Life In 19x19

Tami wrote:rather than seeing tesuji as specialised moves that don`t normally crop up, it seems much better to think that any kind of move

Exactly.

Tami wrote:rather than seeing tesuji as specialised moves that don`t normally crop up, it seems much better to think that any kind of move

Something similar applies to joseki as well imho.

Tami wrote: The reason I`m enjoying the Yamashita Tesuji book is that it`s causing me to see the whole business of tesuji in a new light. I`ll compare my old and new ways of thinking:

Just curious but the Yamashita dictionary is the new version of the old Shuko tesuji dictionary. I can guess changes in the Joseki and Fuseki dictionaries, but do you have an idea of what changed in the Shuko to Yamashita Tesuji dictionary?

edit... should have searched first

Nihon Kiin wrote: 　日本棋院書籍のフラッブシップともいえる、新版基本事典シリーズから、布石、定石に続いての第３弾、新版基本手筋事典が発売された。
　昭和53年に上下巻で出版されてから、実に33年ぶりの全面改訂。著者は藤沢秀行から山下敬吾にかわり、新版は上下巻ではなく１冊にまとめられた。
　そのかわり総頁数は旧版から大幅に増やされ640頁と分厚い一冊となった。

So it's one volume versus two, and some updates. Since it's one volume, I might pick it up as well even though I have the old one.

Also if you want a recommendation, I've been working through "中盤戦に強くなる 打ち過ぎ撃退法" which has been a very good book.

oren wrote:Just curious but the Yamashita dictionary is the new version of the old Shuko tesuji dictionary. I can guess changes in the Joseki and Fuseki dictionaries, but do you have an idea of what changed in the Shuko to Yamashita Tesuji dictionary?

Yes, indeed, this is basically the Fujisawa Shuko dictionary plus updates (just confirming this for those who could not read your quote in 日本語). Yamashita supplies some whole-board examples from his own games and other current top pros.

I also have the Fujisawa book, which I bought nearly 10 years ago, long before I actually learned to read Japanese. It's sitting in my parents` attic now I think having the work in a single volume is vastly more convenient. I don`t know why, precisely, but for some reason the work seems to have become much more fascinating and enthralling for me than before. Possibly it is simply the thrill of learning a new way of seeing.

Thanks for recommending the Nihon Ki-in`s middlegame book. I`ll have to bear it in mind next time I feel like buying a go book. For now, though, I think I`ve got enough on my plate.

I also like Awaji Shuzo`s book on the Counter-measures to Invasions that Amateur`s Don`t Know. John Fairbairn has done a review of it here. I`m reading it for the second time, in my new "bitesize" way, and I`m remembering a lot of it very well now. Indeed, it seems the best way to read a lot of go books, especially the dictionary-like ones, is to read them in lots of short sittings rather than as though they were novels!

Changing subject, I found a very enlightening page on Sensei`s Library: http://senseis.xmp.net/?HowToGetAlongWithKGSRatingMath Finally, I understand how it works. I`m not sure whether to be happy or faintly furious. Basically, ranks do not get stuck, but they may seem to if you play a lot of games in an irregular way. For all these years, I`ve been operating under the misapprehension that it was your percentage score per day that mattered, not the number of wins, but now I see that if you play 20 games in a blue rage over a drunken weekend, each of those games will carry the same weight as the 1 game a day you play over the next three months while calm and rational. If you want to preserve fluidity, then either play a lot and keep playing a lot, or play only one game a day; but do not play to an irregular rhythm, because then the rank petrification illusion will set in.

Well, my main account is currently "petrified" because of one or two days when I played a lot in spite of my better judgement - the 3-6 September stands out as a rather tiltly period (scoring 4-11). That`s actually not too bad, by my standards, because for the rest of the time I`ve been too busy with this weird little thing known as "life" to play any more frequently, but there have been other little stretches, such as 5-9 March, when I threw all self-control out of the window and a lost a lot of horrible games after being irritated or discombobulated by some factor or other. Anyway, I am not complaining about it: I should have exercised better self-discipline, and now I know that there is a heavy price to pay for rattling off a lot of blitz games trying to get that one elusive win before bedtime.

