Raising the Standard of Western Go

[zslane]

Regarding theory (and books on theory):

In my experience, most humans are not good at remembering abstract theory without context to give it meaning and practical usefulness. Go theory is most effectively absorbed when there are burning questions, born from the crucible of actual play, anxiously awaiting answers. Answers in the form of a proverb or piece of theory that make the student go, Aha! I see how that would work! And they immediately begin to apply the theory because they understand, from first-hand experience, the tactical needs those theories meet. Without the need, the theory has nothing to stick to in the brain.

I think this is the underlying, and unspoken, value of playing 50 or 100 games as soon as possible so that you acquire a body of tactical questions that need answers. At that point, theory can come to the rescue and it will actually mean something to the student. So if someone is having trouble absorbing theory, I suggest that the cure is to play more games so as to acquire lots of recurring, internalized, (general) problems in need of (general) solutions. Simply reading what those recurring problems are is not ideal because the problems float around in the same abstract theoretical realm as the solutions. Nothing sears a problem into one's brain like encountering it (repeatedly) in one's own games.

[snorri]

When I was learning go in Japan, there were books aimed at absolute beginners, akin to Lasker's book or Iwamoto's book in English. Those books aside, there was next to nothing aimed at DDKs.

Ah, what a sorry state. However did all those players in the golden era of go manage to learn without carefully guided books of thousands of problems continuously and steadily increasing from 30k? Or without the internet, to play countless blitz games against other 30ks?

[Bantari]

It is not easy to write for DDKs. What are they thinking?

I wonder if this is the same feelings pros have when watching ama dans play.
What the heck are they thinking?!?

[Bantari]

Let me try to be a little controversial here and ask the simple question: Why?
Why are we trying to raise the standard/level/whatever or western Go? Whatever it means...

I mean look...

• there are tons of books, and more will get written/translated - where there is demand, somebody will fill it, and the demand is getting greater. Even Robert stared writing.
• with the advances of the internet, you can find a game at any level and with any conditions you want at any time of day and night. Long time ago, when players were dependent on who showed up in the local club (if there even was any) and had to play the same 3 people over and over - such rush to popularize Go made much more sense.
• what else?... there are more and more tournaments organized online, if this is how you swing.
• there is more software/tools/materials out there than any sane person can reasonably use, or close to it - and the pile is growing steadily.
• I could keep going on here, but I'm sure you get the drift...

To be perfectly honest, the pleasure I personally derive from the game and all its aspects would not change in a bit if we had 1000 pros in US. Publish another 1000 books. Write another 1000 Apps. Add another 100K players. Nothing much would change for me. I cannot play/read/enjoy more than I do now. And I bet there are many out there in the same shoes, if you think about it.

So... why do we worry about it so much?
I think Go reached the point at which it will not disappear anymore from western countries - there will always be a niche. And this is a major victory. I am not sure we can ever really get much further qualitatively (although we surely can advance quantitatively.)

Just look at chess and the depth of its history in western culture. There will always be a small niche for chess. But that's all, even given episodes like Fisher (which we will probably never have in western Go.)

PS>
Most of the above is just to stir juices and make you think about where we are going and why.
I actually know why we do it... And whatever we do, I will support.

[hyperpape]

I want someone available to play at lunch in every company I work for, for the rest of my life. I want my children to have plenty of friends their age to play with if they take up the game.

[Bonobo]

I want someone available to play at lunch in every company I work for, for the rest of my life. I want my children to have plenty of friends their age to play with if they take up the game.

Exactly this!

I for one am much more interested in introducing new people to Go than in getting stronger myself (as long as I’m strong enough, that is ), so that I will some day always have somebody to play with IRL. I have no children … so this is totally egoistical.

[Bantari]

I want someone available to play at lunch in every company I work for, for the rest of my life. I want my children to have plenty of friends their age to play with if they take up the game.

Ok, but... how about something realistic?
Not even chess is there, and I do not think Go will ever surpass it in popularity in wester hemisphere.

[Charles Matthews]

Too much focus here is on theory and not on the problems I think.

I think the opposite, but I am curious: What is the problem? For problem book lovers, the Western and Asian books are the heaven. Just ignore any theory they might contain. Treat any example not described as a problem nevertheless as a problem. Think about each move in each diagram as a problem. And you have any number of problem books! So why worry about "too much theory"? It does not matter, if only you ignore it.

Interestingly, I was trying to define my position to myself: and from my point of view this is the "wrong argument". Then I remembered an anecdote that says something quite helpful here; unfortunately it is about chess, but you can't have everything.

So I think the "European" attitude is something like an axis "reading versus theory". And the question is not which you need more. It is whether there is another axis you could call "Asian" that is still missing from the Western literature (better, is not as well supported). I think there is, "heuristic versus exemplar". "Exemplars" are pieces of pro games that one should study as, well, exemplars. But we are not talking here about very full analyses of pro games.

So the anecdote is about Tal and Botvinnik analysing a game. Tal was showing endless detailed variations of a complex endgame position. Botvinnik just said "in this kind of position the player with the extra pawn needs not to exchange the rooks". Which is a heuristic, and the point here is that the heuristic trumps the reading.

So I think the attitude that "proverbs" yield to "reading" is a certain kind of thinking that "Europeans" fall into. Why is it wrong? Good reading wins many games, but an unbalanced style is not a reliable foundation for further improvement, to put the point concisely.

[Charles Matthews]

Why are we trying to raise the standard/level/whatever or western Go? Whatever it means...

