[book] Learn To Play Go Volume III: The Dragon Style

As opposed to the… what? the soup kitchen style?

First of all, I don’t get the title… Really, I read the book through and have no idea what this “Dragon Style” is that they are referring to here, apart from the fact that they wanted something that had an exotic Asian ring to it… Anyway, now that is out of the way, to the content we go!

This volume, the second I read after Vol II: The Way of the Horse, is very different in what it tries to instil. I found that is isn’t as “practical” as the previous volume, rather focusing on more general concepts that are important to remember. It basically outlines seven dangers and eight secrets, and then has a section with a few analysed games. I must admit that when I first read through it I found it not very valuable, I knew a lot of what it tried to explain already through experience (at least to a certain extent); however, when I read through it again, I felt that it was useful how it was laid out before me and explained with examples. What I did felt was that, while being useful to see things laid out, it was hard to see how to put it into practice. In many ways what the book presents is an attitude, rather than any practical lessons on strategy and tactics; thus putting them into practice is about forcing you to remember the seven dangers and eight secrets at all times during a game, which really is a lot harder than it already sounds.

I think this is a useful book, for sure, but it could use some more content… The analysed games in the second section felt really like filler, more than anything else; it was not linked to the content one is presented earlier. It would have been great to see each move (or at least a few of them) thoroughly linked and analysed in the context of the dangers and secrets presented earlier. Rather, they are simply analysed games with comments on the moves and a few alternative sequences.

Overall, I think it is a good book, but it could have been a lot better if the different sections were brought together more. However, maybe if I reread it a few more times (as is good advice with any baduk related book) I’ll have a different opinion. Again, as with the previous volume, the amount of actual content vs the price is more expensive as with other books I’ve gone through; which is indicative of a general trend in publishing: lots of white space on pages, leading to a larger book with less in it.

[book] A first edition of “GO proverbs illustrated”!

An out of print first edition by someone who taught Go Seigen? Those facts alone will make me a full stone stronger…

I just got this book… it cost me a bit, but I didn’t care! It’s an investment, because my bibliophilic heart just danced and will keep dancing, preventing it from buying other books for no reason for at least a while… This is Segoe Kensaku’s “GO proverbs illustrated”, 1st edition, printed in 1960 by the Japanese Go Association. Now, I know that there are other books out there about proverbs – some good, some evil; to illustrate this: one the first end of that spectrum (not counting Segoe’s book) is the recent Nihon Kiin’s “Proverbs”, and on the other hand (judging from some reviews) “New Go Proverbs Illustrated”… But I didn’t buy this because I want to learn from it, I bought this so I could go raise the departed Segoe Kensaku from the grave so his zombie hands can sign this first edition before, you know, he eats my brains or something.

So this will be my holiday reading, and I’ll post a little review here afterwards… Not that a review is helpful, considering it is out of print, but still.

[book] Basic Techniques of Go

If you look clearly at the cover, black has played 24 stones… and white 29… Call me pedantic but had a little “dafuq?” moment there…

So I bought this book from the stock of the Cape Town Go Club for 70 rands (which is about 6.34 USD as of today), actually I paid 80 for it because they didn’t have change; so left a 10 rand donation – about enough to buy a cold drink for one person at the next committee meeting. Basically I got a signed copy dirt cheap; at the Kiseido online bookshop it’s listed as US$18 – €16 – ¥1,800, that being about 198.71 rands. Also it is signed, I just want to mention that again.

The book is by two professional players: Haruyama Isamu [春山勇] (9p) and Nagahara Yoshiaki  [長原芳明] (6p); they didn’t bother to update the cover when they reprinted after Haruyama’s promotion from 8p, though did in fact update the information inside, which is kinda weird. There are quite a few good reviews of this book online already, but I just wanted to contribute my thoughts to the discussion because I like hearing myself type; but you can find the other reviews here, here, and here. The edition I have is the third edition, so the general complaints about the overuse of Japanese terminology isn’t an issue; I would have loved them to simply replace it with Korean terminology instead of English, but hey… can’t have everything in life.

Overall, there are mixed feelings it seems about this book: some say it is too dense, not clear enough; others feel it has a breath of information. My opinion is that it is a great book, and while some recommend it for the intermediate to advanced player, I would disagree; I think it is a great second or third book to read. Granted, it might take some rereading, but I found it very helpful as a beginner (currently a lowly 23k); especially the sections on handicap games. The thing is that other beginner books don’t deal with this, so you read through how to make approaches and how to make openings, but in actual games you don’t end up using that knowledge; instead you are faced with 9 stones on the star points, and no clue what to do with them… most basic jeongseok [joseki] that you get introduced to in introductory books deal with the 3-3 point or the 3-4 point with scant attention to the star point. Having a book that goes through the 9 stone handicap down with explanations of basic plays to do and how to handle the aggressive play that white inevitably has to engage in I found truly helpful.

I think the main issue here is that people are used to books such as those in the Learn to Play Go series, which doesn’t have much breath… They are great books, but they are essentially written for a generation that clearly reads differently I think. Basic Techniques of Go is written densely, packing as much information on a limited amount of pages, leading to the need to often reread sections to really comprehend them… Also playing the diagrams out on a board sometimes is necessary to grasp them. Sure, if you read through it once you won’t understand half of it, but this is a study book in essence and requires study, not just cursory reading. I would really recommend this book for beginners, after reading a few books in the Learn to Play Go series, or other introductory books.

