Yoon Young-Sun was awarded the pro 8-dan honorary for her great services to the spread of Baduk in Europe.

_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

I don't know the author, but I do know that this thread is being monitored. What I would say, though, is that the book has relatively little text and so would be a good candidate for the above suggestion.

I can't say why neither the pdf solution nor the Amazon on-demand solution was used. But I can think of several good reasons. One, which is often ignored or underestimated by the typical go freebie collector, is that many authors like to make corrections or updates to their work. This becomes frustrating when there are copies floating round from various sources.

As it stands today, I've literally devised entire philosophical concepts based on 바둑.

It depends on how you learn it.

Most people trying to learn a skill use the method that will take you there as fast as possible, memorisation of patterns. Indeed, this it's why it's dumb for adults to think they're that much wiser or smarter than children. 80% of the difference is simply rote memorisation rather than any increase in the profoundness of their thinking.

However, these days I'm trying to learn 바둑 from a first-principles basis. I don't solve easy problems to memorise they're shapes or study opening patterns in a conscious way, instead just watching lots of 바둑TV, so I am getting the osmosis but I'm not going out of my way to memorise them. And it forces me to use higher level philosophical concepts that apply to wider areas of life, in pretty much every subject I encounter. I'd have to write a moderately sized book to collect everything,

It would take me longer to improve in the short term, but in the long-term, having a foundation of critical thinking has raised my peak ability in not just 바둑 but other things. In fact, if it were not for a type of anxiety making me feel I have ti play poorly, I'd probably be EGF 1d by now, but I tend to have wild swings in performance since I feel guilty about winning. The stronger I ger, the more I will incorporate traditional memerisation-focused approaches, but my higher critical thinkng abilities mean I can do more with the same amount of domain-specific knowledge.

I've written about something alluding to this before in the random ramblings thread, something like there being a bottle representing interdisciplinary knowledge and abilities and you can put different discipline-specific caps on it.

A note on children, if you aren't lucky to have a major tournament. The absolute #1 priority for every mindsport/棋 association is to make it accessable for poor families including the privilege of attending tournaments and getting teaching from the pros that attend. Number two is that while it seems enough people in 棋院's are so normalised to the privilege of having parents quite interested, perhaps even pro parents, to the degree that there seems to be a general blindspots to how difficult it must be for those children and in fact 棋院's do not seem to care or do much to solve specifically that issue or vastly underestimate how difficult or widespread.

I mean I find it absolutely astonishing that people can theorise genetic reasons to the average and peak differences in performance in mindsports between sexes in homosapiens, yet those same people would never be caught dead prescribing genetic reasons to why Japanese igo players could not match Chinese weiqi players cannot match they're Korean counterparts even though that would be a more logically sound opinion at least. I mean, you had debates on L19 about sex differences in playing ability when during that very time, if you just looked at the fact that population of Japanese males is 10 times that of Korean females, then Korean females are stronger, except that Korean women are getting stronger while Japanese players were in decline. See, it's all about what you focus on. Which makes the entire so-called 'debate' a farce, and also the fake neutrality people who can't seem to think of these obvious points a farce, it's highly arrogant and prideful to even be theorising, most humans claim that they care about intelligence and use it as pretty weak reasoning as to why human life is superior to other species, yet in reality they do not care about intelligence itself but only the power that comes with it, otherwise mindsports would be more popular. Yes, western civilization is especially guilty of this. At least run experiments with other simian and bird species to test if there are any actual consistent sex differences, duh, and even then the experiments might be biased by the experimenter towards how the know males in that species likely thinks compared ti females. That being said, my personality type makes me feel that if you decide, you never wanted or deserved to be able to do it in the first place. When things are important to you do it on faith even if there is a 1% chance. I like the book the bell curve, but for me it encourages me, because when I was 8 I didn't want to be smart but instead had ideal of being a person with average intelligence and pretty much average in every other respect who achieves extraordinary things through PASSION AND INTEREST, and the hardwork that naturally arises from it, more thsn innate abilty. More of a 최정先生 or Naruto and Hinata philosophy. It's a meaning of life, and since my sisters forced me to watch the first 70-something episodes of Naruto I can say it's my 棋道/Kiidou, my 棋士/Kishi way.

