Whole Board Thinking

The term Whole Board Thinking refers to evaluating a position or outcome in one section of the go board in the context of all other stones in play. By contrast, joseki are sequences that result in a locally balanced result given the starting position. Yilun Yang, among others, stresses the importance of evaluating the local result in the context of the entire board. He has written specifically about this matter in the two volumes of Whole Board Thinking in Joseki.

Obviously enough, if you can really think globally about board positions in Go, that leaves out nothing and is ideal. Still this is very hard to do.

Parts of the game that certainly require whole board thinking of some kind include:

• positional judgement
• direction of play
• fuseki
• ko
• middle game strategy, including awareness of weak groups and unsettled groups
• proper use of thickness
• overall style territory versus influence styles

In contrast there is the opposite kind of analysis, which you could call modular thinking. Some aspects are

• shape
• vital points from a local point of view
• life and death
• joseki
• suji
• endgame counting.

There are important areas that seem to need both types of thinking. For example framework theory has to combine ideas about vital points with ideas relating to direction of play - otherwise you have to read out far too many sequences.

See also Whole Board Thinking in Joseki and Whole Board Connection Theory.