Technique

While it is clearly a useful concept that strong players are strong because of better technique (not just factors that would apply to any sport such as will power, focus, stamina), there is no one way to express the nature of go technique.

Parts of the game that appear technically dense to beginners and intermediate players would be:

• reading, in particular life and death and capturing races;
• endgame calculation;
• ko manoeuvres.

These happen to be the parts of the game where mistakes can be most easily identified and discussed.

Dividing things up according to Japanese terms, technique would correspond most closely to suji, but in a complex of ideas including also katachi (basic patterns) and tesuji. These are all concepts used to define good technique, as opposed to failing technique: for example discussion is of tesuji that exploit bad shape, rather than of bad shape itself.

In the light of Korean terminology, things are somewhat different, with maek being close to a translation of 'technique' (covering both of suji and tesuji), haengma more like 'dynamic technique' and soksu being a term for 'technically inadequate play''[1].

Further reading

• Basic instinct
• Tesuji
• Haengma
• Conventions in technique

Indexes of techniques

• Basic technique
• Advanced technique
• Connecting techniques
• Cutting techniques
• Capturing techniques
• Killing techniques
• Living techniques
• Aspects of sacrifice
• Forcing and initiative
• Give me liberties
• Taxonomy of techniques

Books and publications

• Guanzi Pu - a classic collection of go problems focusing on technique.

^[1]

Bill: As in, "That play seoksu"? ;-)

Charles Works better with Japanese pronunciation (silent u); su here is 'soo' phonetically (I think it's from the hanzi read te in Japanese, cf. shudan).