Play by Heuristics

Yesterday I played a game against an unranked player. It was a strange game, where the other person's play depended on trying to incite mistakes. I won by resignation. I played someone else who's play was similarly strange, and lost by resignation.

It occurs to me that, at my level, many of my games are won and lost on what basically comes down to luck. In the first of those games, I made a dangerous cut that paid out because I was running on a rough heuristic involving eyespace and a count of liberties--not because of any deep reading. I read it out far enough to know that it looked promising--and no further.

In the second game I mentioned (it was actually my first of that day) I did something similar and it turned out I was wrong.

A lot of games--particularly more aggressive games--at my level seem to come down to one liberty, one L&D problem, etc. Sometimes this is not enough to swing the game, other times it makes all of the difference if both players bet on the same thing. This is one of the reasons a single game means very little: even a difference in several stones can be erased by just one or two mistakes of this nature.

While in the aggregate this will work out against a weaker/stronger player, against someone of roughly equal strength a heuristic going wrong can make all of the difference in the world.

To conclude this rambling, I think the underlying point is:

Heuristics are good, reading is better.