My suggestion is that homeschooling groups the ones who would be most forthcoming to any mindsports activity, indeed the parents would themselves relative critical thinkers relative to the general population and having children. In addition, any way to enable socialising isn't taken for granted compared to families with children. Thirdly, they are more skeptical to mainstream approaches to education and more likely to be open to alternative methods of education and see alternative subjects such as mindsports as possibly effective alternatives.

I really want to note that 윤영선先生 really did say 'Master' both the book and the video which to my mind means that seriously and intentionally studied to book and the video at least 3 times or more untily you know the right moves for every singke problem instantaneously. Considering proverbs like mastering the carpenters square makes you one dan pro by 20th century standards, probably EGF 6 dan or so today, I think the two difference between pro opinion and Robert Jaseiiek is that he is looking at shape and pattern knowledge on a wider scale of points on the board, two shapes Robert Jaseiiek would classify as different, a pro would classify as shapes with perhaps a shared smaller shape within them, and see that as what's learned. It perhaps could also be a culturally conditioned way to see things; the native speaker of a language that uses chinese characters can see all the shared radicals in the Kanji westerners who don't speak the language think are completely different, and even westerners who are learning may not use the same radicals.

And indeed, you are more likely too consider the smaller shapes the actual units of knowledge if you're idea of knowing a shape means being able to see it instantaneously after sudying it 20 times rather than it coming to mind after a few seconds because you've studied it twice before.

I determined that according to my system based not only on intelligence but also morality and scarcity, that on average bonobo life is most valueble. Perhaps other people's superstitions like living in chosei is more valueble than living triple ko, if by value you don't mean territory but luck outside the board. Again, the bell curve means there will still be many males who are more interested in students than themselves or are low-key–Bill Spight comes to mind? And females who put on a show. And there will also be males more excited about . The cause for why I like festivals and 바둑 tournaments but don't understand parties, and realised I want to be a teacher and is more excited about being a househusband putting all my focus strategically than some corporate or business career which seems dreadfully to me even if it made me a millionare. My social interpretation style of prefontoral cortex, U think being of (the are three types of overall patterns, mine is least common one). Or perhaps it just that Ewe people are naturally interested in raising the next generation, male or female. Actually. In fact, Ewes are quite similar to Chinese and Koreans in that respect, especially Koreans with the similar sounding tonal language and obsession with seniority by age and traditionally counting age from before birth, although the view is different; what's actually seen as rude isn't as much lack of deferrence to elders as much as something like saying 'how are you' to elders as a greeting, since it's seen as almost saying you think the elder is not uo to the obvious task of being the one to be seeing to whether the younger one is fine. A bit weird but hey. Cultural Bell curves. The variety among people who will read the book means that some will actually study it, and you never know, just as a blue moon might occur, some westerners may actually go through the process to master it.

This afternoon, I came across in this regard something that surprised me a lot. It was a dance class, and part of the instruction was to proceed clockwise. This had to be explained to some people. They all knew what was meant but had to stop and retrieve it from their deeper memory. Such delay, tiny though it is, in a moving dance causes hiccups for everyone. Then the instructor explained why she felt obliged to mention it. Most people now mostly look at their phones to tell the time, and the word 'clockwise' has apparently lost a lot of intuitiveness for them.

There is a related problem with anti-clockwise. Leaving aside those woke idiots who ban "anti" as negative, it does seem that in cases where quick-thinking is needed (as in dancing), when people hear 'anti-clockwise' they react mostly to the clockwise part. Which is not very helpful.

We therefore often say either widdershins or deasil. German speakers will recognise widdershins as wieder + Sinn, and deasil (pronounced jessil) is one of quite a few words from Gaelic used in English. But both these words seem to be dying out, possibly for the same iPhone reason.

A similar funny thing to do with the way the brain works is that, in practice, left is not the opposite of right. Again in quick-moving situations, 'the other right' is often a better option get, er, the right result.

