Playing style

Playing styles need two players to materialize on the board.

This article brings together an overview of stylistic aspects of various departments of the game and an overview of articles on style or individual styles.

Table of contents The concept of style Style aspects Opening Balance of power and territory Various Large scale Solid play Technique Fighting Articles on style General articles Styles of groups of players: Specific styles Examples of styles in specific positions: Learning styles See also External references

The concept of style

Style aspects

The following expression are among those typically used to describe the style of individual players, especially professionals. Many appear to have been culled at some point from our article Professional Players' Go Styles.

Opening

• Chinese Fuseki
• New Fuseki

Balance of power and territory

• territorial (amashi)
• power

Various

• fast-paced (see pace)
• daring
• unexpected play / original / imaginative
• natural?
• artistic
• flexible
• ooraka na? — placid/broadminded
• strong on the side
• pragmatic
• patient?
• messy
• orthodox
• amorphous
• drill strategy (see example game at compromised diagonal and dropping back)
• ibushi-gin? (oxidised silver) (=? shibui, more like 'moderate')
• kyudo? - "seeking the way"

Large scale

• full-board vision: see whole-board thinking
• large-scale, thick moves
• large-scale, original
• Omoyo
• positional judgement

Solid play

• quiet moves
• never make an overplay even when behind
• straightforward, no tricks (see hamete)
• steady?, relying on ordinary moves
• solid fundamentals, thick, unhurried play
• slow, thick moves
• gentle, aji-leaving

Technique

• Theoretical
• miai
• sharpness of (local) perception
• shape
• shinogi
• direction of play
• managing the center
• counting
• trades based on calculation
• middle-game
• light and floating / nimble
• thick
• focus on influence
• luring into traps

Fighting

• gambling
• attack
• direct attack
• counter attack
• violent style leading to wild fighting
• fighting jabs leading to a roundhouse ko
• sharp and brute strength
• using thickness to attack
• straight-line?
• bean-scattering? go
• pressure? (severe)
• preferring to catch up from behind after the middle game / turning games around
• high-position fighting

Articles on style

Style in general and particular styles are described in the following articles.

Some may have been added on the basis of having “style” in the name, but not in fact be relevant to playing style.

General articles

• Professional Players' Go Styles — an list of the salient features of the styles of may professionals (some 163 as of 2019-01-17)
• Achieving a Personal Style (大森泰志の自分流のススメ) by Oomori Yasushi (NHK 2006) — an extensive description of the content, apparently about technique rather than a style that is personal in the sense of distinctive
• Bad style
• Playing Styles And Player Types (humorous)

Styles of groups of players:

• Korean Style of Baduk (3 volumes) by Lee Chang-ho and Kim Sung-rae (Oromedia 2004) — fuseki/joseki for (¿high?) dan level players
• DashN Style — of players at dashn, a Korean go server which appears to have disappeared
• A Dictionary Of Modern Fuseki, The Korean Style — an English translation of “Hyeondae P’oseok Sacheon” (현대포석사전), number 13 of the Baduk Dictionary? Series.

Specific styles

• Cosmic Style — as pioneered by Takemiya Masaki
  • Takemiya Style San Ren Sei — an aspect of Takemiya Masaki’s style
  • (not to be confused with the book Cosmic Go: A Guide to Four-Stone Handicap Games encouraging one to play aggressively with a four-stone handicap)
• Taiji Style — based on the Chinese Taiji philosophy (or perhaps on the martial art T’ai chi ch’üan/ 太极拳), highlighting balance and said to be practised by Wu Songsheng
• Hooligan style — mixing it up wildly
• Krav — based on Israeli martial art Krav Maga, involving luring the opponent into attacking
• >Stanley Style Go — the curious style of an individual 9k observed on KGS

Examples of styles in specific positions:

• Positional Judgement Kobayashi Style

Learning styles

• Kinesthetic Learning Style — on how handling go material may help one to learn
• Ladder problems and exercises (alias: Practice Kageyama-style)

See also

• Radar chart
• /Discussion

External references

• On Move Pattern Trends in a Large Go Games Corpus by Petr Baudiš, Josef Moudřı́k (September 2012) — an academic paper on automatically identifying a player's strength and style
  • They use data-mining to identify the most differentiating features extracted from game records, and relate those features to Go culture. They correlate significantly with perceived strength and style. This may be applied to ranking internet players, studying and programming Go and discussing playing style.