flOvermind wrote:He definitely does not mean you should study haengma.
Are you sure? I see a lot of haengma concepts in that book. Chapter 3, "The Stones Go Walking" and Chapter 4 "The Struggle To Get Ahead" get right to the core of some basic haengma.
There are some advanced books that contain the word "haengma" in their title, but there are also some very basic ones. Many consider haengma a fundamental.
My personal "fundamentals": 1. Think enough! ( You should be able to replay your game more easily when you can recall the meaning of your moves) 2. Train your reading-power continously and use this power. ( See Point 1 ) 3. You will never make a 9-Dan-error. Most of your errors are of fundamental nature. Analyze! 4. Knowledge that you can understand completly is a subset of fundamental knowledge. Study all you can understand in order to get a broader understanding of meanings and the pontenzial of your moves. 5. Do you think that you have learned or even mastered a topic? Fine. But some months later you can study the same topic again. And again you will learn something. 6. You can't call a move a good move until you have considered alternatives. ( See Point 1 )
You learn to understand. But understanding is never absolute. Problems arise when you try to use higher-level concepts without a neccessary good understanding in the more basic skillz. Example: To make proper use of probing moves on a shimari. All possible variations should end in a good result. When you are just trying out and your group is killed, you have obviously neglected something "fundamental". Of course, there is no progress without effort. But you cannot go wrong when you study basic skillz. But when you study contents like probing moves you can "learn" false things, when have not mastered the basic skillz, yet. Than you have wasted your study-time.
To think on a higher level, you have to save the time on the lower level. I think that is another good reason for studying the fundamentals.
The ability to learn is imo another point. I can understand "Study the fundamentals" can be interpreted as "Study all the simple things, with the desire to learn everybody can be a shodan". I cannot agree. In fact, such statements can cause frustration to some players. But when you think on the proverb "The journey is its own reward" it makes sense again.
Kirby wrote:Back on the subject of go, maybe studying simple go problems repeatedly, for example, can be more beneficial to improving than studying a single super-hard go problem for days. Maybe reviewing nets and ladders repeatedly will help you to see them more easily in your games.
- I can support this method. I've been doing hundreds of easy problems at WBaduk and already I can see that the readiness to read sequences has come to surface in my games. I believe brain is like a muscle in that its workout improves the result. All that matters is that you visualize positions and consider possibilities for you to become the kind of person that visualizes positions and considers possibilities.
As for easy vs. hard problems, I like to think easiness as a function of solving time. "Thoroughly internalized" problems can be solved in a matter of seconds. As if you were playing blitz. There are some kinds of problems that are hard to figure out, even though the tesuji used in them is common. I want to practice those problems over and over to begin internalizing them. Internalized tactics can then be readily used in real games, because they come to mind. This is the point where horizons can be broadened and solving more complex problems becomes naturally possible.
RobertJasiek wrote:A clear definition of fundamentals? An interesting request:)
But a valid one isn't it? If someone tells me "study the fundamentals and you will be xy dan in no time", then I should have the right to ask "ok, what exactly should I study?"
"Graded Go Problems for Beginners"
Sakata's "Killer of Go" series. "Killer of Go" and "Tesuji and Anti-suji" have been translated into English.
Takagawa's "Go Reader" series. Not translated.
Maeda's Tsumego series, vol. 1 and vol. 2.
Ishida's joseki books in English.
BTW, whoever told you that is lying. I do believe that almost anyone can become amateur shodan in 2 - 5 years with a good teacher and the desire to learn.
So here we have an experienced, scholarly, helpful, and well-respected L19 poster who sees no need to recommend any book published in the past three decades (or maybe longer if you are dating from the Japanese editions?) when the question of fundamentals comes up. It's like a go publisher's nightmare. But there's something to be learned from that. Like in many disciplines, the real fundamentals rarely change...
entropi wrote:If someone tells me "study the fundamentals and you will be xy dan in no time", then I should have the right to ask "ok, what exactly should I study?"
"Graded Go Problems for Beginners"
Sakata's "Killer of Go" series. "Killer of Go" and "Tesuji and Anti-suji" have been translated into English.
