Sentestrat

Sentestrat is an endgame strategy where you respond to your opponent's move if it was sente, and play the move with the highest miai value if it was not.

More precisely, if your opponent has just made a move in a region whose temperature (i.e. the miai value) is now higher than the ambient temperature (i.e. the historical minimum of the highest miai value on the board during the game), then respond in that region. Otherwise, play in a region with the highest temperature.

Sentestrat is provably an orthodox strategy, given that every hyperactive ko in the position has an unambiguous komaster. Orthodox strategies are optimal in Environmental Go.

The basic idea is that your opponent's sente is their privilege, so sente gains nothing. Responding to it loses nothing, so might as well do that. There are some situations where following the Thermostrat strategy — which always plays the move with the highest miai value — is actually suboptimal even in Environmental Go, and Sentestrat is a minimal change to fix that.

While Sentestrat plays optimally in Environmental Go in the sense that it guarantees that the final score is no worse than what it would be if two perfect players were to play the game from the start, it might not take full advantage of an imperfect player's blunders. If a lost game turns into a won game because the opponent played a bad sente move, Sentestrat might still lose that game because it reflexively responded to that sente.