Another possibly inane/unsuitable for my level question!

I've come up with two ideas: Studying joseki and watching the games of stronger players. Any other ways out there? Are there any good tsumego sets for teaching this? I realise this is a huge and extremely complex topic and I'm really only concerned with the fundamentals but I haven't seen much directly addressing this aspect of learning in the game and honestly I'm fascinated by the concepts of efficiency and shape in go.

There's the book Making Good Shape...beyond that, I don't really know. I think it's a perfectly suitable question for most levels though.

You can read Shape Up by Charles Matthews.
It is a series of articles about shape, I found it intresting.

You can find the pdf here:

[Mod edit: The link to the pdf "Shape Up!" has been deleted as it is not an authorized copy as explained by the author later on in this thread. Please look for the sources mentioned by the author of this book if you are interested in this book.]

Note to the admins: I think he made it open to the public, if not i'll remove the link.

Hope that helps;

Otenki

Let me stick my neck out and define shape.

1) The local relationship between stones of the same color.
2) Good shape. An efficient local relationship between stones of the same color, typically in the presence of opposing stones.

Usually when players talk about shape without qualifying the term, they mean 2).

There is an amateur misconception that shape is static. In the second sense, it certainly is not. It is forward looking.

Shape is not an extremely complex topic. I would not even consider it to be complex. Forcing your opponent into bad shape may take tactical skill, of course. But shape is on the whole easier than tsumego or tesuji. Good shape is often a prophylactic against the opponent's tesuji, and it sometimes involves tesuji to make it work. But on the whole it is easier.

When I was an SDK I bought a book on shape, which was an eye-opener, but now I do not have a book that even has shape in its title. I was fond of that book, but lost it along the way. Your instincts are right that you can learn shape from studying joseki and professional games. It helps to have some guidance, though, to understand the aspect of efficiency. All too often players will observe that a certain configuration of stones of the same color occurs in joseki or pro games, and jump to the conclusion that that configuration is good shape. They ignore the context, and do not understand why that configuration is efficient. In a different context it could be bad shape.

Examples later.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I second watching games of stronger players. You also might try replaying some professional games.

Shape example from joseki



See? Not so difficult.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Strong amateurs often make bad shape. That's true even for Asian players. Good fighting skills can make up for bad shape. Within limits, of course.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

So it's a case of needing to study professional games? The issue being is that they won't make a whole lot of sense and one won't necessarily grasp the context which made the shape good if one is too weak.

Also look for info on haengma
Perhaps start here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?HaengMaTutorialForBeginners

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Shape example from pro play.



How White induces Black's bad shape may not be obvious, but once Black makes it, it is painfully obvious.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Pros make good shape. It is so obvious to them that they do not usually comment on it. What you need to do is to go slowly and question ordinary moves. Why is that the right spot, and not a nearby point? The joseki example shows how to do that. You could have come to the same conclusions that I did. With my experience it was obvious. You would have to work at it.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Time to get a goban out then so.

If I may offer my two cents... I think the most natural way to develop some feel for shape is to study tesuji, since many tesuji exploit a vital shape point or, vice versa, many strong shapes prevent tesuji.

Also, if you notice a certain move in a pro or high Dan game and think "that looks so dumb", and then you see it again and again, you should ask someone to explain it... In my limited experience, however bad amateur Dan shape is, if I think it looks clearly dubious, then there's a rationale.

Also, shape that is a shape is not the true shape. There are shapes for attacking, shapes for defending, shapes for eyes space, shapes for connecting, shapes for development... Shape can be deceptive because a certain configuration of stones can be the most efficient for one particular purpose, while being useless for a different purpose.

dsaun does a nice audio lecture about shape on KGS every so often.

Thanks everyone for their comments.



It wasn't "Tesuji and Anti-Suji of Go: Playing in Good Form and Making Correct Shape" was it? Because that was out of print but was recently released on SmartGo Books and looks interesting.

It was a book by Maeda. I still have the Sakata book (in Japanese). It is an excellent book. (I had completely forgotten the subtitle. )

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Ohira Shuzo 9 dan says,( translated by John Fairbairn ):

"Good shape is when stones are arranged in such a way that all the vital points are guarded."

_________________
Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

This describes only a special case of shapes: one-colour, thick shape, where the objective is not necessarily thickness but could also be (local) life. It does not say what "vital point" means, but let me make a suggestion:

For the local shape of a player's stones, a "vital point" is an intersection on which the player's play transforms a -1-, 0- or 1-connection to a higher degree connection or transform a -1-life to a higher degree life, so that the best possible improvement of connection degree, life degree or efficiency (preferably of all) is achieved.

(Efficiency has several aspects, so the definition is still generic.)

http://senseis.xmp.net/?NConnection
http://senseis.xmp.net/?Nalive

Shape can be studied especially for fulfilling purposes, positional contexts, visual types, kinds of dynamic processes, fulfilling strategic concepts (in particular, connection, life, influence, thickness, efficiency (e.g., territory efficiency), mobility (e.g. mobility difference), haengma, stability, aji, tenuki), analysis (tewari, local positional judgement), recurring techniques, tesujis and tactics. See Joseki Vol. 1 + 2. Literature studying almost all of those aspects for the topic shapes does not exist yet. Therefore one needs to study both shapes literature and literature explaining those aspects regardless of the shape topic.

For beginners, start with

- Connect your stones!
- Keep your stones alive!
- Achieve the same with the smallest possible number of stones!

Thank you so much for this, it's utterly fascinating!