Any book recommendations?

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be immersed

Hm, I guess this is difficult because at the moment I am catching up on older books ^^
I have yet to finish Stephen King's Dark Tower series, right now I'm at the last book. Then there is a german fantasy series called "Mara und der Feuerbringer", which comes on the big screen next year, as far as I know. Furthermore I plan on purchasing "Ender's Game", because I heard - as always - you should read the book instead of watching the movie : D

That's what's in my head for now ^^

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Except for reviewing, I didn't study any Go books since my last post in this thread.

Hitting and maintaining Shodan (if ever so briefly because I stopped a few weeks after that) seems to have quite the psychological effect on me. Understandably if I look at how long this was my goal. I think it's time for something fresh and new.

I still visit the weekly Go club and I got definitely weaker (strategy, oh, where are thou?). But since I started playing chess (again), learning C# and generally feast upon math (projecteuler.net ftw!) and physics this should come as no surprise. (So problem solving is still my number one interest but in different fields : D)
Luckily the whole Go club is pretty much a gathering of programmers, math and physics students and chess players and trainers.

All that's left now is concluding with the famous Captain Jack Sparrow quote: "Bring me that horizon!"

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I know exactly what you mean. I've been 6kyu (including weaker peroids of time) for more than four years and since I was finally able to promote myself to 5kyu recently, I experienced the exact same thing. It sounds like your interest has shifted to some other fields for now and forcing yourself to do more related to Go probably wouldn't be that productive. Maybe you have to wait a little more for the motivation to come back? I'm sure there'll be better times to come when the fire is burning bright again and you'll not only catch up with your old strength, but get stronger than before. Until then I'll come back to read some old entries of your journal, which, by the way, is really inspiring.

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Thank you very much, that's nice to hear =)

I certainly learnt a lot along the way.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Well, chess got boring again : D

Thinking about opening a new "study" thread (maybe planting a tree after all that paving) but since I don't really have time to study right now, it would kind of go to waste...

With the time I have, I try to play some faster games and got from ? to 3-kyu so far. Losing handicap games (giving and recieving) as always... I guess I can stable around 2-kyu, maybe going to 1-kyu but not that sure. Definitely not 1-dan-material anymore ^^

When I have time again, I'd like to go over every item from my book list over at Sensei's Library. In my opinion I'm missing out more things that are below Shodan than advanced stuff. Especially Attack and Defense. And how to work with and handle handicap stones - maybe I'm going to borrow Handicap Go from the Elementary Go Series and Kage's Secrets to Handicap Go for the long run.

Until then, well, gl hf =)

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

After 31 games I stabilised at 2-kyu. I feel, 1-kyu is possible but it requires effort (or more to the point: some thinking).

It's nice to just play/fool around, though =)

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

We should play again some-time, I'm still (perhaps forever) an awful KGS 1d. What are you doing with physics and maths now? At this bizarre juncture I'm a second year math and physics double major (please, no-one remember my current age). With project Euler I seem to always make a game of writing the most hideous code imaginable.



I played a few stray games of chess with go newbies who "were actually chess players" and apparently knowing the rules + go strategy makes one a viable chess player on its own. How do you find the two relate?

(Is anything about to die? What about my opponent's pieces?)

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Sure! =)
If I see you online, I will drop you a message.



Right now, I'm reviewing all school math and physics (khanacademy.org is really great for math!) and I plan to start studying physics at the end of the year.



Ha ha ha, I know what you mean =D
Did you solve problem 4? My code for this is hilarious...



Hm, the only bonus I had, was that I knew how to "read" (visualize moves). Aside from that I frequently overlooked hanging pieces, didn't develop right and so on.
I was still more viable than people without prior knowledge in another strategic board game, who played for around the same time or a bit longer. In general terms I was still really bad, though ; )

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Haven't done question four yet.

My advice on physics which is probably going to be really impractical is to somehow start getting acquainted with Schroedingers equation (eg. in a 1 dimensional infinite potential energy well) as early as practical. It gets a lot less confusing as you get a little more familiar with it. Though to be fair that's second year material.