I wonder how many other players, especially the ones who don`t speak English and cannot read up obscure SL pages explaining the mysteries, fall into the same traps? My guess is that quite a large percentage of players have deflated ranks because they periodically get frustrated, go on tilt for a couple of days, and acquire a lot of losses that don`t really reflect their playing ability. I say this because I have noticed a wide variation in the quality of my opponents - I hardly ever have close games and I have played many a 2k who turned out to have been 1d or even 2d in better times.

At least with Kaya, you can see exactly where you stand. When you know what damage you are taking, it`s much easier to quit a self-defeating behaviour, and easier to understand what it will take to rectify matters if you do have a spell of lunacy.

Finally, for this post, which has consumed nearly 1 valuable hour already, I`m thinking of taking one month out of my schedule to go "hardcore" on go. The reason is that I`m now confident that I can learn what I need to learn to become stronger, and becoming stronger is more important to me than I have cared to admit. I would like to set aside a period of time in order to read the heavy-duty, hard-content books that contain the essential knowledge (such as the Yamashita Tesuji book and Takao`s Joseki Dictionary), to train my reading, and to study some professional games thoughtfully. I think I could learn enough in one month to power me for quite some time afterward (I did something similar with JLPT N3 and N2, and not only passed the exams, but also found that the improvement in my Japanese was ongoing and lasting). The only reservation I have is that I have a very serious goal to re-become a professional musician (I was a pro choralist, but that was radically different from what I do now), and at my age (40), giving up one month of practice, songwriting and recording time, to pursue an unrelated and essentially amateur whim is not something I take lightly.

If I did go hardcore, I would probably do it in December, when it gets too cold in my wooden Japanese house to play guitar for long spells. Who wants to encourage me to become a "go nun" for a month; who wants to say "get back to your guitar you slacker!"?

Tami wrote:I`ll try to keep you posted on the Yoda book.
...
he described his early days when he played through the games of Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru, and was thrilled by the way they would save stones he thought would be cast off, and would throw away stones he thought would be saved. To be able to play like this, he recommends laying out pro games repeatedly, saying that your ability to emulate their moves will increase without your being aware of it.

Ah ha. I like Yoda even more now
I wish I could read Japanese.

Dear journal, not much to report, but I think at last I have three clear steps to follow in the way of becoming stronger.

1) Practice reading, always stretching to new depth and breadth
2) Study books, because it`s a lot of fun and knowledge is power
3) Take your hand off the trackball when playing online, because how can you apply your strength when you play impulsively?

Although I bought it over a year ago, I finally got around to reading Ishida`s fuseki book (and my review is now in the Go Book Reviews section). I`m glad I did. To be honest, I wasn`t very much past the "corners-enclosures/approaches-sides-checking extension-centre" mantra, but now I have some useful ideas to add to that. Now I`m reading another MyCom fuseki manual, by Mimura Tomoyasu. The Japanese is a bit hard-going for me in places (which is good, because all this reading is doing wonders for my Japanese ability), but I already like this book enormously. Why? Because, like Ishida, it is not merely another statement of the above mantra, but gives alternative and additional ways of thinking about the opening. It`s especially good because he looks at the problems you face when playing White (another poster on L19 in another thread recently bemoaned the lack of attention paid especially to White in fuseki literature), and what to do when your opponent does not agree to your desired strategy!

In essence, Mimura talks about different styles of playing the fuseki, and how to be consistent within those styles. This makes me realise one way in which I`ve been going wrong for a long time. I have often played large-scale openings and then gone on to start invading, only to find my frameworks crumble as my opponent attacks my raiding party. The right way to play a large-scale strategy is to keep expanding, and welcome your opponent when they invade, because that gives you the chance to consolidate. Conversely, a different style of play is to make smaller, tight positions and then to go making shinogi in order to catch up; but this is more difficult to master.

