You’ve heard about LL and would like to know what it is about.

So what is the idea, or philosophy, behind LL?

What is allowed in LL? 

Pretty much anything that makes sense. More clearly, any trick that a player could come up with through experience without anyone teaching them the trick – experience may mean 2, 10, 200, 3000 plays or more.

The whole idea is to stick to tricks that smart, logical players could come up with on their own, starting from scratch. Therefore, if a trick is unvital and/or so complex that it requires a group to discuss and engineer it, it will not be used in LL.

 The benefit-risk balance is important as well: if a trick seems efficient but frequently makes other simple and/or good moves impossible, it will likely be rejected in LL (typically, conventional leftism is unvital and has big downsides).

LL was born from intense practice and deep understanding of the game, starting from scratch – very rare tricks were suggested to me by other players. It requires a deep knowledge of the game and its traps, not just "knowing techniques and applying them blindly". It requires understanding deeply why you make the move you make in a given situation and being able to break down your reasoning.

What about hard variants? 

LL hasn’t been used much in harder variants, for lack of solid players in official variants (normal and multicolor).

However, LL will adapt to variants and not use the same tricks throughout variants. Some tricks may be vital (i.e. used) in a variant and both unvital and counter-productive (i.e. not used) in another.

Then it will become logical to use them in some variants despite their downsides, because they’ve become necessary vis-à-vis the variant’s specific dangers, failing which efficiency will be too low.

Supposing these techniques are highly complex or advanced, their discovery by one’s own means is strongly encouraged versus collective engineering, to remain within the scope of non-conventional play.