I'm seriously considering this book even though I already have plenty of literature. However, the price of the book is quite expensive and before I make my purchase I would love some insight from other readers. I have read the author(Robert's) information on it and the sample pages, but this hasn't sold me. I would also like to know if a large portion of the information presented in the book would be known by a 2 kyu. The last thing I'd want to do is spend around $40 on book filled with cliche phrases that would remain on my shelf for the rest of its days. Thanks for all future comments.

The price probably stems from the fact that it's a private print and not from a publisher and the author has invested his personal money into printing the book. The printing quality is the same as other books of course.

I can't say anything about the content though as I don't have the book.

It's been reviewed twice here on L19, once by John Fairbairn here:

viewtopic.php?p=64859#p64859

and once by the author himself:

viewtopic.php?p=63693#p63693

A list of all reviews that have appeared on L19 can be found here:

viewtopic.php?p=45918#p45918

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

Christien, a 2 kyu can find a lot that is new to him, a lot else that is familiar to him but now explained much more carefully and a lot yet other things entirely familiar to him. There is simply such a great amount of theory and with such a broad width of degrees from basic to high dan knowledge that there is a lot for every mentioned kind. Most of the theory cannot be found in other English books, partly even because it is new research by me made specifically for this book. Amateur high dans will know most of the principles verbally or have developed similar principles for themselves. The definitions of well known terms are so very correct that you might easily overlook to learn from them but actually I needed many years to understand well and work out those "trivialities" while removing the false and the superfluous. As Kageyama writes, what turned him from amateur to professional was a profound, detailed understanding of the fundamentals. Most of the analysis values, about half of the methods, some concepts etc. cannot be found elsewhere in English or partly anywhere else, regardless of how much literature you have.

The book does contain cliche phrases where they are correct ("Avoid overconcentration!"), simple principles easily overlooked for a long time ([A possible purpose of a cutting group:] "to prevent opposing territory where one's own center running group is situated"), intermediate principles ("An aim delayed until about the last moment can preserve additional ko threats." [Note: The power of this principle is its generality; it is not just forcing moves that can be kept in reserve but also aims related to other ideas like local sente endgame sequences or other usage of aji.]) or advanced ("A player lets the opponent create or use strategic choices or attacking options if none of them hurts the player more than its elimination in time.").

The price is the smallest economically fitting in view of the invested labour and amount and quality of contents. Judging only printing costs and number of pages, the price has about an expected order of magnitude. Judging only the quality of contents per page, the book is incredibly cheap. Juding what the book would have cost if a big publisher were chosen and the author's income were below 1 EUR per sold copy, the book is expensive.

If you find / don't find any other go book with more strategic theory, please don't hesitate to blame / praise my book! (I have seen only a few that approach at least 10%...!)

Thanks Robert. Your insight has pushed me into the direction of buying your book. I'd also like to apologize for the negative ambience that I unknowingly portrayed. I realize the price of this book is not inflated for opulent profits, but even so, money is not easy to come by in these unrelenting economic times especially for a student who makes minimum wage such as myself. Lastly, I would like to ask if anyone has read this book and what their experiences were with the book? John Fairbairn's review gives me the impression that he did not use the book to improve and simply thought it was a nice reference book. On the other hand, I aim to use the book to strengthen my own joseki knowledge which, as of now, relies solely on reading and a few common Joseki's I know of.

Volume 2 makes it easier to understand josekis. It is not a joseki dictionary though. So if, besides getting easier access to josekis (and strategy in general), you want to learn some actual joseki variations, it is necessary to read also some source containing variations (a dictionary or an online database). Vice versa, reading only a dictionary lets it be hard to understand and remember the joseki variations and their moves. So, IMO, you need both Vol. 2 and a dictionary. Some online databases are free, so if you want to save money, then trying to use them might save you the expense for a (first) dictionary. OTOH, getting a representative overview on the many variations might be tough from a database only (and unfortunately Vol. 3, which would fulfil that purpose, is not available yet).