Another thing I`d like to note in this entry is that I`ve decisively given up on things like compasses and checklists. Basically, you can`t play go "top down", because it is simply too large a game. While it`s desirable to have systems for choosing the move, I think the unconscious mind is much, much better at creating them than the conscious mind. It takes a long time for this to occur, but it is a lot more natural and effective than trying to convert oneself into a human computer. For example, I keep thinking about Ilya Shikshin, when asked about how he got so strong. He said he studied everything he could get his hands on. I doubt he uses artificial systems to analyse the position; rather I imagine he must look at the situation, and allow his mind to produce automatically the necessary ideas to handle it.

Anyway, I spent 10 years (!), although I often take long breaks from go, on repeatedly trying to come up with shortcuts for getting stronger, and I have only got about 2 stones stronger since 2002. That`s not good enough, so at last I`m changing my ways, and I would warn all who read my journal never to be too stubborn, because when something just ain`t working, it ain`t working!

Thinking about fuseki, it seems many people copy pro-level fuseki, and even if they don`t really understand the reasoning behind the moves, it can still be very difficult to play against somebody who has recently been viewing the latest ideas from Korea or wherever. After all, even if you are not an expert fencer, carrying a samurai sword about can still make you very dangerous. But rather than swing about my own sword, I`m going to try to learn the reasoning behind the moves, and hopefully I shall become better able to dodge the attacks and disarm my opponents.

Go nun! I am up for some rigorous sparring when I eventually remember my password on Kaya*.

I'm also gradually learning the best shortcut to getting stronger at go seems to be putting long hours of hard effort in (apologies to Tabemasu who has said exactly this to me over and over and over).

On the checklist front, that seems to be my experience also. Study and revise diligently, then trust your feeling in game (obviously counting and reading are implicit). To try and follow some hard and fast rules seems gimmicky to me.


Aping pro fuseki does not seem so bad to me. You must be familiar with the moves to learn about them, it seems to me.


*Making passwords inconceivably long and arcane sounds like a way better idea than it is.

Tami wrote:the unconscious mind is much, much better at creating them than the conscious mind. [...] I`m going to try to learn the reasoning behind the moves

Seems you can't decide which is better for you - unconscious or reasoning:) Why not trust both?

RobertJasiek wrote:Tami wrote:the unconscious mind is much, much better at creating them than the conscious mind. [...] I`m going to try to learn the reasoning behind the movesSeems you can't decide which is better for you - unconscious or reasoning:) Why not trust both?

Tami wrote:the unconscious mind is much, much better at creating them than the conscious mind. [...] I`m going to try to learn the reasoning behind the moves

Seems you can't decide which is better for you - unconscious or reasoning:) Why not trust both?

Yes, I believe in using both. My experience of and research into the learning process suggests it works like this: you study ideas consciously with great care and attention, but it is the unconscious mind that synthesises new learning with old to produce a greater understanding. That process, I believe, is called "relational memory".

Of course heuristics and mnemonics are extremely useful in the acquisition of new skills, I don`t dispute that. But the bringing everything together workably, I think, is something that comes naturally as learning is absorbed. You cannot force it, because I don`t think anybody can consciously carry around enough principles to do so; rather, the right principle comes to mind when the situation arises. Or perhaps your system is perpetually present in your waking mind?

When I jam on the guitar, I used to try "let`s play such-and-such a lick here" but it was impossible to keep the tempo when I did that. Now, I just let the lick come out naturally if it feels right, and that seems right. Likewise, wenn ich deutsch sprache, ich denke nicht zu Grammatik, nur von ausdruecken. (I know my German is horrible, but I can only get my point across in it when I forget about rules, and just speak.)

Okay, I`m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater here, either. If the relevant ideas don`t come to mind in a situation, then you have to tackle it top-down from principles; but it`s ideal if you can already recognise the situation and have some grasp of how it works first.

As it should be obvious, I`m only someone with an amateur interest in pyschology, but I should think even an amateur grasp of cognitive psychology could be very be useful when trying to find ways to learn and progress.