Remember: L19 is the culture channel, not the AI channel!

Elom0, since you like shapes so much, learn ie and look at my name:)

I can't believe I did that, I'm very sorry, memory was never a strong point of mine and I'm dtill not quite as sharp as I was I was 15 or so and am still making slips of thought like this, my sincere apologies, thanks for being nice about it, but I stand 100% corrected on that part! Another reason you're 5 dan and I'm not, natural ability !

Interestingly, speakers of East Asian Languages seem to know how to pronounce the name Elom correctly, like Michael Redmond 先生、but not so much English speakers, and I'm sure about those who speak other latin-germanic languages . . . Ewe name Elom is a short form of both Mauelom = 神愛 Selom = 運命愛. And yes, that's not coincidental, Of course ewe is related to hebrew so elom is indeed to the word elohim.

It is absolutely mind boggling that . I'm definitely not in the wokeness for wokeness' sake camp but in this case the only possible explaination. Anything to do with helping women's, but if women's 바둑 could be one that helps western 바둑 in general is dismissed because it's not as much of an ego-boosting narrative for the western national mindsport associations. The west starts a pro exam yet don't incorporate the 바둑 mum program, I wonder how serious they are about it or if it's just for show

Maybe we should do an experiment, we should find EGF single digit kyus to study nothing but this book and accompanying videos 5 times and run an experiment to see how many reach EGF 5 dan. Yes I do agree that the lack of variations does imply it's for EGF single digit kyu UNLESS the book was specifically designed to be as lightweight as possible and to be a revision supplement to videos with more variations. Indeed, if a European teacher is more likely to know how westerners are more likely to study whereas 윤영선先生 still has the idea of Aaian students who are more likely to actually try to master the book and videos by going over it multiple times, then teacher Robert Jasiek may have a practical point regarding how 80% of westerners are likely to consume the book, although a maths teacher once said that you really teach for the 20% knowing the other 80% won't manage .

The limited edition of 300 volumes is almost used up but a certain number will be made available at the EGC 2023 in Leipzig.
If you are interested to get a remaining copy, please pm me, mentioning your strength and country of origin as we want to give feedback to KIBA. If there are more people interested than we have books available, a lottery is considered.

Paul Schmit, co-author

Here are some impressions after a first, quick and superficial, read through the book. There's a lot of content, and I'll need to go through it a few more times...

Robert and John give quite different descriptions above. I'm more with John. I think this is a very good book, with only a few minor irritations. It doesn't set out to be an exhaustive encylopedia, but aims to teach, and contains about the right number of variations to achieve its goal. The text has a lot of useful hints on how to think about a problem.

Out of the 50 chapters, 36 of them are sets of four related problems. The other 14 are called "Origin of the shape", and give sequences (mostly but not always joseki) showing how the problems might arise in a game.

The problems are realistic game situations, rather than composed tsumego. This means you're often looking at problems with more than one "right answer". There are some good discussions of why one solution might be better than another.

Many of the chapters break down a difficult problem into four easy stages, so it's really four instalments of "the same problem". (Can you find the last move of the sequence? Now can you understand the position a move earlier? And so on.) Other chapters explore variations on a common shape, e.g. how to defend against different attacks. Often the next chapter will look at how the sequences change according to the presence or absence of a hane, or different numbers of outside liberties, and so on. Sometimes another chapter explores how to respond to mistakes from the opponent.

The "origin..." chapters are more than just the sequence leading to the problem position. They usually recap the main ideas of the previous chapters, and often include variations, discussions of "old joseki" versus "AI joseki", and introduce new ideas.

Overall, the way the problems are organised into groups reminds me a bit of James Davies's "Life and Death" from the Elementary Go Series.

The last few chapters could be read on a different level: it's a masterclass in how to play and respond to the 3-3 invasion for different formations around the 4-4 point.

For me, the biggest problem with this book is that the chapters are not at all in order of difficulty! There are some rather complex variations early on (e.g. living with double ko, or finding the best version of an approach move ko), while some later chapters are much easier. There's an appendix on bent four in the corner, but I think if someone isn't already familiar with these concepts, then the book is on too high a level for them.

