Beginner's questions about a few topics (long post)

[gaius]

Welcome to the world of go! Without seeing a game, it's hard to give specific tips about middle game fighting beyond the obvious: during contact fights, keep your stones connected; be ready to sacrifice useless stones; always look for opportunities to counterattack; and (the most effective way to learn) do go-problems. Sakata Eio's "The Middle Game of Go" is a fantastic book, but don't even consider trying it until you are at least strong kyu or dan level. The book assumes a lot of basic knowledge. What might interest you more is something like Kageyama Toshiro's "Fundamentals of Go" or Ishida Akira's "Attack and Defense".

By the way, for a "quick tip", you might be interested also in this post on contact fights and crosscuts I recently wrote.

[Jujube]

Posting a game is a great idea!

Thank you all for your kind comments! Everyone is so nice here.

I've ordered Kageyama's 'Lessons', I've read some online and it seems... Interesting.

I really must play more online, not just against a computer. I think it's lack of confidence, and not seeming to get a spare hour these days. I need more spare time. I guess blitz Go is a bit beyond my level at the moment!

Thanks again. I'll get back once I play a game that's not going to get ripped to shreds I'm sure you guys are much too polite for that.

[Mark356]

It sounds like you are playing the opening straight from the proverbs without actually quite knowing what your moves actually mean.

All of the pieces of advice you listed are good advice. They are not rules written in stone, and deviating from them will not cost you the game-- they're to be interpreted as you like and depending on the circumstances of the game.

But in order to use any of those pieces of advice, you're going to have to know what those moves mean into the middlegame.

An example: the advice to start on a star point. Yes, that's good advice, the star point is a good place to begin, and pros very often begin there. But the star point actually is somewhat weak: it's extremely easy to undermine. Your enemy can play a 3-3 invasion at any time, and even after you've made one short extension from it, like a knight's move, you still haven't quite claimed the corner. So if you play on the star point, you are welcoming invasions and incursions. Strong players who open on the star point are totally OK with the types of invasions and approaches that the 4-4 is friendly to, because they know how they'll benefit from those invasions and approaches too.

Likewise the advice to extend long from a star point. Say you play on the star point and then extend halfway across the board, to a third-line point next to another star point. (This is a fairly common move.) This move doesn't mean that you've claimed the whole edge from the corner halfway down. Goodness no. Your opponent can still come in easily, there's plenty of room to live. But if your opponent tries to wedge, your stone in the middle of the edge still will be able to make a two-point extension and live, and your opponent probably will not be able to kill your original star point stone either, unless he already has stones close to it. Or if he plays the 3-3 under your star point, you will build up a big strong wall that will work beautifully with your long extension.

That is, any stones you place in the opening are usually tentative plans, or statements of intent, or flags to mark who's side the early fighting will favor in each region. This is necessarily so-- even the strongest territorial fighters in the world, who like to open on the 3-3 point so as to not need to defend the corner too soon, are still going to make some invadable long extensions or some unsustainable invasions. If you play only low, tight stones and two-point extensions on the third line, you will lose, because your opponent will play faster.

What I mean to say, though, is that each of those useful little pieces of advice you listed, while not bad, are really more summaries of various complicated theories on go strategy than pieces of advice to be memorized and followed by heart.

My advice (for what it's worth) is this: Next time you play a game, whether you win or lose, review it. Take a very good look at the board after about 20 moves or so, whatever point you thought that the shimari and kakari and extension phase is over. Then, skip to the end and compare the final board position with the opening. Look and see how your opening turned out. This way, you'll be able to see the value of all of the plays you made in the opening. Maybe you made an extension which got invaded, and then your original extending stone died because it didn't have enough space to run to. Maybe you played too many stones on the fourth line and your opponent invaded under them. Maybe the way your groups are arranged, when you defended one you gave your opponent strength with which to attack another. (This is very common, even in pro games-- advanced players are just more aware of it.) Maybe it was not you but your opponent who had all of these things happen to his stones. Very often, problems in the middlegame and even endgame can be traced back to problems in the beginning.

I don't know how valuable this advice will be to you-- "beginner" could mean any number of things, and you may be much stronger than me already-- in which case you should be giving me advice. In any case, good luck and have fun!

[EdLee]

But the star point actually is somewhat weak

The star point as an opening move is not weak at all.
As you correctly pointed out, it does not mean you own the whole corner
since the 3-3 is still open, etc., but it does not mean the star point is weak,
"somewhat weak," or even "a little weak." Not at all.
You're confusing weakness with something else.
All your other advice is quite nice, though.

[nagano]

Hi everyone, my name's Ash from UK, this is my first post!

