Radar Chart

Article made from material created by John Fairbairn on Life in 19x19.

The radar chart, or spider chart, is a means of displaying one's strengths and weaknesses, or a way of doing multivariate analysis.

In the Go world, the chart became popular after Go World recently started running a series on young members of the Japanese national squad.

Fairbairn notes that he has a suspicion that some players have either marked themselves down a lot out of modesty or have marked some variables high or low as a way of getting extra attention on those aspects of their game.

Going round the chart, 12 o'clock represents the opening (in the full sense, not just the fuseki), 1.30 is the middle game, 3 o'clock is the endgame (again in the full sense, not just yose/boundary plays). 4.30 is reading (i.e. looking ahead with moves), 6 is whole-board vision, 7.30 is positional judgement, 9 is resilience when behind, and 11.30 is composure (i.e. keeping calm under pressure).

The following table, quoted from Fairbairn, shows the self-proclaimed strengths and weaknesses of the players on a scale from 1 to 10.