Also… my copy is signed… for just 70 rands! The unsigned copy they had on sale was only 60 rands…

[book] Learn to Play Go Volume II: The Way of the Moving Horse

So, Janice Kim went to the Korean Baduk Academy, and co-writes a book with a Korean 9 dan pro… and still it is titled ‘Learn to Play Go??”

I bought this book a few days ago, and went through it in one sitting over a glass of wine. The Learn to Play Go series by Janice Kim (3p) and Jeong Soo-hyun [정수현] (9p) is often recommended for beginners and comprises of five volumes. I decided to skip Volume I: A Master’s Guide to the Ultimate Game because I had already read Go for Beginners by Iwamoto Kaoru [岩本 薫] (9p); from other people’s comments I concluded that the first book in the series would be a waste of time and money considering the material that is apparently covered in it, though it still is recommended for absolute beginners. There is some overlap with Go for Beginners, but overall it was a great second book to read actually.

The main asset is that it just tackles one specific thing, or collection of things; basically it deals with haengma [행마] which literally means “moving horse”; hence the title, I assume. I’m not going to attempt a definition of haengma, and potentially start some sort of nerdy baduk-related flame war in the comment sections here, but to give a summary the things covered here are: relationship between stones, extensions, approaches, capturing races, ko fights, and a few tactics for contact fighting. The book doesn’t go in deep into these things, it basically explains it and gives a few examples and moves on; the result of this is that it makes for light reading, aided by a very open layout, resulting in me going through it in a matter of hours and still feeling I’ve learned something here.

I guess you could find a more cost-effective format for the information contained in Volumes I & II of this series, but I love the fact that it is easy to read, and easy to retain information because of it, making it a nice investment for a beginner. If you’re farther ahead, you probably won’t get too much out of it though.

[website] The Interactive Way To Go

While I knew the rules of baduk from years ago, when I submitted myself to humiliating losses once every half year, it is only since a few months that I seriously looked beyond the basic rules of the game (meaning, I knew the aim was to surround, and I know how to capture, that was pretty much it.) The place where I actually got a taste of the true complexity of this game was at The Interactive Way To Go, a great website that not only shows you the basic rules, it goes into tactics and strategy.

The website is interactive (duh…) and gives you exercises using a little flash plugin. Overall, of course this makes it more convenient than dealing with diagrams in a book, though it tends to illicit the click-blind-and-see-if-it-is-correct behaviour. Also it uses flash or java, so if you’re trying to access it on a tablet or phone it won’t work. The lessons are intersected by problems catering to the specific rules that have been learned, and in some cases rules are learned simply through trying to solve problems; the problems are rated from 50k up to 34k by the last lesson… Though, a translation would be more like 35k to circa 20k (depending on how well you manage to apply the lessons), according to a lot of books and other tutorials out there.

What is great about this website is that it is available in a lot of languages… Arabic, Basque, Belarus, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Chinese (Simplified characters), Chinese (Traditional  characters), Croatian , Dutch , English , Esperanto (!!!), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian; I’m surprised they didn’t translate it into Klingon or Sindarin. Some use Java instead of Flash, not sure why, and there is no Korean… which is an almighty sin which will rain down fire and tear open the earth (or maybe I just find it a pity…)

The overall layout of the website reminds me of the days before Web 2.0, with html-only and flashy banners, and the absence of CMS; it’s kinda retro, and a plus is that it can be accessed over a slow internet connection.

[book] Go for Beginners

Simple, and straightforward… and points for not being titled “Go for dummies”

I recently purchased Go for Beginners by Kaoru Iwamoto, mostly because I was looking to improve my basic skills at baduk. Honestly, I really wish it wasn’t referred to as go… at the very least, if there is preference for the Japanese word, then call it igo; it just would make googling information on it a lot more straightforward. Anyway, so I got the book and I really like it. It’s fairly thin, but there is a lot of information there. Most of the stuff in the first part you can find online as well, on various introductory websites; I started going through The Interactive Way To Go when I got back to playing baduk, and I as a result I kinda flew through the first part. I think an argument can be made that a lot of the material in this book, and I assume in a lot of other introductory books, is just for those not being able to access the internet nowadays. Still the information is very well explained, and I grasped a more in depth understanding of some of the basics; this might also be because I read printed information better than on a computer screen, somehow. The second part of the book, which I am reading right now, is quite helpful. While of course a lot of it is also to be found online nowadays, it is good to have it nicely structured. It goes over some general strategy, very basic jungsuk (aka joseki), and give example games with commentary.

What I thought was funny is that at one point the author states that one would go from 35k to 10k within a few months, which part of me hopes is right, but I’m somewhat skeptical about. Of course, considering the year it was written (1972) the ranking system might be somewhat differently somehow, as nowadays 30k is the bottom rank. The style of writing is clear, and at points opinionated; he gives clear indications of what he considers bad etiquette and behaviour when it comes to playing a game, calling things vulgar and boorish at times. The only minor issue I found with this book is the fact that some of the diagrams are out of place in terms of the text: they appear sometimes above, sometimes below, sometimes on another page all together from the point where they are mentioned. Though overall, I found this little gem very helpful; the question remains, however, how will I fare coming Tuesday?