I've been playing go ... well, actually, not for very long at all. I'm pretty good at Chess, play at county level, but Go is something that I've been drawn to like a magnet for the past few months.

I feel generally OK about the opening, I rely on general principles, like ...

play on the 3-4 or star point
extend with two point jumps, first for weak stones, then for shimari, then for other stones
when you have a wall of 2, jump 3
a double wing structure is desirable
star points naturally lead to long extensions
3-4 points lead to kakari or shimari due to their asymmetry
an extension also acting as a pincer is most useful

etc, etc

... However, when I'm done with the post-shimari and extending phase, I just get clobbered. The opponent invades, and I get lost in close combat - either end up killing my own once-alive group (!), or losing a load of territory.

I can't seem to read ahead very well (I'm pretty good calculating variations in chess) ...

And especially frustrating is that the opening is supposed to be the most flexible, difficult stage, but my mind is MUCH MORE DRAWN INTUITIVELY to a specific move in the opening than in the middle game. [In the middle game] I'm just faced with so many points, I don't know where to go or what to do (or where is the 'large' play as Go books like to put it) - I just feel aimless.

So, what would you more experienced infinitely wiser folks suggest I can do to improve?

Also, Xmas is coming up. I just wondered, why are so many Go books out of print these days? I mean, there seemed to be so many great books released in the '80s and '90s, I would have thought that a certain anime show would have made a spurt in new books, or at least reprints of old ones?

I mean, as an example, take a look at this list, some of these books look like absolutely essential reading if one wants to get stronger?

http://senseis.xmp.net/?OutOfPrintGoBooks

ARIGATOU GOZAIMASU!!

Hi! Now in relation to your questions:
First of all don't worry about your reading ability being so low at this point. This is very normal. Reading ability really does not transfer between Chess-type games and Go, because the underlying patterns and logic are different. You should begin to develop your ability there in the next few months. Doing life and death and tesuji problems help tremendously. As far as the out of print books are concerned, don't worry about them. They may make an interesting read, but there are newer books that cover the same topics, and often with better rigor. I cannot recommend Korean-English books enough for their flawless curriculum planning. They are designed to drill specific concepts, techniques, and even common sequences into your head so thoroughly that they become second nature. You can find these at http://slateandshell.com, http://yutopian.com, and http://www.schaakengo.nl. Definitely do not buy any books on the opening or joseki that are greater than ten years old. The information contained in them is often outdated, and while it may not matter much at all for you for a long time, if you ever become very strong you will have to unlearn the errors that those books taught you.

[mohsart]

Elementary Go Series are quite old and still some of the best buys IMHO.
In the Beginning was first printed in 1973 for example and is, again, IMHO one of the best books about the opening for SDK players (possibly for weaker, and stronger, players too).
So yeah, some books are dated, or just aren't that good, so they go OOP, or not because the first printing never sells enough.
BUT some books are good enough to get a second printing.
And I disagree about having to unlearn 10 years old joseki, they are all still valid if you understand them.

/Mats

[nagano]

You don't have to unlearn ten year old joseki, but often sequences given in older books as joseki have been improved upon, and once you get to a high enough level, you will have to unlearn it or it will cause problems.

[mohsart]

I disagree, let's take a example:
(This is not outdated joseki, but two that most players know, so easier to understand.)

A player learns the joseki that starts out with the opponent invading his 4-4 stone on 3-3 and ends with him getting a wall.
He learns this joseki very well and when he should direct his wall to either direction, when it is time to close the corner etc.
After having played this joseki many times, a stronger player introduce him to the double hane and a couple of variations.

Now, would knowing the first variation help in understanding the new variations or make learning them harder?

I think that it is very similar with outdated joseki: "this move was OK before white had komi, but now it is considered to slow", or "Korean professionals have discovered that *this* move exploits a weaknes in this joseki, so now most pros play here instead" are much easier to understand if you first understand the outdated joseki in question.

It would be interesting to know what a stronger player think about this...

/Mats

[hyperpape]

How much has the advent of set theory changed the way you teach arithmetic to 5 year olds?

The advice to only read new books might be reasonable for joseki, but it's preposterous for opening theory for a DDK. The kind of principles that you're capable of learning at that stage really have not changed. At that level, you're mostly learning rules of thumb, and very broad ideas like corner, sides, center or urgent before big.

I think that part of the difference is that where joseki are specific sequences, the opening in general is much more open ended. What you need to learn is how to approach the essentially unlimited variety of board positions you'll see. To do that, you need a blend of intuition and principles, and to get that what you need is a good book for learning, not the newest fuseki being played.

So long as your books are new enough that they tell you it's ok to play a star point as your first move, I'd think they're new enough at that level.