Generally the most important move is the first move, a common 'zen' go problem is an empty board with 'black to play to win'.
Komi(compensation given to the second player) is a recent invention(1900s) and has only gone up from 4.5 to the recent 6.5 or 7.5 in some tournaments, and yet black still wins over 50% of professional games. Knowing how much komi should be is equivalent to knowing how to play the best game.
As the board fills up tactics or 'tesuji' becomes increasingly important and many times there is only one correct move, computers have become better at this but they still can struggle over common life and death problems. End game is where computers really shine and can now play better than even the best players. Overall computers have taken a recent dramatic upturn in strength thanks to Monte Carlo probabilistic reasoning and are now within a few stones of professionals.
Seemingly, Go will become as chess is within our life times probably even within the next ten years, it will be another interesting moment in the advance of 'AI', but whether it will reveal anything deeper is an open question to me.
I find Go more interesting than chess because often, especially in the beginning, the analysis is less 'hard' or involves less reading of game tree possibilities but involves more 'soft' concepts like spacing, relative territory, trading territory for influence (whether to play on the third line or the fourth line), and is something more akin to art than science if I were to grasp for a metaphor.
Computers will likely enlarge the 'end game' that is be able to play better and better than humans the last part of the game and eventually play better middle game, and eventually only the opening will be where humans have an advantage until that too is taken by computation.
I'm about 7k on kgs. I'm at that stage where to get better I reckon I would have to actually study joseki and tsumego. Which seems wrong for a game. I will just keep playing at this level.
Also the rating system (while necessary to find a roughly match) sorta bothers me. I keeps making me want to get a higher rating! Normally I dont care about stuff like that.
In my experience, the gap from 7k to 3k actually is mostly about the sense of the game, rather than skill and technique. To be precise, I don't think reading skill is that much difference, but 3k know better what to read, what constitutes weak or strong group. Joseki definitely isn't an issue well into dan level.
Komi(compensation given to the second player) is a recent invention(1900s) and has only gone up from 4.5 to the recent 6.5 or 7.5 in some tournaments, and yet black still wins over 50% of professional games. Knowing how much komi should be is equivalent to knowing how to play the best game.
As the board fills up tactics or 'tesuji' becomes increasingly important and many times there is only one correct move, computers have become better at this but they still can struggle over common life and death problems. End game is where computers really shine and can now play better than even the best players. Overall computers have taken a recent dramatic upturn in strength thanks to Monte Carlo probabilistic reasoning and are now within a few stones of professionals.
Seemingly, Go will become as chess is within our life times probably even within the next ten years, it will be another interesting moment in the advance of 'AI', but whether it will reveal anything deeper is an open question to me.
I find Go more interesting than chess because often, especially in the beginning, the analysis is less 'hard' or involves less reading of game tree possibilities but involves more 'soft' concepts like spacing, relative territory, trading territory for influence (whether to play on the third line or the fourth line), and is something more akin to art than science if I were to grasp for a metaphor.
Computers will likely enlarge the 'end game' that is be able to play better and better than humans the last part of the game and eventually play better middle game, and eventually only the opening will be where humans have an advantage until that too is taken by computation.
(I'm about an AGA 6 dan)