New Contents in Joseki 2 Strategy


Very significantly higher quality of general description of known concepts in comparision to prior world literature:

- Influence
- Thickness
- Stability
- Mobility
- Haengma
- Unrest Model
- middle game territory estimation using 0- und 1-territory
- quiet some of the definitions of terms known by name

Very significantly higher quality of general description of known concepts in comparision to prior western literature:

- Playing Elsewhere
- Options
- Timing
- Current Territory Depends on Sente
- Tewari
- Strategic Choices
- Strategic Planning

Transfer from online discussion and specialized articles to western go book literature:

- Quiescence
- Current Territory in Quiet Groups
- Count of Quiet Position
- Average Local Move Value (miai value) + Average Locale Value (local Count)

Invention of names for known, so far not named concepts:

- Locale
- Strategic Object
- Active + Passive Thickness

New in western literature:

- Investment (the name is new world-wide)
- Group Meanings
- Maximal Number of Development Directions
- Local Positional Judgement (incl. Territory vs. Influence, Value of an Extension, Attacking an Unsettled Group)
- most principles

New:

- Strategic Lines (I had sketched that in ICOB 2001)
- Unsettled Group Average (something similar was known for the endgame)
- Value of Early Corner Move Derived from Killing
- Excess Influence Stones (for Local Positional Judgement)
- Territory Efficiency (as a value)
- Unrest Level
- Mobility Count + Difference
- Usefulness Count + Difference
- n-connected
- n-alive
- n-territory

This is mostly sheer bombast. You acknowledge repeatedly that you cannot read the world literature, nor have you seen it, so how can you know?

Thickness and influence are superbly dealt with, for just one example, in the Japanese book Atsuku Utsu devoted exclusively to the subject in over 220 pages - almost ten times your pagination. It is heavy with text, and most diagrams relate to discussions and commentaries rather than examples. It covers more aspects of thickness than you do, it covers the whole game and not just joseki, and it gives historical perspectives, too. I rate it several magnitudes higher than your work, although I wouldn't quibble much with what relatively little you do say.

I disagree with your definition of haengma (which you yourself claim to be too general for usefulness, anyway). What you say may be valid enough in its own right, but I think you would have done better to invent a term of your own, as people reading your book may be confused when encountering other (better) definitions of haengma by natives and (more pertinently) discussions of how haengma is applied. Without going into detail, I think your concept of mobility mostly belongs under haengma, which is hardly surprising as haeng refers specifically to mobility and nothing else.

Concepts such as mobility and stability (as you define them) or unrest, or 1-territory, are not used in the Oriental system, so claiming to be better than nothing is not much of a claim. That is not to say that what you write is not of interest. The mobility count idea, presumably, like quiescence, borrowed from chess programming, is one especially novel and worthy contribution.

As I've said before, some of your new definitions are not just sound but good and appealing, and I'd be willing to go along - at a little distance, perhaps - with your claim there. I'd cavill at some of your other claims, but it seems especially egregious to claim to be the world's best when you (like me) are just a frog at the bottom of the well. The end result is to detract from your legitimate claims.

Christien: Your impression of me that I did not use the book to improve and simply thought it was a nice reference book is correct (though I'd omit "simply"). You need have no fears of finding anything cliched in there - entirely the opposite. There is a lot that is new, interesting and challenging. If you can overlook the overblown claims (which tend to be in the PR rather than the book itself) I think you will enjoy using it, especially if you are in a rut at your present grade or improving too slowly. But it is a book for the long term (mainly as reference) or for the committed student. With its new concepts, it is also outside the mainstream, if that's something that bothers you (personally I'd see that as a plus but I have all the mainstream books anyway). Whether it is worth 40 euros, or more or less than something else, is not something I want to get into, but I will say that you probably don't need to worry about further expenditure on Volume 1, simply because the author himself did a good job of recapitulating in Vol. 2 the main ideas of Vol. 1. There's also enough meat there to keep you busy for a long while, and you might find it more palatable to regard it as costing more like 1 euro a week.

Without provoking, I will never find out.

I look at every go book I get to see and must have seen thousands different ones. The problem is, of course, that big, ordinary go bookstores in Asia offer many books but almost all of them are uninteresting. I lack your research possibilities in which further books exist and you have pointed out occasionally a few books or journal articles published during
the last decades with potentially competitive contents. You have even started to describe some of their contents. Whenever the real matter of whose description might be better was "threatened to be revealed", you dropped discussion though, leaving me with the impression that there was no better Asian description of a concept than mine. So far your descriptions have only convinced me that there are or have been a tiny number of Asians with serious attempts of providing some good descriptions. Of what you have described, those were significantly weaker though than mine for the concepts I mentioned. Maybe another round of descriptions and comparision can clarify better whose descriptions of concepts are?