There are some other slightly odd things. The book is missing the usual front matter with publisher details, ISBN and so on. The inside front cover does list Paul Schmit as co-author, even though he's not named on the front page, and the preface acknowleges contributions from Laurent Heiser and Rob van Zeijst.

There's an "index of the chapters", with a diagram for each chapter and the page number but no text, then a separate "contents" page with the name of each chapter but no page number. Diagrams, names and page numbers all together would have been nice.

Diagrams in each chapter are numbered consecutively, and don't relate to the problems. For example, the solution to problem 4.3 is diagram 4.11. It's not a problem when you're reading everything in order, but if you refer back to a previous chapter, it would be much easier to have diagrams labelled "solution 4.3", "variation 4.3.1", and so on. Sometimes the relationship between a variation and the previous diagram isn't made as clear as it could be: instead of saying "if white plays 1 here...", it's easier for the reader if it says "if white 4 in the previous diagram is played at W1 here..." or whatever the relationship is. Sometimes, diagram captions such as "5 at 1" are missing (usually but not always noted in the errata slip).

The appendix on "neuroscience" lists a few ideas about pattern recognition, deliberate practice and so on (really more psychology of learning rather than actual neuroscience) but doesn't develop them at all. It's interesting, but not substantial enough to be useful, and doesn't feel as though it belongs here. It reads more like the introduction to another book.

Overall I'd say this book is a valuable and unique addition to the English language literature, and I would have happily paid money for it. At first sight it looks like yet another book of life and death problems, but it's actually much more than that. I hope it gets distributed more widely, and I hope there's more books on the way from Young Sun Yoon and her team.

Regardless of whether a book is an encylopedia, shape selection, problems and answers, theory or a hybrid, every book also aims to teach. What kind of teaching do you perceive so that you think there was about the right number of variations? Should this be the same number for every problem or differ? What do you call the book's teaching goal?

For me, "aims to teach" is an idiomatic English phrase that should not be taken too literally. It suggests a conscious effort on the authors' part to select and order the material in a way that will make sense to a learner, rather than a mere list of true facts (e.g. an encyclopedia or dictionary).

As an example, when I was studying chess openings in the 1990s, before modern databases, I mainly used two books. Modern Chess Openings (MCO) is a dictionary, with tens of thousands of variations, indexed in such a way that you can easily look up the variation that appeared in your own game. Reuben Fine's "Ideas behind the Chess Openings" contains many fewer variations, but they given in approximately historical order, grouped by strategic theme, and accompanied by explanatory text describing how chess strategy changed between the 19th, early 20th and mid 20th centuries. Trying to read MCO from beginning to end would be a mistake for most people. It's too much information to absorb, and later chapters do not build on earlier chapters in a logical way. I'd say that "Ideas behind the Chess Openings" aims to teach, but MCO does not, even though one might use it as part of learning.

(I'm trying to think of a clear-cut go example, but it's more difficult, at least for the English language literature. Ishida's joseki dictionary contains a lot more explanatory text and is easier to learn from than MCO, and for me falls somewhere between a reference work and a textbook. Maybe some of the Japanese endgame or tesuji dictionaries would fit my definition of "reference", but I haven't seen any of them. I can't think of a joseki equivalent for Fine's book, although I know that some of your own books are written with a similar philosophy, as is the controversial "38 Basic Joseki". If this turns into a longer conversation, maybe it should be a separate thread.)


"What kind of teaching": as described in my previous post.

"About the right number" refers to my intuitive judgement (based on learning and teaching various subjects over many years) that there are enough variations to illustrate the principles being taught, and not so many as to overwhelm the average reader ("average" being another intuitive judgement). There is no exact "right number". The range that I consider to be "about right" will vary according to context.

I think the book addresses multiple goals. This is another intuitive judgement, but I might include developing intuition for choosing good candidate moves, intuition for whether a shape can be killed, understanding how the status of shapes depends on outside stones, accurate reading, following up on and responding to 3-3 point invasions.

