Katteyomi

    Keywords: Go term

Chinese:
Japanese: 勝手読み (katteyomi)
Korean:

Katteyomi (勝手読み) is a Japanese go term referring to subconsciously ignoring good sequences for your opponent during reading, making assumptions that lead to things working out better for yourself. Sometimes known as "wishful reading", it has also been translated as "self-indulgent reading."

As with most Japanese terms, katteyomi is not a mere linguistic curiosity, but describes a very real [ext] phenomenon that it is important for go players to be alert to: the psychological tendency to favor yourself in reading out sequences. It's possible that stronger players have developed explicit anti-katteyomi measures, where they consider a positive result a reason to explore alternatives that might be less favorable to themselves.

Katteyomi does not refer to the questionable practice of consciously reading and choosing sequences that you think your opponent is too weak to respond properly to.

Derivation

Katte literally means winning moves(s), from Katsu: to win and Te: move (literally: hand). Yomi is reading. It means to only reading the winning moves instead of considering all possibilities.

John F. No, it has nothing to do with winning. Katte is a very common term in the normal language has several meanings (all written with the same kanji), including "kitchen" and "circumstances". Another meaning is wilfulness/selfishness, or doing something for one's own convenience. That is the one covered by katteyomi. A similar phrase is katteshidai.

Example

[Diagram]

Katteyomi Example

Black has just played B1. How does White live?

[Diagram]

White 2 is katteyomi

White plays W2 expecting to live with B3, W4.

[Diagram]

Black forces ko

White has failed to anticipate Black's improvement at B3 here. This forces ko when Black answers W6 by capturing at B3.

[Diagram]

Best for White

Further reading yields this W2 instead, which lives unconditionally.


This is a copy of the living page "Katteyomi" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2011 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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