It's just one of those things.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Hi Loons, just curious:

You mean this? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation)



Are you trying to kill me? =D

I must say, I love the mindblowness of quantum mechanics and I already did some reading into Schrödinger's work... but I was completely lost. I figured it would be better to start with Newton instead ^^

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

You know what Feynman said about Q.M.

Yeah, I kind of realized saying that was crazy (thus 'as soon as practical'). I did rather mean



Though I think it can be written in a simpler* way. The point of "for a 1d infinite energy well" makes the general solution become

Psi(x) = Asin(kx) + Bcos(kx)

Where the modulus of Psi squared is your chance of finding the particle there, and some thinking (and context) will reveal that one of those terms is definitely 0 (because you're not going to find the particle in a place it would take infinite energy to enter, and that graph must be continuous).


@Ed: Also good, but I enjoyed writing '= no1 + no2;' six times nearly consecutively too much.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

I confess, I had to ask my search engine and came to like: "Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize."
But I'm not sure, if this is the quote you meant ^^


post scriptum: This is also nice: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I think the quote was ... "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics".

In the event that you have/will install Microsoft Silverlight:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/research/toys/project-tuva.aspx

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Before reading QM make sure you know Classical Mechanics and Differential Equations (these are to understand the Shrodinger equation).

Bill Spight made a marvellous new thread: "The Trivium and learning go". I wanted to answer there but I could not really focus my train of thought, so I just put everything in here and maybe participate later in the original thread.

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Years ago I tried to write a small guide on how to learn Go for the newcomers in our club. I also wanted to branch off from the usual "do a bunch of problems" and instead wanted to paint a more wholly picture of Go. And I didn't want to just give them a book list because some young ones where not sufficient enough in English and others did not want to buy a couple of "expensive" books. Besides, I guess beginners can enjoy an overview somewhat more than a complete book devoted to just one aspect of the game.

So I wrote down the rules and made a couple of diagrams for each rule so that it can be understood easily. No problems here. There are no interpretation of the rules, no variations, they are absolute (I omitted bent-four-in-the-corner and also any form of Seki).

Next I was confronted with the question of how to proceed.
My original plan was to focus on two main themes overall: Opening moves and shape with special focus on safety/connection of stones.
So after explaining 3*4 and 4*4 a bit, showing the common corner-side-center-territory-per-stone-efficiency and advising moves on the third and fourth line (plus some easy explanations), I stumbled across the connection of stones.

I always considered a half way extension from a 4*4 or from a Shimari as connected since you can either attack any invading stone and make life in the center or at least two-space-extend the other way. But now that opens Pandora's box: Do I include the concept of Miai, which surely no beginner will have any use for and how do I explain the two-space-extension with regards to safety?
The two-space-extension is such an elementary shape, I felt, it had to be included but I didn't want to state any absolutes like that it's a "safe" extension. So should I be cryptic and just say it's basically safe? Should I include more diagrams which would open yet another box (attack and defense)?
I was afraid that when I say a two-space-extension is safe that players would refrain from attacking it. I myself learnt a lot of wrong absolutes in my beginnings and definitely didn't want to pass that on.

Shortly thereafter I gave up on the project.

In the end I collapsed when deciding between reasoning and stating. There are too many exceptions in Go to really state anything besides the rules. And generalising felt off because it's only just half the truth at best (like "Hane at the head of two stones").


Coming back to Bill Spight's thread - at last ; ) Grammer, dialectic and rhetoric.

I feel grammer is the least problematic because the rules are easily conveyed. Basic Haengma (jump, keima... etc.) and Tesujis (basic net, ladder... etc.) I also included in my draft back then. You can also quite easily point out the relation between speediness of the moves and their connectivity and write a few words whether net or ladder is better to capture a stone.
I guess this should be taught/known first.