For basic corner LD shapes, an encyclopedia would attempt to list all of them. An Ishida-like book might do that and give lots of answer diagrams and text. A book like Capturing Races 2 - Tactical Reading would be Ishida-like but furthermore also state in the text all those relevant variations that are not shown as diagrams but one must read when solving a problem.

For this book, I have said that one must read about two or three times as many relevant variations as shown in the diagrams. There is often much empty space besides text. I think that the book could easily have included such relevant, currently missing variations in the text to enable the reader verification whether his tactical reading is sufficiently complete. However, when you say that the book contained about the right number of variations you disagree and seem to express that such would hurt, rather than help, the reader with verifying whether his tactical reading is sufficiently complete.

Life and death problem and answer books with only small selections of variations needed for verifying sufficiently complete tactical reading greatly slowed down my improvement on tactical life and death reading and prevented my improvement beyond 3 dan. Only when I overcame the selective variations style of life and death books like Mastering Basic Corner Shapes - Step-by-step and the implied teaching that selective consideration of variations would be enough and I changed my life and death tactical reading style to exploring every relevant variation, I could then raise my life and death skill to 5 dan.

You and John, however, praise the way too selective variations of the book and thereby contribute to the persistence of overwhelming teaching that first greatly slowed down my progress and then prevented my further improvement.

Selective relevant variations of life and death enable limited teaching and some improvement for kyus and maybe low dans. Rather complete relevant variations of life and death also enable further improvement towards and for high dans.

Too many life and death problem and answer books are written in the style of tesuji books, for which a comparatively small selection of relevant variations is sufficient because, for tesuji problems, such often includes every relevant variation and therefore is sufficient. For life and death, however, there are often many more variations whose tactical reading is mandatory.

Please reconsider whether you want to disrespect teaching of most relevant variations!

There is little wrong with presenting some relevant variations in an easily accessible style, like in this book. What is wrong is the too many relevant variations that are not mentioned at all, not even in the text.

I did not say that, and I did not mean to imply it. "Sufficiently complete" is a very subjective standard. Even computers do not read every variation. I think that reading is only one of many skills that this book teaches. You did ask me about goals :-)


In my opinion, there's more than one way to learn go, and the type of book that helps you improve may be very different from the type of book that helps me improve.

Rather it is close to an objective standard! In every case of doubt, whenever one is unsure whether application of specific pruning methods is valid, one must fall back to, e.g., the method of regular tactical reading (verfication of at least one successful optimal next move or else of all failing next moves etc.), which is known to produce the correct result.



Surely there are different ways to learn. However, apart from valid pruning methods, there is only one truth about what variations and decisions are mandatory (or optional among several alternative mandatory variations) to correctly decide life and death status. In particular, apart from valid pruning methods (such as applying knowledge of known (e.g. nakade) shapes, ignoring obviously inferior moves and obvious failures if and only if such is not wishful thinking), each decision verifying non-existence of a successful next move requires checking all possible next moves. Apart from valid pruning methods, different learning / teaching methods may not provide shortcuts for this because then status "verification" can be, and in practical application during games very often is, wrong.

Robert, I think you have shot down your own argument. You think the books you mention have failed you. In fact they have inspired you.

As what seems like a "bottle half empty" person you have seen the lack of extra variations in books as an annoyance - but you have nevertheless made the decision to do the extra work yourself. Other people (the vast majority, I'd say) are "bottle half full" people and if the contents of the bottle are tasty, they will look forward to the extra slurps - and do the extra slurping themselves. Being in a cheery mood, they may be even more likely to do the extra work than the half-empty people, get more enjoyment out of it, and so learn more from it.

The task of a go writer is to get people thinking of the game as a half-full bottle. That is what this book does. Even the white space you disdain contributes to that effect. Newspaper, magazine and book design is to a large degree founded on the use of white space to create a mood. For example, magazines designed to be read over a leisurely weekend use white space far more than newspapers intended for busy commuters.

