RobertJasiek: Development of Modern Endgame Theory (2019-05-11 18:06) [#11370]

On 2019-05-11, your Practical Endgame subpage says: "With modern endgame theory being developed and published by professionals like O Meien and Antti Tormanen"

This would be less false if "developed and published" was replaced by "promoted and written about". I think that neither writer's endgame books are self-published. I am not aware of O Meien or Antti Törmänen developing modern endgame theory in the sense of researching in it (except that I am not sure about the origin of O's error margins). Developing only applies in the sense of promoting.

One of the early professional players having presumably used and indeed written about modern endgame theory was Takagawa Kaku, although his description seems to have been only very basic.

Research in modern endgame theory has come from amateur players (not / hardly from professional players): Sakauchi Jun Ei around 1955, those mathematicians (in particular Elwyn Berlekamp and David Wolfe) relating combinatorial game theory to modern endgame theory or studying thermography for its application to go (combinatorial game theory and thermography has been older but its relation to modern endgame theory has started in the 1980s, I think, published since 1994 especially in Mathematical Go Endgames), Bill Spight (mostly private studies since the 1970s, published in go forums since the 1990s, I think) and Robert Jasiek (early studies in the 2000s, deep research since 2016 as of today on 2019-05-11 mostly still unpublished but being under hard work to publish).

I have coined the phrase "modern endgame theory" and consistently used it since Endgame 2 - Values in 2018. Previously, its non-CGT part was mostly called "miai counting".