Here we appear to have had a misunderstanding. My claim is to have provided the best DEFINITIONS of what influence and thickness are. The book you mention and probably further such books appear to belong to those with the best descriptions of HOW TO USE influence / thickness. I have not written detailed texts about usage so naturally I expect such Asian books to be much better and much more detailed concerning usage.

I do not recall if the book mentioned by you above is the same you had described a bit earlier. If it is the same, then the description of definitions of influence / thickness were much better than the average English descriptions for that but much weaker than my description of definitions of influence / thickness. From what you have reported so far, an
Asian description classifies thickness into different types like atsumi and atsusa. This is useful, of course, but - as I see so far from your selective translative descriptions - it
misses the core of the natures of influence / thickness, which I define by reducing them to the possibilities for player versus opponent to connect, make life and make territory. If
some of the Asian books do the same, please reveal it, thank you! So far though I have yet to be convinced though that they do it at all. Beyond this essential insight, I go the final
step farther and show how in general to derive influence and thickness (and their degrees) from (rules) axioms. Such is possible because my theoretical models refer to n-connected,
m-alive, t-territory, which rely on "force", which in turn is an already solved rules term.

Summarising, my definitions do two things: 1) They let influence and thickness rely on the more basic concepts connection, life, territory. 2) They are shown how to be derived from axioms.

Where Asian and my descriptions appear to be already closer to each other is on the intermediate level of characterisation: aspects which are implications of my definitions: thicker shape, less aji etc.

So what do the best Asians definitions of what I do? Where and how, as you claim, would they be better as definitions than mine? You even say magnitudes better, but that might be
related to our above mentioned misunderstanding between seeking definitions of what influence / thickness are versus seeking usage during various parts of the game.

Please don't hesitate to point out all shortcomings in my desriptions and what the best Asian books might do better! Only if we know what it is that might be better can we learn
that.



Unfortunately! It is so convenient to be less general than I am;) I am grateful to Prof. Jeong 9p though to have opened my eyes towards the very general potential of a generally perceived haengma though. It is very unfornate that the well known haengma books teach it as if were little more than efficiency combined with some striving to walk to the center.



No. Rather I have said that my definition is too general for a DIRECT application (to a position).



What I learned I did learn from a few Korean professionals like Jeong. So I think that ackowleging their origin and relation to the word haengma is appropriate. A word of my own would have pretended more personal discovery of related understanding than occurred.



Better? If so, please state them! So far I see only much more restrictive definitions or example studies presuming such in Korean books (I know; mostly those from the standard publishers like KBA available to my eyes).



Quite possible. I do not claim that my short description in the book would even start to be as detailed with respect to usage.



It is possible to group it that way but I think that considering mobility on its own is a very powerful view for practical application in one's games. Very simple and yet very powerful. Burying it under haengma would lose that simple usefulness.



The mobility of haengma is usually treated as that of stones interrelation. The mobility in my book's concept of that name is something else: a count of dominant numbers of more mobile
stones than the opponent's.



Rather I'd say that inventing the first step of a new concept is the most difficult step of all! Like inventing the use of fire for human beings. A simple step but very difficult to invent (I suppose it must have been). Nevertheless, already the basic usage of controlled fire at all was very valuable. (Surely mankind added lots of improvements later such as
specific uses of fire for running engines.)



What about stability and unrest model? Rather than worrying I'd like to know if anybody else might have some better description, which so far is just hidden to the west. Convince me that I am a frog at the bottom rather than the panther at the top!;)

The unrest model is one of many possible approaches. So I guess that something more or less equivalent must have been written down somewhere rather than existing only in one person's
head. But which alternatives are actually written? So far I have not even heard of any.

EDIT: Several layout corrections after the server had issued timeout and I had to copy & paste and linebreak again.

Do those Asian books on influence / thickness define either? If yes, then what are the definitions? Are their definitions able to assess precisely degrees of influence and thickness of each intersection or stone in each position? Are their definitions precise enough to be derived from axioms? If all answers are yes, then there is a chance that some of the Asian definitions might be better than mine. Otherwise mine are clearly more powerful, general and precise for the sake of identifying what is influence / thickness at all and for studying relative degrees.