Pounding people with facts tends not to create a good, inspirational mood. I was amazed when I first encountered the masochistic tendencies of some fellow students at university lectures, where they tried desperately to write down every word the lecturer said. If they failed, they would collar other students in the common room and beg to copy their notes. Once they had a full set of notes, they went off the pub. Some of us preferred to take brief notes in our own words, thus having time to think during the lecture. Afterwards we went off to the library. Then to the pub.

Whatever floats your boat, I suppose. Tasked with the argument that writing down the lecturer's words was a waste of time, some would respond that by citing back the lecturer's words in exams would score higher marks. I never found any lecturers who would believe that, and in fact noted that they would in fact often make efforts to interrupt the mindless copying process. I was interested to hear from a grandson that he noted the same thing when he started university. He has a lecturer, considered zany by most students, who has a habit of stopping for a while. He goes to a window and just gazes out. My grandson soon realised that the guy wasn't being loopy. He was waking some students up. They would be like suddenly alert cats: what's he up to, what am I missing, is he mad, etc. But he was also giving the students' unconscious brain elements time to absorb difficult facts, to make associations with already absorbed facts, and to pigeon-hole the new facts correctly. The same process we all use when we go to sleep. I think, Robert, that in general you overrate the conscious part of the brain and vastly underrate the unconscious part. Is that why you are stuck at 4-dan?

If you are on the opposite side to a student/reader, i.e. you are the lecturer/writer, you need to give your charge motivation, time and opportunity to absorb what you say then act on it, even if that means (rightly) putting your book away and doing extra work on their own. If that happens, you have succeeded. You have become an educator - and remember that that is what the word means: you have "led someone out." If that doesn't happen, you have only produced a reference book. You have become a lexicographer rather than an educator, and dictionaries - while valuable (I have over 300) - are not normally as interesting or inspirational as educational books. In other words, writing a book that appeals to most people is not about showing how much the writer knows, but about how much the reader can learn if he takes the opportunity to follow the path outlined to Extra Work Farm." I believe the book in question here does offer an appealing entree for a city boy into the wider world of pigs, geese, kye and yowes - or tinkering with tractors and combine harvesters for those of different inclinations.

The ways one creates interest or inspiration are several. A trivial way is in that sentence. I could have said 'various' instead of the rarer 'several'. I could have used the more normal but boring word order "There are several ways to ...." But I tired to perk the reader up. The same thing happens in the book here, and I was fascinated that xela noticed the slightly oddly early mention of double ko, too. (Note the -ly -ly -ly, as well as this parenthesis itself to grab attention and give the reader's subconsciousness time to recall their own views on double kos.) I treated this as just a motivational reminder to the reader to say, "There's a lot more interesting stuff to come than what we are doing at the moment."

At least, that's the sort of thing that registers with me (and xela, apparently). I remember two inspirational things from school - still fresh some 70 years on. One was a Russian teacher talking about ballet. Which came up because ballet was most associated with Russia at the time. He told us a story of his time doing National Service in the army. In his squad was a professional ballet dancer, and the drill sergeant assumed he was effete. He was determined to crack him. So the PE exercises went on and on and on. All the squaddies, and the drill sergeant himself, were collapsing on the ground, whilst the dancer was fresh as a daisy and would do the odd entrechat six between exercises to keep his muscles warm. I took many lessons from that. One was not to take other people at face value, but the other, more important for me, was the benefit of the hard work the dancer had already put in. In fact, I even underrated it, as I learned much later when I became friends with a Royal Ballet dancer. The one lesson I didn't learn, mind you, was how to work hard myself!

The other school inspiration I recall was from a history teacher. Most history teachers expect their charges to learn dates so as to pass exams. This teacher instead wanted us to learn that history teaches us lessons. I thus soaked up with huge enjoyment his accounts of Bismarck and Metternich but still haven't a clue when the Congress of Vienna was - despite "learning" the date many times and despite visiting the important sites.

It is also possible, or necessary in some cases, to make much more overt attempts to amuse and/or inspire go readers. I often loosely call this "entertainment" but however you dress it up most professional writers use the technique of inserting anecdotes or asides of one sort or another. The purpose, rather like the double ko reference above, is often to produce a change of pace (to allow absorption of previous facts), or to provide a different way of looking at a new or difficult concept. All readers are different and many will appreciate a sidelight. Rigidly defining 'connection+1' and 'connection+2' may work for some readers, but most find that stodgy. Kids, for example, might prefer to be told that groups can hold hands tightly but sometimes it's OK to stand just far enough part to touch hands.