Because "better" go as an end itself is a kind of resistance to the "sportification" of so much. I actually now think the "mind sport" business is a kind of selling out (yes, I know ten years ago I was organising something called a Mind Sports Olympiad). We now have "cooking sport" and "singing sport" and "dancing sport" and so on (maybe even "social skills sport") all over TV. But sport is not the only way of judging human endeavour. Go is also a traditional art, and by valuing it in a different way we can make contact with some things which are not reduced so much to a common denominator.

[Charles Matthews]

Would it be fair to say your position is something like this? "If you took the easiest bits of the best volumes of the Elementary Go Series, they would fit into two volumes, and then you would have a volume left over to treat miscellaneous topics like ko or probes or whatever else a 5k should know."

I think I'm beginning to see the logic of your position now - something along the lines of, only a hardened bibliophile will buy more than four books despite being only a weak amateur. But I think adult players are quite willing either to buy more books than they can afford, or to swap with members of their club for things they haven't read; whereas the real potential for Western Go lies in 10 years olds, who are not ever going to buy as many as three $25 books.

"Basic Techniques of Go" was not the greatest Ishi Press book, but I learned plenty from it, and it had that ambition to cover multiple areas. (The problems were to do with the writing itself.) In particular you can learn tesuji from a book that doesn't have tesuji in the title.

The issue with kids is not that they should study directly from books. They should learn in an environment where the go knowledge is implicit: their contact being with others whose coaching is well-informed. As far as I can see this is still much more the case in, for example, communities with a Chinese background.

[gowan]

Would it be fair to say your position is something like this? "If you took the easiest bits of the best volumes of the Elementary Go Series, they would fit into two volumes, and then you would have a volume left over to treat miscellaneous topics like ko or probes or whatever else a 5k should know."

I think I'm beginning to see the logic of your position now - something along the lines of, only a hardened bibliophile will buy more than four books despite being only a weak amateur. But I think adult players are quite willing either to buy more books than they can afford, or to swap with members of their club for things they haven't read; whereas the real potential for Western Go lies in 10 years olds, who are not ever going to buy as many as three $25 books.

"Basic Techniques of Go" was not the greatest Ishi Press book, but I learned plenty from it, and it had that ambition to cover multiple areas. (The problems were to do with the writing itself.) In particular you can learn tesuji from a book that doesn't have tesuji in the title.

The issue with kids is not that they should study directly from books. They should learn in an environment where the go knowledge is implicit: their contact being with others whose coaching is well-informed. As far as I can see this is still much more the case in, for example, communities with a Chinese background.

The statement in bold face (mine) reminds me of Kato's description of the Kitani dojo where it seems that Kitani didn't do much direct instruction in the form of playing games with his students. The students played each other and Kitani's main contribution was to provide a supportive environment.

[billywoods]

Still, it boggles my mind to try to think, well this is a 25 kyu technique and that is a 15 kyu technique.

I'm sure that, with careful study even of a small handful of 25 kyu and 15 kyu games, you could work out the differences between them and teach them both something. In a sense, it doesn't matter what a "19 kyu technique" is - an author can make that up as they go along. The only requirement is that you continue to get stronger, you learn the right things in roughly the right order (increasing in difficulty over time), and that you don't miss anything important out. Some things that DDKs consistently do wrong include things like playing atari on a stone just because they can, regardless of whether they can capture it / it's important / playing atari will weaken a group of their own, but I imagine most go authors would find it thoroughly embarrassing to write about things like that.

[Bantari]

The statement in bold face (mine) reminds me of Kato's description of the Kitani dojo where it seems that Kitani didn't do much direct instruction in the form of playing games with his students. The students played each other and Kitani's main contribution was to provide a supportive environment.

This is very interesting, and something I heard as well. It always made me think...

Kitani school is known for producing quite a few amazingly outstanding players... Takemiya, Kato, Ishida, Cho, Otake, and so on... it almost reads like who-is-who of this specific couple of decades in Japanese go. But if Kitani himself only 'provided the supportive environment' - what made his school so much more successful than other schools? Did other teachers provide less supportive environment? Or was it just the luck of a draw - Kitani just happened to attract some exceptionally gifted students who would blossom wherever they went... they just happened to go to Kitani.

I always liked to believe that Kitani somehow did teach his students directly, if not through games then through analysis and discussions of specific ideas and stuff... Something that made his school special and personal to him. In spite all the things I hear to the contrary. The same pretty much goes for other pro teachers.

To me, a parallel of Kitani and his school in the western world was Botwinnink in chess. He also had a famous school (chess school in his case, of course), which also produced great many outstanding players - Karpov, Kasparov, etc... But from what I read he did spend a lot of time studying with his students, having sessions with them, in groups and one-on-one, and possibly playing many games with them as well. Teaching them specific skills and techniques unique to Botwinning at that time - like details analysis and preparation.

Another example can be martial arts teachings. Even if the sensei rarely (if ever) spars with the student, there is a lot of joined training, and the instructor puts a lot of his own sweat to teach the student.

So I don't get the Kitani school... there simply must be more to it than just the 'supportive environment'. Or was there?

[SoDesuNe]

Or was there?

Maybe that he was one of the two (three?) outstanding players in his time lead to a lot of aspiring Go players wanting to train in his dojo and so he could separate the wheat from the chaff by chosing the more talented ones out of the mass?

[billywoods]

there simply must be more to it than just the 'supportive environment'. Or was there?

My experience of being a mathematics student was that I learnt more from (hours upon hours per week of) discussions with enthusiastic fellow students than I ever did from (small amounts of contact time with) lecturers, and when the discussions abated I learnt very little. Ultimately, the bulk of the effort has to be on the part of the student; if a teacher is going to do one single thing to help their students, fostering a supportive environment is probably the most effective.