Life In 19x19

From the color it definitely looks too dark for sakura.

Mage wrote:Thanks. Yes, my friend bought them from Mr. Kuroki couple of years ago while visiting Japan. The bowls are Karin, Keyaki or Sakura (he's not sure, he bought 3-sets at that time and has forgotten how to identify each ) The stones are size-34 standard grade.

I don't think they're Keyaki. They could be older Sakura but I'll place my bet on Karin.

oren wrote:From the color it definitely looks too dark for sakura.

Sakura tends to darken quite a bit with age. I have a couple of Sakura bowls I use for my travel set that are about that dark.

A couple of weeks ago everyone else was busy at the end of our Saturday afternoon amateur playing session at the Nihon Kiin. As a result, I was stuck dining alone at our usual hangout. However, with the support of Nakagawa-san, the manager, things did not go so badly. So for varying definitions of "study" and "space"...

So that's what we need to do to get to 6d like ez4u.
I've been studying the wrong way all this time.

This seems to be the perfect audience to ask a related question for my go study space to be.

In the "classic" setup of cthomas on page 1 (post 4), the player's knees are about at goban top surface height and outside of the perimeter of the goban. In some AGA published tournament photographs, the tables appear to be either standard 30-inch (75-cm) tables, or slightly lower standard height card tables (27-inch). In these cases, the player's knees are under the table and potentially under the perimeter of the goban.

I intend to build a table for my 2-inch (5-cm) Hiba goban for use with chairs having a nominal 18-inches (45-cm) seat height. I can build for coffee table height (18 - 20 inches) that establishes a knees outside the board perimeter configuration with perspective like that of the "classic" configuration, or build the table higher (24 - 26 inches), which would allow room for a knees under the table configuration and a closer perspective. In both cases the table width (player-to-player) would be just a little longer than the acrylic goban cover (20-inches).

My question to youall is: What in your view are the comparative advantages of the knees-outside versus the knees-under playing configurations?

Thanks

kas

kaseki wrote:This seems to be the perfect audience to ask a related question for my go study space to be.

In the "classic" setup of cthomas on page 1 (post 4), the player's knees are about at goban top surface height and outside of the perimeter of the goban. In some AGA published tournament photographs, the tables appear to be either standard 30-inch (75-cm) tables, or slightly lower standard height card tables (27-inch). In these cases, the player's knees are under the table and potentially under the perimeter of the goban.

I intend to build a table for my 2-inch (5-cm) Hiba goban for use with chairs having a nominal 18-inches (45-cm) seat height. I can build for coffee table height (18 - 20 inches) that establishes a knees outside the board perimeter configuration with perspective like that of the "classic" configuration, or build the table higher (24 - 26 inches), which would allow room for a knees under the table configuration and a closer perspective. In both cases the table width (player-to-player) would be just a little longer than the acrylic goban cover (20-inches).

My question to youall is: What in your view are the comparative advantages of the knees-outside versus the knees-under playing configurations?

Thanks

kas

When playing on a table, I have found the card table height to be a little awkward, but not bad. Coffee table height is better, but a bit low. It feels natural to lean forward so that your head is at about the edge of the board. A card table gets in the way of that.

From my first few games with Rod Jones, my favorite playing position is with the table below my knees.
I can play with the board on the floor and we're trying to find a way to sit comfortably.
I prefer the board on a low table, 8-17 inches high, and we're seated comfortably in standard chairs.

I've never really liked playing at standard dining-style tables; I find they are too high.

Thank you boglesan and Bill Spight. The meager consensus so far is coffee table height, plus or minus a few inches. I too have found regular height tables to be a bit awkward for go, although leaning on elbows becomes feasible (a no-no in good manners) while scoping out the n-1 critical positions I can't play next.

(Coffee table height is normally set to be the uncompressed cushion height of the local furnature so that when a person is sitting on a couch or plush chair the height of a glass or cup on the coffee table is comfortable to reach. Cushion height is typically 18 inches uncompressed. For firm 18-inch chair seats, coffee table height should be a bit heigher, but goban thickness has to be subtracted from this (if one is using the goban to serve drinks). In the classic setup with seat height several inches below the goban surface, the goban would be higher relative to one's eyes than if seated on an 18-inch firm chair with a two-inch goban on an 18-inch table.)

I'm hoping for more opinions here, but I'm thinking that when the snow is off the scrap woodpile I should try different goban heights to compare perspectives. There may be enough physiological variations among players that the pursuit of optimal is a doomed effort anyway. The most important aspect that you have confirmed is that the desired height range is low enough that the players knees are outside the goban perimeter. This affects table size and whether it can be enclosed or include shelves.

kirby

kaseki wrote:...I too have found regular height tables to be a bit awkward for go...

I'm hoping for more opinions here...

Kirby, here's more opinion. I like to sit on the floor when I play Go.
(I can of course also play Go on a table. But when when I play online at home,
I sit on the floor with my table board set at a "floor board" height, about 6.25" (~16mm) from the floor.

EdLee:

By sit on the floor, should I assume you mean posterior on the floor and not on your heels (seiza position)?

kas

kaseki, correct. If I want to sit in seiza over a long period, I'd have to
incrementally work on it, first 5 minutes, then 10, then 20, 40, etc. etc. --
I don't know how many weeks it would take me to reach 1 hour or 90 minutes.

Years ago after I had trained for [amateur] cross-country ski racing for several years and became fairly flexible, I could sit in seiza for up to 30 minutes on a cushion. But for the last 10 minutes it was pretty distracting. Close inspection of modern Japanese anime, which presents some visual reality behind the usually improbable plots, shows that while the girls can sit in seiza seemingly endlessly, the boys either tilt their toes inward to reduce ankle angle or sit cross-legged. I'm certain that it has to be practiced practically from birth.

Anyway, I expect that seiza is worth about 4 inches in raised body position. I'm not sure what the chair and cushion in post 4 provides, but it looks like less. But then the goban in post 4 is not 12 inches high as the high-end classical ones appear to be.

I have to make the table useful for other purposes on occasion, so that is why I'm aiming for somewhere in the range of coffee table height, but just which height to choose is not fully resolved in my mind.

kas

My Japanese relatives cheat when sitting formally on the floor. Well, they cheat when among family. "Cheat" means that the legs are still bent at the knees but the shins are to one side as the butt rests on the floor. When numbness starts to set it, the legs move so that the shins are either directly underneath the body as they are supposed to be or so that the shins are then on the other side of the body.

I should add that they don't play go. This is just a description of folks sitting & chatting with family!

Thanks for the insight, penfold:

It was interesting in the Hikaru no Go series that while the Insei all sat in seiza, the older tournament players sat on floor height chairs like those in post 4, with the consequence that their legs had to be crossed. My take-away was that modern Japanese have chosen to accommodate age related flexibility loss. Even the ladies in the fourth drawing are not in seiza.

http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/gallery.html

kas

It was interesting in the Hikaru no Go series that while the Insei all sat in seiza, the older tournament players sat on floor height chairs like those in post 4, with the consequence that their legs had to be crossed. My take-away was that modern Japanese have chosen to accommodate age related flexibility loss.

The way I understand it, even when trained since childhood, seiza becomes increasingly uncomfortable over time. The insei have 30mn thinking time in their games, but pro tournament games last much longer. So the players would probably need to change position. Also we see with young Hikaru that not every japanese nowadays is in fact trained for seiza. Some of the young generation are not so mindful of the traditions.