Under the heading of anecdotes, more often than not, comes the journalistic (or novelistic) mantra of "there's nowt as interesting as other folk." That means that most people get more fun, and so ultimately more benefit, from reading commentaries that involve players with fascinating personalities and intriguing views on moves than from looking at soulless printouts from AI bots. Even those who spend a lot of time with AI data desperately crave to know what other people think about this new move or that percentage difference.

This is not all about words, incidentally. A good composer will structure his music in ways that are designed to draw in and inspire listeners. The journey through a piece may be made more interesting by an unexpected or novel change of key, or change of rhythm, or new harmonies. Or the composer may reference a well-know folk song to establish a well-shared mood in his listeners. A performer or conductor will then add a further layer of interpretation. The end result, if it works ideally, is to make the piece not just entertaining but memorable. It becomes embedded in our subconscious (or becomes an ear worm if we don't allow time for the absorption process!)



I think this quote illustrates Robert's lack of understanding of the "other" looser way of looking at things. Those who advocate the intuitive way of doing problems do NOT deny the need to do verification. Nor are they seeking shortcuts. They are seeking time-efficient processes in a time-constrained game. They want not mathematical perfection (the date of the Congress of Vienna) but the biggest bang for the fewest bucks (the lesson from history). The verification element has to be put in its place as a supporting role and not be allowed to take centre stage.

I had a very insightful experience a couple of days ago that spoke volumes about this. I was inputting some data about classical go problems. I was using old texts which give solutions on the same diagram or page and which do not say who it is to play. Initially, I took a bottle-half empty approach to this latter omission, but after being forced to look at the positions in detail to work out for myself who played first, I soon reverted to my more normal bottle-half-full approach. What I realised was that whenever I am told it is "Black to play" I start by looking at potential candidate moves for Black. I may then try to be "clever" by looking for an additional unexpected candidate or two. I can then often solve the problem in a reasonable time. So that approach "works."

But when I had to look at the problem intently to see who played first, I noticed that my thought process was completely different. Instead of candidate moves I was looking for weaknesses or plus points (e.g. he's very close to the corner so there may be liberty problems, or he can make an eye in the corner). In other words, I was starting off by looking rather deeper than first move. I was astounded at how much easier it made the problem, and even more so how much easier it made the verification process. What I was doing was something rather akin to an alphabeta search instead of a minimax search. It got me to thinking this maybe explained why the ancients were so good at tsumego, and whether we should likewise be omitting "Black to play" from problems. I haven't made my mind up on that yet. I think the mental process differs in subtle ways from doing status problems, but I believe it is generally agreed that even they are an ultimately more efficient way of learning tsumego.

I say all this at some length, Robert, not really to criticise your views but rather to encourage (inspire even!) you to ask you to consider why so many people do things differently from you. I hope this post doesn't elicit the your usual list of one-sentence quotes with rebuttals which are not really rebuttals but just statements of your different way of doing things. Do ask yourself why it is that so many people, including people who have become 9-dan pro at tsumego, have preferred and managed to enjoy go's entertaining scenic routes rather than travel through tunnels. Remember, there's nowt as interesting as other folk.

You do not determine my reply style. I choose short quotes this time to enable reference to what you have written and decouple it from long, rather unrelated meta-discussion.



These books I mention are essenially all life and death problem and answer books, except for mine with their rather complete variations and explicit decision-making. The other books have not inspired me in the manner you suggest. For years, I read them in good faith that their often strong authors would direct me well in their selective presentation of only the most "exciting" variations and that all I would need to do was just to accumulate enough bits of "exciting" knowledge on shapes, tesuji, timing and the like. My faith has been disappointed, much of the time was wasted, the "click" moment did not appear but it was a dead end of learning.

