nice to have some more language to describe it.
A sente ("sent-ay") move is one that carries a threat. Sente moves force a direct response, as a follow up move is too advantageous to allow.
The opposite, a move that carries no real threat of follow up, is called gote ("goat-ay").
If you can achieve something in such a way that your opponent is obliged to make the final move of the sequence, you do it in sente. That means you get to make the next move again at the next big area, and you get to keep the initiative.
To tenuki is to not directly respond to your opponents move, and instead do something else more important elsewhere. Especially interesting situations arise when players disagree on the importance of a threat! If player A thinks a move is sente, but player B disagrees and tenukis, then player A might have an opportunity to punish B for their insouciance...
Go has developed these concepts very well, I think again perhaps because the value of a move in Go is so high. The player that goes second (white) is given a handicap of 6.5 points to even things up, so one measure of the value of a move at the start of the game is double that: 13. In contrast, the margin for victory in go between strong players is often <5 points!
This all might seem a bit abstract, but I think the main point is that moves are valuable. The initiative is hugely important and it shouldn't be squandered on trivialities. It's often good to ask yourself if you really do need to respond to what your opponent is doing, or if advancing your own agenda would be a better idea.
The following was a particularly fun game on the theme of sente moves and tenukiing. On move 13 and 14, black decided white's move wasn't actually sente, so continued playing actively.
To conclude, the chess world needs the word sente. Go can have "zwischenzug" in return!
