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 Post subject: Fighting Fundamentals by Robert Jasiek - another review
Post #1 Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 5:26 am 
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Introduction

Robert Jasiek's Fighting Fundamentals is an ambitious and original book which aims to make the reader stronger by teaching him to think more in a more structured manner about fighting. Jasiek's approach is to teach the reader to differentiate between types of fights, and to help him to clarify and achieve his objectives during the fights. The central concept of the book is that during a fight, each player follows primary aims, for example defending the life of a group, in order to achieve secondary aims, such as building territory. Let me begin by describing the structure of the book.

Description

The book, which weighs in at a hefty 256 pages, is divided into 6 main chapters plus an introduction and an index. Each of the main chapters begins with a brief introduction to the topic, which in most cases is followed by a short set of problems. Then comes a series of sub-chapters categorizing the main theme. The chapters then conclude with detailed answers to the problems.

After a brief introduction and explanation of the basic concepts used in the book, Jasiek gets rolling by presenting a comprehensive catalog of the types of fights, with the idea being that one should know what one is getting into in order to know what one might expect to get out of it. Jasiek lists 13 types of fights, all of which are probably familiar to the reader. Each of these sub-chapters begins with a description of the fight type, pointing out its main characteristics and what one might expect to get out of it. This is followed by a few well chosen examples mostly from professional games, often with detailed variations.

Next, Jasiek tackles the big question of what one wants out of a fight. The key concept is that each player explicitly attempts to achieve secondary aims whilst pursuing primary ones. Jasiek devotes a chapter each to primary and secondary aims. The primary aims are not easy to put under one hat. This is because they are presented from the viewpoints of both players. Although they mostly involve familiar concepts, Jasiek's categories encourage the reader to view these aims not in isolation, but rather as opposing desires. Thus in addition to Defending Life (a primary objective of both players) we have such headings as "Capture versus Sacrifice and Exchange," and "Threatening versus Defended Stability." The secondary aims are presented in a more straightforward manner, and involve territory, influence, aji and playing elsewhere.

This brings us about halfway through the book, and if we consider the first part to be the bones, what follows is the meat and internal organs. Chapter 6, titled Fighting Techniques and Moves, is the longest one of the book running 85 pages. Here we see that Jasiek's method is to teach functional principles, such as blocking directions or maintaining flexibility, as opposed to focusing systematically on particular moves such as the cap or cutting the knight's move. This chapter also includes a section on timing, a subject that seems largely neglected amongst other books on my shelf. The book concludes with a chapter strategy, pointing out where one should be fighting and what for.

Style and Features

The author's voice in Fighting Fundamentals is somewhat inconsistent. At its best, we hear Jasiek speaking as a teacher, telling us what we need to do to get to the next level, patiently asking us to examine constellations on the board, anticipating our thoughts and questions and encouraging us to step beyond our current limits. Unfortunately this tone is interspersed between longer stiff, dry and tiresome passages with a penchant for the passive voice and a hang for stating the obvious. Thankfully, the author has largely eliminated the teach-by-list method, and aside from a few clumsy formulations there is seldom cause for confusion. Nonetheless, this reader found himself struggling not to skip over parts that appeared long-winded and repetitive. I must add however, that this is not a book designed for bedtime reading, but rather meant for serious study, and the author clearly expects the reader to spend most of his time delving into the diagrams and internalizing the concepts.

While the text could surely be more pleasant to read, the content is quite interesting, and appears to be largely the result of Jasiek's original thought, research and teaching experience. Fighting Fundamentals introduces and explains a number of ideas that I have not read elsewhere, for example the concepts of stability and of offering one's opponent a strategic choice. Also the central theme of the book, structuring one's thoughts about a fight is original.

By and large, the teaching method is to present concepts and principles and illustrate them by presenting and analyzing examples from professional games. The games are taken from GoGoD, and thankfully the players and dates are included which makes it easy to find and look at the games in SGF format. The diagrams are plentiful and the author does not skimp on the variations when illustrating the principles discussed. So far, I have found no errors in the diagrams, and the only difficulty I have encountered is having to flip back a page in order to read the text of a diagram. An additional feature of the book is a small selection of problems, which Jasiek uses to introduce the various topics. I liked that many of them were not of the run-of-the-mill black to kill variety, but rather asked questions such as "what's wrong with black's aim to defend the marked string." I would have found it more valuable if the problems were used in the more standard way to test comprehension of the material taught, but I do appreciate the attempt at a new approach.

Conclusion

Fighting Fundamentals covers a huge amount of ground. We are shown when and where to start a fight, we are given a way of formulating our objectives, we are shown techniques and principles about how to handle common situations and we are given categories to get a better handle on what fights are about. In short, we are presented with a comprehensive approach to fighting. I found the book to be thorough and demanding, and I suspect that for anyone willing to put the work into studying the diagrams and structuring one's thoughts, this book offers ample opportunities for improving one's fighting skill.

-Daniel Goldman KGS 3k

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Last edited by daal on Tue Dec 24, 2013 3:38 am, edited 2 times in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Fighting Fundamentals by Robert Jasiek - another review
Post #2 Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 9:42 am 
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Thanks for the review daal, I was wondering, did RJ, give any high level ideas for contrasting approaches. Say, why he chose to write a book titled "Fighting Fundamentals" rather than a book called "Calm Fundamentals"?

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 Post subject: Re: Fighting Fundamentals by Robert Jasiek - another review
Post #3 Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 4:07 pm 
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If someone writes a book about "how to be active" the first thing you would ask him would be "why didn't you write a book about how to be passive"?

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