It was not these books that inspired me but it was my own, independent thinking from which I developed the insight that proper tactical reading is needed. Rather, the impact of these books was a delay before I got the courage to think about L+D problem solving independently. I have always been a creative, analytical thinker but, when, as a kyu or low dan, faced with hundreds or thousands of books all having the same selective, accumulate knowledge, develop L+D intuition style, my mind was buried by the traditional dogma. The earth was flat and I had to recognise that it is curved, so to say.



Books should teach more than that. One of the tasks of life and death books can be telling the reader what verifies something as the solution; this the book does not do. Even if a book intentionally skips this but wants to get readers doing it on their own, the book must state such a command and explain what is expected from the reader's thinking. Instead of all the neuro-science things, the book should have, at least briefly, described regular tactical reading. James Davies knew better (Tesuji, introduction).



5 dan - not 4 dan. (Spare me with rating systems.)

Stuck at 5 dan since 1998 is one description. The reality, however, is that I have become significantly stronger since then. My 1998 5 dan opponents were considerably weaker than my 2023 5 dan opponents. My 1998 5 dan play was much weaker than my 2023 5 dan play: then I played some "random moves", my strategy was driven by futurology (according to Vladmir Danek 6 dan and Christoph Gerlach 6 dan, that is, wishful thinking) instead of reasoning, my positional judgement was almost non-existent, my endgame was weak etc. - now it is contrary, my reading is better and my knowledge is very much greater. The overall level of playing strengths has improved not only at the very top while some not improving players have quit.

From 10 kyu to 3 dan, I improved very radiply in 17 months also very much because I replaced my subconscious by conscious decisions! The contrary of what you recommend me. If anything, there must be more and better efficiency (quality per time) of the conscious thinking.



Yes, and I also tell such my students, among which the fastest improving (4 ranks in 10 lessons) are those studying the most.



IIRC, in over three decades, this is the first clear statement by a proponent of the "intuitive" way that conscious verification is needed. Good to see some progress! :)



Eh, what? I am weak at deciphering metaphors. "scenic routes" = intuition, "tunnels" = depreciated conscious thinking?! If so, 1) the Asian insei education favoured subconscious thinking and 2) some (incl. 9 dan) pros do (also or favourably) use conscious verification or calculation, as they have told me. In particular, they (of type (2)) emphasise it for tactical reading and endgame calculation. Some type (1) pros have admitted their frequent lack of conscious thinking when they described why they could not explain some of their go theory to me.

I remember reading the 1971 Honinbo Tournament book. It always left a bitter taste in my mouth that I wasn't Honinbo tournament level after I'd finished it.

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North Lecale

Update: this book is now available on Amazon! Links at https://forums.online-go.com/t/masterin ... n-8p/54097

I haven't tried to read this entire thread just now and I don't think I did back when it was active. This is because it seems to go off topic.

But it is a great book and Robert's reviews are always useful. Not least because they are consistent and earnest.

This book is really good in many ways. Its main weakness is in one dimension, the number of volumes, there is only one volume. The strengths are primarily the presentation and a fairly consistent level of detail.

It might be useful to compare this book to the Eba Hiroki dictionary of basic life and death (published in 1992), which has 11 sections on basic corner shapes and 2 on side shapes, and it is available for free online (in Japanese). The level of detail in Mastering Basic Corner Shapes is much more conductive to studying the entire book and the shapes, as well as the focus of the presentation, are much more practical. ... I'm trying to say that it is doable to get this book, study it and learn the entire thing. This would be very difficult if every shape was delved into at the same detail as some other works do.

The exact presentation desired by each reader will by necessity be different, because people are different, but I predict that many people will like this book. Maybe 30 years from now we can compare other books favorable to this one but for now it is probable the best one on the subject.

I've just read the first five chapters or so but it looks very good so far. My one wish is that a native English speaker had proofread it. It's actually all perfectly fine with the exception of a ton of run-on sentences, which I'm allergic to. (Example: "Black 1 has to be considered as an approach move, in order to make this move, Black needed to ignore a ko threat but the ko is not finished yet, the situation now becomes that of a direct ko.") But the content is great. I'll get over it.