I have a terrible feeling that I`ve merely said "just learn a lot but keep an open, critical mind" in a very verbose and pretentious-sounding way.

Loons wrote:

Aping pro fuseki does not seem so bad to me. You must be familiar with the moves to learn about them, it seems to me.

Yes, agreed. I meant that even if you don`t know how to use it like an expert, carrying a samurai sword about still makes you very dangerous to other people (and maybe a bit to yourself too). So it would be with pro fuseki.

Tami wrote:the bringing everything together workably, I think, is something that comes naturally as learning is absorbed. You cannot force it, because I don`t think anybody can consciously carry around enough principles to do so; rather, the right principle comes to mind when the situation arises.

As explained elsewhere, I disagree.

Or perhaps your system is perpetually present in your waking mind?

Yes. Most of it as references I can look up explicitly when needed (e.g., when a strategic concept is applicable, I look up the related principles).

top-down from principles

You keep talking about top-down, but it is not only top-down. It can also be bottom-up, a combination of both etc.

IMO, your disappointment with principle application is a premature prejudice. Presumably you have read books with weak and unordered principles instead of books teaching principles well.

grrrrr

I understand your frustration with learning principles from books. Good ones are still scarce and so there are many gaps. One needs to fill those gaps by oneself. Besides the effort part of solving problems and playing through games and openings, that's what I did when reading hundreds of books (seeking everything I could get) to improve quickly from 5k to 3d. Your 2 ranks in 10 years might mainly be the consequence of much less invested time per day, effort and literature consumption.

The principles I reinvented for myself up to about 3d were an important part of what made me 3d. My frustration was: Those principles were still weak, flawed and pretty unstructured (and worst of all: not available explicitly in Western literature [nor implicitly by consistent application in available Asian literature] at that time). Only later (3d to 5d and afterwards), I could invent (rather than reinvent) better, mightier and better structured principles (and other methods).

What can this mean for you? Besides the obvious advice nowadays, you must try to reinvent and improve on the quality and structure of your reinvented principles (or those luckily found in books). For you, this applies at least to your desire to understand reasoning. For your belief in the power of your unconscious thinking, eh, nobody can help you beyond suggesting more invested time and effort, so good luck with that part!;)

Dear Robert, I`m not sure we`re always on the same page in our discussions. It is obvious, however, that you want to help, and I am sincerely grateful for that.

I think:

* principles are extremely useful

but also that

* it`s your unconscious mind that sorts, relates and synthesises learned principles with logic, taste, experience, examples and thousands of other elements to produce a working "system". This is supported by cognitive psychological theory. That`s not to argue that you cannot or should not apply principles consciously, only that a lot of the work is done before a thought enters your head. (How else could anybody speak a language fluently or play a musical instrument or play a game as quickly as you do?)

and also that

* you must take each position as it comes

I`m not an expert on go literature, but it seems to me that you are quite correct when you say there is much missing from the Western literature. I learned all I know from reading English books and from lessons with breakfast, but I always felt that these sources were not giving me the whole picture. Gradually, I`ve become able to read Japanese, and now I`m discovering a lot of principles and concepts that I was not previously aware of.

That`s not to say that your work is not needed or valuable. It`s simply that there is a lot of good stuff in the MyCom books and other sources, and it`s changing my way of thinking. For people who cannot read Japanese, they`d definitely be better off reading your books. But my go book reviews are for two purposes: 1) to give a heads up to people who can read Japanese and want to know somebody`s opinions about various books on sale and 2) to serve the selfish end of helping me review what I have learned.

So, there you go, I am glad you are writing original and interesting books, and I plan to read them, but please try not to seem as though you resent famous 9-dan professionals for having the temerity to write their own books, particularly when you have only short, amateurishly translated excerpts to judge them by. It`s not fair to them, and not fair to yourself. The Garden of Go is big enough for everybody, and nobody is going to cut down your flowers simply because they happen to like somebody else`s.