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Miai Counting
    Keywords: EndGame

Miai Counting is a method to assess the value of a move.

[Diagram]
Diag.: Example diagram (gote)

Miai counting assigns a count to the position, and a value to a play in the position. The value of the play is how much it gains, on average, if it is a gote or reverse sente, or how much the reverse sente would have gained, if it is a sente. It indicates the urgency of a play.

In this example, the count is 2 (Black has 2 points more than White) and the miai value is 1.


[Diagram]
Diag.: Black's play

Black's hane-connect shifts the count to 3.


[Diagram]
Diag.: White's play

White's hane-connect shifts it to 1.
Each play gains 1 point.

[Diagram]
Diag.: Example diagram (sente)

Here the local count is 0. Each side has 5 points.


[Diagram]
Diag.: Example diagram (sente)

W 1 is sente, threatening to connect to the 2 White stones.
Each player has made one play, for a net of 0 plays, and the count remains the same.


[Diagram]
Diag.: Example diagram (sente)

B 1 is reverse sente, gaining 1 point.
We call the sente a 1 point play, too, because it becomes urgent for White to play it when the size of other plays nears 1 point, and Black threatens to play the reverse sente.
Note that the urgency of a 1 point sente and 1 point gote is the same by miai counting.

Another example of miai counting is given in Value of a Monkey Jump.

Comment: You can compare miai values directly. In general, you make the play with the largest miai value. Also, miai values add and subtract like ordinary numbers. Neither is true of deiri values. -- Bill Spight


Question: Do miai values take sente/gote into account?

Answer Bill Spight: Yes. You do not have to make any alterations to compare the sizes of sente and gote plays using miai values.

The example is not a full board, but part of a board. The stones framing the example are alive. That is a convention started in Mathematical Go, by Berlekamp and Wolfe.


[Diagram]
Diag.: Clearly living

By placing two extra black and white stones, the example is clearly living, though this is unnecessary by the assumptions of yose problems. Black a and White b make the neutral position from which the differential counts can be compared


[Diagram]
Diag.: White -1

Black moving first costs White one point of territory and is minus one for White.


[Diagram]
Diag.: Black -1

White moving first costs Black one point of territory and is minus one for Black.



Harpreet: I tried to understand this from the Value of a Monkey Jump page but couldn't. Are there any books that teach miai counting? Am I correct in thinking that The Endgame book teaches deiri counting? From what is written above it sounds to me like I should learn this miai counting stuff for purposes of taking into account sente and gote. Is deiri counting more normal? Perhaps that is why it is taught in the The Endgame. I'm trying to make less sloppy endgame plays and I would just like to learn how to count values better and order moves better but between miai, deiri modified by sente, gote I'm not really sure I know what I'm doing.

Charles Matthews Since a number of people seem to require further explanation, I'm adapting and moving here part of an article from Gobase:

Miai counting - ratio explanation.


The Japanese amateur Sakauchi Jun'ei is credited with some of the development of miai counting.



This is a copy of the living page "Miai Counting" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.