Shudan (Hand Talk)

[Here’s](https://senseis.xmp.net/?ShouTan) Sensei’s Libraries page on the term.

It’s maybe my favorite way to call go/baduk/weiqi/surround.

Where we play on the board communicates in a way without words. Do I push, or build, and how can it be both? I play a lot of correspondence games on ogs, so there’s lots of time to plan out how I think things will go. If I push here, what will the other player most likely do? Sometimes I’ll respond and instantly they’ll go, meaning they planned a conditional move. And further, sometimes my next play triggers another and another. They knew exactly how I would play. No “words” communicated, but communication nonetheless.

Sometimes I’ll play a move, and a few minutes later they/you play back, and back and forth for a few plays, both of us playing pretty close to live. I don’t know you, but I know that both of us had a free moment.

I’ve a few “friends” I play with whom I’ve never met in any real way outside of the few good games we’ve played. It’s wild to set a trap, see if they’ll take the bait, and then watch them do it again and again, until one day they don’t. It’s seeing growth in the ways you play obviously, but also in others.

For lack of a better term, it’s almost intimate. Sometimes you will play where I don’t expect, and I have to shape my thinking as to why. Sometimes it’s obvious, a cut at my weak spots. Sometimes it’s tenuki, and I struggle to see the rationale to defending this, or targeting that.

Years ago I moved to a new city and went to the local Go Club. I played with someone and I don’t remember her name, but I remember how she played. I lost, but I also got to learn a different way someone played.

Anyone else have any experiences with Hand Talking, or Shudan?