Reading

Reading is the process of calculating variations to determine whether moves work and what position or result they produce. A player examines candidate moves, the opponent’s strongest replies, and the continuations that follow. This includes checking resulting liberties, life-and-death status, captures, and territory.

Reading supports accurate tactical play in fighting, life-and-death, capturing races, and choosing the correct order of moves. It calculates concrete variations, unlike intuition, general positional judgment, or pattern recognition, although strong play combines all of them. The analysis should assume the opponent finds the strongest response rather than cooperates. Once the result is sufficiently clear, reading should stop instead of continuing needlessly.