Dialectic is a bit more tricky. As far as Tsumegos, Tesujis and endgame problems are concerned, you cannot go wrong. If the book solution is good (and correct), you just do them repeatedly until you can solve them on sight.
How to learn Josekis and equally important when to learn them is a topic which still eludes me. I'm fundamentally opposed to just memorise Josekis from a dictionairy.
My prefered way would be a fusion of the books "Whole Board Thinking in Joseki" and "Get Strong at Joseki". So on the one side a whole board application of a Joseki with the explanation why other Josekis wouldn't be so good in this situation and on the other side problems which exemplify how to react to e.g. non-Joseki moves.
Both help you understand the Joseki, which is the important part, I think.
Still this does not answer the question when to learn Josekis. In my opinion, anyone below Shodan has more serious matters to attend to then Josekis.

Rhetoric - super hard!
Since my biggest weaknesses besides the endgame lay here, I feel, I can only speak of why this area seems to be the hardest to learn/teach.
In my opinion everything Bill Spight mentions boils down to positional judgement, which again boils down to experience. You cannot fully judge a situation, when you are unable to spot all the weaknesses/Aji/possibilities in the positions. To spot such weaknesses/Aji/possibilities you have to know the shapes and be proficient enough to read them out in this situation.
So I guess the better your grasp at dialectic the better you do at the rhetoric aspect of Go.
But since you cannot train every position in form of a problem, you have to play through plenty of games and review (better: get reviews from stronger players), so that you learn how to play certain situations better next time.
Each reviewed game might offer a new piece of the rhetoric aspect of Go but rarely will you get an universal applicable piece. It's patchwork.
That's why I think this area is super hard to learn and to teach. It might take a whole game and a review just to learn one thing and chances are you make this mistake a couple of times until it really sinks in. Progress in this area seems really slow compared to the other two areas.
I have a hard time coming up with an on point training here. Of course there are a couple of middlegame problem books and opening problems might also help to a certain extent but overall I feel the best way is playing and getting reviews (while simultaneously working on the dialectic aspect).
Of course there a books like "Opening Theory Made Easy" and "Attack and Defense", which are very good but they also have the premise that you play a lot to incorporate the presented ideas (and checking them works best again with a stronger player).


In a nutshell: I really like the idea to distinguish between these three aspects, it helps in learning Go, gives starting points.
It also helps in chosing the best learning method, I think. Grammer you have to memorise. For dialectic I think practice and repetition of problems works best. And finally rhetoric, you have to play a lot and get reviews from stronger players.
Of course you can further differentiate, e.g. when to do which problems (endgame seems not the best to start with).

I'm looking forward to what Bill Spight has more to say =)

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I had an epiphany recently. Sort of.

One of the bigger reasons why I still play Go or regulary come back to it is this community. It's so alive and always fuels my Go passion with interesting threads and exciting debates.

When I was playing chess, I found a community easily enough but the people there where for one thing less active in the actual chess-related area and for another thing not my cup of tea.

Now I really like to study Shogi! But if you think the Go community is small then you don't know the Shogi one. As far as forums are concerned is pretty much dead or non-existent. Funnily enough it has way better playing servers than chess (kind of equal to Go).
Still it's a bit lonely. And I also have to wait for my Shogi stuff (board, pieces, books) : (


---


Since this is still a Go blog, some updates.

I actually played six games yesterday, lost four and dropped to 2-kyu ^^ But man, two games were really bad! Still it's worse that I knew beforehand that I wouldn't play any good moves but well, I just wanted to play =D
I lost those two games just because I didn't notice that a group of mine would die and lost one because I thought "Kikashi first then live" but it was no Kikashi and I died (the tragic part is that I was behind pretty much all the game but then managed to kill a big part of his group, only to die even bigger myself) :O

I hope I learnt something at least =)

Aside from playing I didn't do anything Go related.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I have a shogi board, "The Art of Shogi" and even a computer opponent on my iPad (and a tsumeshogi app on my old iPod touch.) But man, the game is "hard." Hard to see anything, hard to follow the opening patterns. It's been almost 2 years on hold, because I don't have that much free time and I try to focus in "just one board game," so no tsumeshogi, no hex, I just to tsumego and the like, at least for the time being I'd be glad to read your shogi endeavours too here! (btw, there's a subreddit for shogi, but it's 99% dead.)

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net