Board geography

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    Keywords: Theory, Go term

Direction

There are two conventions for giving directions:

  • Absolute - when discussing moves or the relative position of individual stones:
    • Up = towards the center
    • Down = towards the edge
  • Relative - when referring to positions on the board as a whole:
    • Up or Top: Towards the white player
    • Down, bottom, left, right, lower left etc.: Correspondingly - all as they appear to the Black player.[1]
This convention can cause confusion with the previous one (or when abbreviated - see below). To avoid this, sometimes points of the compass are used instead, with "North" replacing "upper side".

Areas

The board is loosely divided into nine areas.

%Someone had written "[third|third line]/[fourth|fourth line]/[fifth|fifth line] line can be the border between them". This is very vague. Could someone elaborate this? Along which line do we usually make the cut? I've also seen a definition that called anything around the corner hoshi the corner. Should we define lines before areas?
  • abbreviations
    • UL: upper left (corner or quarter) = NW
    • TL: top left = NW
    • UR: upper right = NE
    • TR: top right = NE
    • LL: lower left = SW
    • BL: bottom left = SW
    • LR: lower right = SE
    • BR: bottom right = SE
    • US: upper side = N side
    • LS: lower side or left side (hence to be avoided) = S side or W side
    • RS: right side = E side

Points on the Board

There are several ways to refer to points on the board:

  • Absolute coordinates. A1 is the left closest corner point for black. T19 right farthest. Absolute coordinates have the form x99, where
    • x = Horizontal, a roman character A through T, I is skipped.
    • 99 = Vertical, one of the numbers 1 .. 19
  • Relative coordinates are measured from the closest corner. They are written in the form x-y, x and y both ranging from 1 to 10. The first point discussed has the smallest number first. E.g. a stone on the 3-5 point might be followed by one on the 5-3 point.
  • Named points: Some points have names, such as "hoshi".

Lines

The lines are points on the board with a certain distance from the border. We usually use

Height

  • very low = second line (not first)
  • no qualification = low = third line
  • high = fourth line
  • very high = fifth (not sixth)
  • Know your lines

Distance[2], [3]

  • contact = no space
  • no qualification = close (approach) = small (enclosure) = one-space
  • distant (approach) = large (enclosure) = two-space
  • very distant = three-space
  • pseudo = four spaces (or more?)

footnotes

[1] (Sebastian:) Is this really true? It seems like an impoliteness to the white player to accomodate the black player.

Bob McGuigan: I think this usage comes from the desire to make it possible for people to discuss moves without using coordinates. In Japan in TV tournament games, for example, the game recorder announces moves in a fashion such as "upper right corner starpoint".

[2] The number of spaces refers to the horizontal distance, not the Manhattan distance. The Manhattan distance is used when talking about pace and the strength of connections.

[3] See also Joseki nomenclature - expert names


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This is a copy of the living page "Board geography" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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