There is also a German review by somebody who reports to have improved due to the book:
http://www.dgob.de/yabbse/index.php?topic=4393.80
See the long article by Nagu. Citations:

"[...] nach einem halben Jahr der Stagnation bei 6 kyu gewinne ich nun auch als 5Kyu so viel Spiele, dass ich mich steil den 4Kyu (KGS) nähere. Und das obwohl ich zuvor stetig Probleme gelöst habe.
[...Robert kehrt] ein Konzept nicht unter den Tisch [...], nur weil es aus der Sicht von starken Spielern trivial ist. [...]
Die Darstellung des Stoffs ist häufig etwas heavy. [...] wer [...] sich ernsthaft damit auseinandersetzt, kann mit diesem Buch sehr viel lernen [...] dass das Buch sehr davon profitiert hätte, wenn es stärker auf ein bestimmtes Zielpublikum [...] ausgerichtet wäre"

Translation:

"Despite regular problem solving, I had half a year of stagnation at 6 kyu. Now also as a 5 kyu I win so many games that [my KGS rating] approaches 4 kyu [quickly ...]
Robert does not hide a concept under the table just because, from strong players' view, it is considered trivial. [...] The presentation of the material is often a bit dense [or: heavy]. [...] Someone having a serious look at it can learn a lot from the book. [...] The book had profited much if it had been aimed more at a particular readership [with a restriced rank range]."

Lastly, Robert what would you call your book( I don't mean the title more so the format)? For example, an encyclopedia(I want to say dictionary but that gives the idea of endless variations in the Go Book world)? Is it a book with all the concepts one should take into consideration while playing in the Joseki stage that you can constantly refer back to? Like sente, gote influence, territory, thickness, forcing moves, cutting, connecting and so on.

Yes.

Not only concepts though but also decisions, analysis methods, values, meanings, reasons. Not only applicable to the joseki stage though but also applicable to the middle game and the understanding of the components (moves, sequences, parts of sequences with the same intentions) of josekis.

Clumsy english vocabulary: do you mean the terms, the non-term parts of the text, or both?

Style: do you mean the definition texts, the other paragraphs or both?

Clumsy definitions: the book is very dense, so the text of the definitions is dense. If they were rewritten in "nice to read" English, the book would have to be split into two volumes. Instead my plan is to work out application and details with more examples in other books, such as Positional Judgement 2 - Influence shall be. (Applications are in my other books, too. However, they, in the meaning of providing explanations of Joseki 2, are not worked out in detail yet.)

Clumsy explanations: what do you mean?

German style for sentence length: I guess so. I was told by my proofreaders that my subsequent books are improving.

Free advice: fine. However, it is also mixed with personal preferences and other things.

Suberb English: why? Excessive use of Japanese terms or bending of English terms for the sake of maintaining a tradition of Japanese origin are hurdles for a better understanding of go knowledge. Very much of my effort used for becoming 5d I had to spend on deciphering go theory from books that take more pride in Japanese words than in overcoming them to better explain the go contents. Power and Davies may have good common English, but their contents of go theory does not surpass the limitations of the functionally restricted set of Japanese go terminology. Van Zeijst has shown a bit more courage.

Can you elaborate?

In All About Ko, van Zeijst has broken out of the box of previous contents in the literature by starting to discuss evaluation and using the phrase 'adjacent threat' instead of the otherwise used 'local threat'. (I dislike his phrase, because the other phrase has been common (for those already knowing the concept) and is more correct, but I appreciate his courage.) See also
http://www.gobooks.info/jasiek/all-about-ko.html
Before van Zeijst, Bozulich's books were, to be polite, within the box of traditional contents.

The book had not been available directly from me in printed form for a couple of months but now I have reprinted it. This version 2 has only a few tiny corrections and a better printing quality of the cover's colours. If you have version 1, of course, you do not need version 2, but the die hard collectors might wish to know that there is the new versíon.

Of course, everybody having version 1 can get a free update to the PDF version 2 on request. Please send me an email preferably with your license number for it.

I'm not familiar with the book but I rather doubt it was a question of courage. It's more likely just to be a literal translation. It is, however, possible that it was an attempt to be more accurate in that Japanese theory has made a distinction between 近所劫 and ｿﾊﾞｺｳ. Both can be translated as "neighbourhood/adjacent/local ko" but the latter is distinguished and so gives rise to the proverb ｿﾊﾞｺｳはたたず.

As that shows, Japanese theory is not lacking, and similarly evaluation is not new in the literature.