Strategy
The term strategy in Go refers to skills and plans for handling the global position.
Handling of the local position is covered by tactics.
A summary of fundamental strategic ideas is at basic strategies list.
Strategic Skills
Skills for handling the global position.
- intuition
- sense of direction
- understanding the importance of stones
- positional judgment
Strategic Concepts
An English language go book dedicated to strategic concepts is "Strategic concepts of go", by Nagahara Yoshiaki and Richard Bozulich. It lists the following eight concepts and expands on them:
Other strategic concepts not in the book:
Planning
A strategy is also an game plan, a overriding principle or set of principles that (hopefully) guide you to victory. Here is a list of a number of strategies and strategic principles in go.
- counterattack
- shut in
- General discussion arising from middlegame joseki
- Whole-board thinking
- Page on classification of positions
- Strategies defined by absences
- Talk about strategy in /Discussion
- The 36 stratagems of Go in the Secret Art of War
- Priority
- Strategic concepts and mediating concepts
- Planning the game
To define strategy
There are many pages here at SL with a "strategy" keyword, which are like general overviews of whole-board positions. In a sense these are always introductory, compared to real middle game analysis. Just because people would like there to be a short description of strategy doesn't mean that this can be done usefully. One really must unpack the concepts of
to understand the factors that determine fighting strategy. Opening strategy also depends on the same factors, but at one remove. Without some idea of those, one opening plan probably looks just as good as another.
For those learning go, there is perhaps a surprise in the way that discussion tends to be dominated by what players call 'strategic concepts', rather than planning issues. That's because some matters such as aji and kikashi are relatively subtle, but essential for major progress. There is a great deal of freedom in how one plays, but that goes for the opponent as well. Therefore a grand plan isn't enough - may simply represent a rather self-centred view of things.
See for example no plan in the opening.
Personal Strategies
I've written a page of general principles for playing a good game of Go. XCMeijin's Laws
Authors: