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 Post subject: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ published
Post #1 Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2019 7:21 pm 
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Buying link for softcover book
Buying link for hardcover book
Buying link for pdf book

'Rational Endgame' is the fourth iteration of an endgame theory book I first envisioned in 2014. One version of the book I even finished in 2014, but I then scrapped it because I wasn’t happy enough with the outcome. After that, the book remained in the back of my mind for a long time.

After taking many different approaches, I finally decided upon one that I thought should serve well both experienced and beginning players alike. The book explains modern endgame theory in a very concise way, and I made a special effort in not just making the text easy to read, but also to make the book look as good as possible. While a lot of the content may be familiar to more advanced readers, I cannot think of any single source that summarises endgame theory as well as this book. Additionally, the whole-board problems included should provide a challenge even to the strongest readers.

At the end of the book there is also an ’endgame move bestiary’ that lists most of the common endgame moves in order by value.

The link above is for the softcover version of the book, but a hardcover book is also available. The printing company’s work is impressive enough that the hardcover book should be a welcome addition to any bookshelf!

I hope that my book will be well received by the western go community!
Antti Törmänen


Last edited by Ten on Sun Apr 28, 2019 11:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #2 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:47 am 
Judan

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Ten wrote:
'Rational Endgame'


Ordered:) It is great to see more books about the very under-represented but essential endgame topic.

Quote:
is the fourth iteration of an endgame theory book I first envisioned in 2014. One version of the book I even finished in 2014, but I then scrapped it because I wasn’t happy enough with the outcome. After that, the book remained in the back of my mind for a long time.

After taking many different approaches, I finally decided


Writing about the endgame is difficult, isn't it:)

Quote:
modern endgame theory


Thank you for also using this phrase! It is so much nicer than 'miai counting'.

Quote:
I cannot think of any single source that summarises endgame theory as well as this book.


As the author, you should be optimistic but why do you think so in comparison to the two or three other books that summarise modern endgame theory? Judging from the page number and your description "concise", have you emphasised on concentrating on only the most basic aspects of the theory, or what else makes your book especially suitable as a summary of that theory?

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #3 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2019 1:13 am 
Oza
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Great! What was your first book?

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #4 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2019 1:55 am 
Judan

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His first book is Invisible: The Games of AlphaGo.

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #5 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2019 3:01 am 
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RobertJasiek wrote:
Ten wrote:
'Rational Endgame'


Ordered:) It is great to see more books about the very under-represented but essential endgame topic.


Thank you!

RobertJasiek wrote:
Quote:
is the fourth iteration of an endgame theory book I first envisioned in 2014. One version of the book I even finished in 2014, but I then scrapped it because I wasn’t happy enough with the outcome. After that, the book remained in the back of my mind for a long time.

After taking many different approaches, I finally decided


Writing about the endgame is difficult, isn't it:)


And the difficult part is not coming up with text – I had a great surplus of it – but trimming it down as much as possible so that only the relevant core parts remain.

RobertJasiek wrote:
Quote:
I cannot think of any single source that summarises endgame theory as well as this book.


As the author, you should be optimistic but why do you think so in comparison to the two or three other books that summarise modern endgame theory? Judging from the page number and your description "concise", have you emphasised on concentrating on only the most basic aspects of the theory, or what else makes your book especially suitable as a summary of that theory?


Conciseness is the key aspect I had in mind, yes. Endgame seems to have a bad impression in many go players' minds, probably because of the many technicalities and terms included in the theory. I did away with as much technical and terminological baggage as I could, and for example even the word gote does not feature in the book. I wanted for the final product to be something that allows me to say, 'If you don't like endgame and want to become strong, then at least read that.'

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #6 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2019 6:43 am 
Judan

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I'm looking forward to getting my copy at the 'Not the London Open' May 25th-27th where Antti will be signing copies as well as giving lectures and reviews.

http://gocentre.londongo.club/events/ntlo-2/

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #7 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2019 9:09 am 
Oza
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RobertJasiek wrote:
His first book is Invisible: The Games of AlphaGo.


Thanks! Always found that to be a cracking title. Never realized it was Antti's.

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #8 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2019 9:54 am 
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I have spilled much digital ink trying to clarify the confusion caused by ambiguous endgame terminology and even coining some terms myself. Dispensing with confusing terms like gote and sente is a bold stroke by Antti. May his doing so eliminate some stumbling blocks for players learning about the endgame. :)

Edit: Correction: It is reverse sente, not sente itself, that does not appear in the book.

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Last edited by Bill Spight on Thu May 02, 2019 1:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #9 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2019 10:17 am 
Judan

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Gote and sente are no longer confusing thanks to our value conditions but maybe Antti writes "not sente"? Will see...

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #10 Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:25 pm 
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Ordering through Hebsacker Verlag sadly adds shipping costs of at least EUR 16 when you are not residing in Germany. I hope I can buy the book through other channels in the future.

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #11 Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2019 11:51 pm 
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There is now also a pdf version of the book on sale for a price of 11.90 euro! https://gum.co/wynlf

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #12 Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2019 2:46 am 
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Marcel Grünauer wrote:
Ten wrote:
There is now also a pdf version of the book on sale for a price of 11.90 euro! https://gum.co/wynlf


That was an insta-buy. :)

Thank you for writing this book; I hope it to be an expansion of your articles on gooften.net.


