[nie]

A Chinese Go teach phrase for kids: "Gold Corner, Silver Side, Grass (paper) Belly (mid)"

  - A corner is the best place
  - Side comes second
  - Carnage in the middle

[nie]

Which explains why most of us are surprised/shocked that AlphaGo developed a winning strategy in favouring battling in the middle.

[fhe]

The current explanation from the professional Go community is that, duking it out in the middle is far too complex for humans to master. So maybe it's not so much that corner positions are better than edge positions, which are better than center positions; it's just that the center area is far too complex to yield to human analysis.