Takagawa's "Go Reader" series. Not translated.
Maeda's Tsumego series, vol. 1 and vol. 2.
Ishida's joseki books in English.
BTW, whoever told you that is lying. I do believe that almost anyone can become amateur shodan in 2 - 5 years with a good teacher and the desire to learn.
So here we have an experienced, scholarly, helpful, and well-respected L19 poster who sees no need to recommend any book published in the past three decades (or maybe longer if you are dating from the Japanese editions?) when the question of fundamentals comes up. It's like a go publisher's nightmare. But there's something to be learned from that. Like in many disciplines, the real fundamentals rarely change...
It is true that the fundamentals do not change. But the real reason that I did not recommend any recent books in English is that I have not read them. However, Maeda and Sakata are classics. And they are not out of print in Japanese. Takagawa is, but I donated my set to the Yale Library. As a kyu player, I felt that I learned the most from Takagawa. His set is comprehensive, the writing is clear and logical, and there are a number of comments on kyu vs. kyu games.
The English go literature is so extensive now that there must be excellent books that cover the fundamentals.
The Adkins Principle: At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
Not to be argumentative or inflamatory, but the statement that there are no fundamentals is simply silly, and likely meant to be inflamatory.
What are fundamentals?
I would say Reading, Whole Board Thinking, and Reading. Tesuji is nice, but you can find a tesuji with reading. Joseki are simply very very well known paths of reading performed and reperformed by professionals and used as shortcuts. Direction of play is a combination of reading (if I play here, this is the result that I think will follow) and whole board thinking (does this result look good for me? What does the board look like afterwards?) Everything boils down to Reading, Thinking, and Reading, usually in that order.
Fundamentals are the things that you eat, breathe, and see in your sleep. If I showed you a dead shape and asked you to name the key point, you'd be able to point at it without fail. But that key point, that very basic tesuji, is based on reading, and knowing that reading inside and out. This is a fundamental. Know that fundamental, and you know one of the thousands of building blocks that a pro uses without conscious effort.
Without fundamentals, you are swordfighting with a bad stance, you are climbing a rock with shifting handholds.
I feel Kagayama brought up fundamentals not as 'see here, this is what makes a pro', so much as 'see, here, this is what makes a game of Go.'
When people say 'study fundamentals' they mean, more bluntly, You're making errors in reading, errors in basic, building block level choices, that should be beneath you. The choice of cross cut or extend, the choice of stay connected or leap out, there are many choices, all of them based on reading.
I often find certain points in my game hard, not because my opponent has played some brilliant move that I hadn't considered, but because my opponent played something I looked at, and dismissed as bad for them. Playing too close to strength, playing a cut that shouldn't work, playing a half a dozen weak groups in the opening. These are all 'fundamental' mistakes to me. They're things I wouldn't do, because I believe in my decision making matrix that dismisses these moves as 'too small for now, too risky, too painful to save'. But proving that belief, that can be very, very dificult. And it all comes back to reading.
It is true, fundamental ideas to me, may not be fundamental to you, or anyone else in the world.
We all play our own game of Go. Unlike Chess, where there are codified openings and set in stone responses and gambits and lines that have been played and replayed until high level players are almost always playing someone else's favourite line... Go is a game of creativity and personal choice.
Is it better to strive for thickness or territory? That depends on your style of play. Is it better to disrupt your opponent, or extend your power? That depends on your style of play. Fundamental things to my game of Go may not be fundamental to everyone else.
Do you suppose the fundamental precepts of cosmic theory go are the same as the fundamentals of 3.3 opening theory?
Never the less, the originators of these ideas had fundamental ideas in mind when they set out to build their styles of play.