Thank you! As you have probably already seen, yes, the book is more or less 'more of gooften.net endgame content'. There should be familiar bits there, and then a lot more that I wrote after I stopped actively writing blog posts.

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #13 Posted: Thu May 02, 2019 1:05 pm 
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I wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:
Dispensing with confusing terms like gote and sente is a bold stroke by Antti. May his doing so eliminate some stumbling blocks for players learning about the endgame. :)


Correction: It is reverse sente, not sente itself, that does not appear in the book. I am curious, however. Aside from scores, simple gote seem to be the most basic type of endgame position. Antti, how do you define sente? Not very easy, IMO. Especially with no concept of gote. ;) The traditional seat-of-the-pants notion of sente allows double sente, which has caused much confusion.

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #14 Posted: Thu May 02, 2019 4:38 pm 
Honinbo

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Anyone care to comment on how they like the book? Good buy?

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #15 Posted: Thu May 02, 2019 6:11 pm 
Gosei

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I've gone through half of it and I think it's outstanding. I was slightly worried by the assertion that it was not very mathematical, but in fact it's quite rigorous. The first set of problems, at least, was not trivial at all. Also, despite the short apparent length, it really does cover the material well.

I would also mention two qualities that I value highly and that not all go books share: the layout and typesetting are beautiful, and the English is completely fluent and not stilted at all.


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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #16 Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 12:49 am 
Lives with ko

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Super interesting book, difficult but great. I always studied endgame with the miai counting so it is hard to break this habit. What are the advantages of using the modern way(deiri counting)?
Is the miai counting less accurate?

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #17 Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 1:19 am 
Judan

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lichigo, you confuse miai / deiri.

The advantages of modern endgame theory (and its move values) include:

- modern endgame theory is extremely more deeply developed than traditional endgame theory,

- for every application of modern endgame theory beyond the scope of traditional endgame theory, the former simply works while the latter then best works only after first converting traditional to modern move values, i.e., by actually using modern endgame theory,

- modern endgame theory simply allows application of the principle of usually playing in order of decreasing move values while traditional endgame theory first requires the still missing calibration of move values,

- modern endgame theory is very consistent: for simple gote with or without follow-up, the move value equals the gain; traditional endgame theory does not have this consistency but, if its move values are used anyway, relations need artificial factors for gote and case analysis because sente does not need the same factors for the same relations,

- modern endgame theory allows easier comparisons of every two values because they are already calibrated.

Traditional endgame theory has only one advantage: comparison of gotes is faster (because the calibration by means of division by 2 for gotes is not used) when comparing only(!) gotes to each other. For all other purposes, modern endgame theory with its calibrated move values works better. So much better indeed that traditional endgame has led to countless (accidental or systematic evaluation) mistakes while modern endgame theory leads to only infrequent accidental mistakes.

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #18 Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 1:59 am 
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lichigo wrote:
Super interesting book, difficult but great. I always studied endgame with the miai counting so it is hard to break this habit. What are the advantages of using the modern way(deiri counting)?
Is the miai counting less accurate?


As Robert said, you have miai and deiri backwards. For simple comparison of plays, with the corrections to deiri, they are equivalent. Otherwise, the gain (miai value) is more accurate.

Here is an example like one that I tried to argue a 5 dan out of years ago.

Code:
               A
              / \
             B   0
            / \
           10  5


/ stands for a Black move, \ stands for a White move. The scores are from Black's point of view.

The 5 dan correctly identified the move from A to B as worth 7½ pts. by traditional deiri values. He also correctly identified the move from B to 10 as worth 5 pts. by deiri values. So far so good. However, he thought that by playing from A to 10 in two moves Black gained 12½ pts. more than if White played from A to 0. All you have to do is look at the game tree to see that that is false. All Black gains by comparison is 10 pts.

Gains (miai values) give the correct answer with no confusion. The move from A to B gains 3¾ pts. and the move from B to 10 gains 2½ pts. for a total gain for Black of 6¼ pts. The move from A to 0 gains 3¾ pts. for White, so the gain for Black for playing twice versus White playing once is 6¼ + 3¾ = 10 pts. As advertised.

OC, the 5 dan could have seen directly from the game tree that 10 pts. is the right answer, but deiri counting confused him.

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #19 Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 8:51 am 
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Thank you for the answers, I'm consider to buy endgame 2 values to learn more about it. At the moment I'm not fully understanding the difference but in some parts I do.
Could you show some real examples (diagrams) of real difference between the 2 ways ?

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 Post subject: Re: Antti Törmänen’s second book ’Rational Endgame’ publishe
Post #20 Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 9:08 am 
Honinbo

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lichigo wrote:
Thank you for the answers, I'm consider to buy endgame 2 values to learn more about it. At the moment I'm not fully understanding the difference but in some parts I do.
Could you show some real examples (diagrams) of real difference between the 2 ways ?


The diagrams make little difference. The difference comes when you try to do arithmetic with the values. That works with gains, but not ordinarily with swing values. Most of the time, people are content with simply comparing the values of two different plays. But where they get confused is when they try to add and subtract values. The example with the 5 dan illustrates that. Or suppose that someone counts the game and finds that they are 3 pts. behind on the board, but they have a play with a swing value of 4 pts. They think that by playing it they can win. Wrong! The gain is only 2 pts., so playing it leaves them 1 pt. behind.

What you are asking is to show the confusion of the players. You can't do that just in a diagram, unless it shows playing mistakes caused by the confusion.

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Visualize whirled peas.

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