Life In 19x19

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 2:49 am**

Hello folks,

How are you doing? Listen, I bet with my friend Sarah about something interesting. That girl claims that the old pro Go players didn't pay much attention to life and death, and during the game all they cared was the territory stuff, and they rarely took any stones from one another :shock:

. I told her that this is not true, and that in Go capturing stones is also very important, but she doesn't listen. So, will you please be so kind to give me a link of pro go players' games in the 19 - 20 century?

Thank you!

Best Regards
Stefany

P.S - The bet is 10 euro, but don't tell her I told you :lol:

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 3:28 am**

It seems that you and/or your friend perceive a dichotomy between "making territory points" and "capturing enemy stones" as goals in the game. This dichotomy is not real at all. These are just superficial symptoms of conquering the board. You cannot describe a player's intent in these terms.

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 3:30 am**

It is the greatest pleasure of a go player to kill big. The only problem with that is, that the better your opponent is the more difficult it becomes. So in most pro games you dont see big kills but ofc there are some, even in classic games.

f.e. the games of honinbo dosaku (18th century) are full of spectacular plays, big sacrifices and captures.

You can read something about him and see some kifu here:

http://www.kyoto.zaq.ne.jp/momoyama/DosakuIndex.html

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 3:46 am**

If two players play a peaceful opening and one comes out ahead, the other needs to fight in order to catch up. That's where life and death enters the board. This has been true for centuries.

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 4:08 am**

Tell yr friend there is a book by an old pro called "Kato's Attack and Kill"

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 4:26 am**

1978 can hardly be called old in the history of go.

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 6:06 am**

I am sorry to tell you, but neither of you can win the bet. Sometimes it is important to capture a stone, and sometimes it is important to let a stone be captured. You have to decide whether the stone in question is a key stone or a junk stone. Professionals need less than a millisecond for that decision. Once you're around 12k, you will start to understand.

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 7:36 am**

Fighting and killing happens at every level. Here's the [sl=FamousKillingGameOf1926]Famous Killing Game Of 1926[/sl] between Honinbo Shusai Meijin and Karigane Junichi 7d:

The fun starts from move 36 onward...

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 7:46 am**

Stefany93 wrote:Hello folks,

How are you doing? Listen, I bet with my friend Sarah about something interesting. That girl claims that the old pro Go players didn't pay much attention to life and death, and during the game all they cared was the territory stuff, and they rarely took any stones from one another . I told her that this is not true, and that in Go capturing stones is also very important, but she doesn't listen. So, will you please be so kind to give me a link of pro go players' games in the 19 - 20 century?

Thank you!

Best Regards
Stefany

P.S - The bet is 10 euro, but don't tell her I told you

How old is old?

Claim #1: "old pro Go players didn't pay much attention to life and death,"

Absolutely false. Absolutely. Absolutely.

The only possible exception depends on the interpretation of "pay attention to". Pro players, ancient and modern, freely sacrifice stones. They do not pay attention to life and death in the sense of not caring much about the life or death of individual stones. (Your English is quite good, but I am not exactly sure what your friend's claim is.)

Claim #2: "during the game all they cared was the territory stuff,"

Before the 20th century, pro play in Japan (which organized go so that you can talk about having go pros) was mainly territorial. That does not mean that that was all they cared about. They freely created outside influence that a lot of modern amateurs would not think of making. (I have posted a few examples here and on the old GoDiscussions.)

Claim #3: "they rarely took any stones from one another"

That depends on what you mean by "rare". OC, they could sometimes get into huge fights and capture a lot of stones, but usually they threatened to kill or capture stones without actually capturing many. So on a move by move basis, they rarely captured stones. On a game by game basis, they usually captured few stones in each game.

Links:

Here is a good online source for ancient games: http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go.html

It is in Japanese, but the games are automated.

To help you navigate the site, here are a couple of inner urls:

http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go_meikyoku.html

This has links to famous games.

http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go ... ntoku.html

This has an 18th century game where Black (Sentoku) plays for outside influence on a large scale.

http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go ... ikan0.html

This has links to famous players and to the four go houses. When you navigate to a player's page, links to his games are highlighted.

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 8:08 am**

HermanHiddema wrote:Fighting and killing happens at every level. Here's the [sl=FamousKillingGameOf1926]Famous Killing Game Of 1926[/sl] between Honinbo Shusai Meijin and Karigane Junichi 7d:

The fun starts from move 36 onward...

Wow, I don't think I've seen a game of that level where they go all out for a kill like that before. Pretty cool.

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 8:10 am**

daniel_the_smith wrote:
HermanHiddema wrote:Fighting and killing happens at every level. Here's the [sl=FamousKillingGameOf1926]Famous Killing Game Of 1926[/sl] between Honinbo Shusai Meijin and Karigane Junichi 7d:

The fun starts from move 36 onward...

Wow, I don't think I've seen a game of that level where they go all out for a kill like that before. Pretty cool.

I have added this game to my new Pro Game Study plan.

It will be game number 2 after the recent Fujitsu Cup Final.

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 8:29 am**

To me it feels like in higher level play it's quite often about threatening to do something and thus forcing your opponent into a suboptimal or even wasted move saving the group. So I'm sure pros pay close attention to life and death(or more subtly the strength) of their groups.
But quite often threating to kill while taking profit while your opponent makes life is less risky than actually going all out to kill. Going for a kill is usually a big commitment and often costs you the game when you don't succeed.
And of course if a big, game deciding kill happens the loser often resigns once he realizes that he is dead without playing it out.
So I'd say life and death are still as important at higher/pro levels but simply become more subtle.

Posted: **Wed Jul 07, 2010 8:16 pm**

Oh no Oh no, I remember there was a game that Huang Longshi play against Xu Xingyuo giving him 3 stones or 4 don't remember, and Huang went and capture everything. Huge fight, great display of skill. Now that was in the Qing dynasty lol very old

Posted: **Fri Jul 09, 2010 3:13 am**

Thank you very much, friends, for the help

I won the 10 euros wow

Next time Sarah will think twice before messing with me

Posted: **Fri Jul 09, 2010 4:58 am**

Stefany93 wrote:I won the 10 euros wow

Should I be concerned that when I read this my first thought was, "bets are miai counting, that's twice as much as it sounds like"?

Life In 19x19

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