Fundamentals definitely exist. That is why pros constantly can talk about complex game situations and make even beginners feel like they are learning something. The stronger you get, the less it becomes "don't do this, this is bad- trust me, I read out all the variations" and the more it becomes, "this is an inefficient shape. It restricts this group's liberties/strengthens the opponents stones/separates black's groups/does not work with your other groups." Pros always seem to be talking about the simplest things and everyone feels enlightened learning from them because of that fact. You will get stronger through reading, yes, but until you understand these abstract, but fundamental, concepts, you're not going anywhere fast because you don't know what to read! Humans have a limited reading ability. You are pretending as though pros can just sit down and look at the game like a supercomputer. No doubt they have amazing reading capabilities, but most of them developed those just like any other player over time and though it is greater, it is likely not orders of magnitudes greater.
Alternatively, if you say they can *just* envision the game better, it starts to sound like you're the one who believes in unexplainable magic that makes people better and that you're just "unlucky" you were born destined to be bad at go. They just understand the fundamentals better than you- they can tell that a shape is inefficient or heavy at a glance and infer problems that may arise because of it, or draw inferences from analogous shapes and situations. If you simply don't play a bad shape because you know what one looks like, you don't have to read those thousands of trees of moves that go with it.
FootofGod wrote:The stronger you get, the less it becomes "don't do this, this is bad- trust me, I read out all the variations" and the more it becomes, "this is an inefficient shape. It restricts this group's liberties/strengthens the opponents stones/separates black's groups/does not work with your other groups."
In my experience, this happens in the kyu range, and then it goes in reverse as you start going past 1d. You eventually do have to read everything out, because good shape doesn't always work and bad shape sometimes does.
I am currently playing a turn-based game, and I recently played a move that made me wake up in the middle of the night to think about how awful it was and why.
Now I did have a reason to play it, but it soon became apparent, that that reason should have been subordinated beneath all of the reasons not to play it. Basically, my move had the merit of shouting: "How DARE you tenuki when your stone is already at a disadvantage!", but also had the drawbacks of touching a weak stone that I wanted to attack, neglecting to play a big point when nothing was urgent, and allowing my opponent to take an advantage on another part of the board. Basically, I played a weird move, and what made it weird was that it ignored what I would have to call fundamental principles. These are things that you should or shouldn't do in certain situations.
The difficulty I think is not whether the fundamental exist, but rather whether one can correctly recognize and analyze the situation at hand. Had I judged it better, I would perhaps not have played a "good" move, but I might not have played one that was contrary to fundamentals.
FootofGod wrote:Pros always seem to be talking about the simplest things
Pretty often. It is also what I do in teaching when possible. Many mistakes can be cured by very simple explanations. Explanations the pupil did not think of at all and is astonished: "How could I overlook something so simple and why does it feel like an entirely new view?" Typical example: Choose the biggest space! This is so simple, but also so often neglected...
you're not going anywhere fast because you don't know what to read!
Shaddy wrote:then it goes in reverse as you start going past 1d. You eventually do have to read everything out, because good shape doesn't always work and bad shape sometimes does.
While (high) dan read a lot more to verify things (Is this good looking shape really connected?) by reading, at the same time they also prune reading (Moving in that direction is bad, so I do not need to read whether a good shape move there is connected.). So I would not say they read everything out. Rather they do verify by reading what needs to be verified by reading.
xed_over wrote:Here's your problem... you're reading Kagayama
I see this post was liked by Bill Spight. Must we conclude that Bill has some griefs against Kageyama's book ? Since I like both (Kage's book and Bill ), I'd like him to explain.
To be honest I was expecting more answers of the kind "what a silly thing to say that fundamentals don't exist, how dare you you silly guy, ..." But most people tried to understand what I was aiming at, for which I am extra thankful
My conclusion:
First, my initial interpretation of the term was "a (probably huge) set of well defined simple rules that boosts your strength when internalized (i.e. not just learned but overlearned)".
What I was saying was that such a set of rules does not exist, or if it existed it would be so unreasonably large that it would be practically useless.
However, reading the thread I guess that my interpretation of the term is not shared by most people. It is more interpreted like "don't go on to chapter 2, first re-read chapter 1 over and over again" or "prioritize solving easy problems over difficult ones"
That is at least my impression from the posts, which will be useful when I find the time to reread Kageyama again.
Thanks
If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.
But there's something to be learned from that. Like in many disciplines, the real fundamentals rarely change...
