Life In 19x19

I just finished reading Yuan Zhou´s "single digit kyu game commentaries" ( off topic: whow; 5 chained nouns, what a title! ).
Nice book, good author. I won't say excellent, beware me.
On topic now. In the last game of the book between two 5 kyus move 164 was the first move at the edge of the board. Anybody knows of a recorded game where the first move at the edge occurred even later in the game?

i suggest that you dont waste your time with kyu players game commentary.
you will learn much more by studying professionals.

Magicwand, I cannot tell you how blatantly false that is.

cyclops, your question is slightly interesting, but its hard for us to provide an answer. I agree, Zhou Yuan is an amateur and a subpar author. His commentary is appropriate for weaker players such as you however.

cyclops wrote: off topic: whow; 5 chained nouns, what a title!

What?

zaqxswcde wrote:Magicwand, I cannot tell you how blatantly false that is.

I could go either way on this one, but I usually tend to lean heavier in Magicwand's direction here.

zaqxswcde wrote:cyclops, your question is slightly interesting, but its hard for us to provide an answer. I agree, Zhou Yuan is an amateur and a subpar author. His commentary is appropriate for weaker players such as you however.

I bought just today three books by Zhou Yuan ("How not to Play Go" and "SDK Game Commentaries vol. 1 & 2)...

I read a post on L19 where the first 6 replies were all off-topic remarks and meta-commentary. Anyone know of a post where the first actual response occurred even later in the thread?

Remember Sakata's statement, "Go is not about winning through brilliant moves, it is about losing through bad moves." I think studying amateur go has a place for those at a similar level who are struggling to understand what the mistakes are. I think it takes a lot of skill and dedication to study professional games fruitfully.

ez4u wrote:Remember Sakata's statement, "Go is not about winning through brilliant moves, it is about losing through bad moves." I think studying amateur go has a place for those at a similar level who are struggling to understand what the mistakes are. I think it takes a lot of skill and dedication to study professional games fruitfully.

Hm, but... can we kyus even see what the mistakes are? It's easy to see mistakes we would never make... the mistakes we continually make are harder to spot.

jts wrote:Hm, but... can we kyus even see what the mistakes are? It's easy to see mistakes we would never make... the mistakes we continually make are harder to spot.

That's the point of the high dan/professional commentary

This is the weirdest collection of posts I've seen in ages. Does Kageyama's review of his game against a 1k amateur somehow become useless because the player in question is a non-professional? Surely it's the comments of the annotater / author rather than the player level that matter?

Yuan Zhou is only a couple of stones or so off the weak end of professional strength (at AGA 7.5 dan) and his commentaries have been well received in general. Robert Jasiek's book collection on fundamentals is all geared around weak players' games and the mistakes they have made, and it seems to have been very fruitful for players to have commentary on games played by others near their own level.

I spend a lot of my time looking at professional commentaries on professional games, and can nod sagely when the comment says "and this result is clearly bad due to the placement of White's stone at C6 instead of the normal C7", but in reality, do I get why? Sure, I can kid myself, but when you see the insane depth of reading that professionals have, the amount that they take for granted before even beginning to parse the game comment is beyond what my comparitively mediocre skill and knowledge can grasp.

If someone, at or at near professional strength, comments on a collection of 2-5k games in a way that is designed to be insightful to other 2-5k players, I suspect it will be of considerably greater value than a collection of the last 50 professionally commented games from 2012 title matches.

Magicwand wrote:i suggest that you dont waste your time with kyu players game commentary.
you will learn much more by studying professionals.

Could it be that my goal is to enjoy reading go books, go discussions, go commentaries besides improving my go skills? Well, I enjoyed reading that book.
On topic: So no game yet of more off edge moves known up to now?

Samura wrote:

zaqxswcde wrote:cyclops, your question is slightly interesting, but its hard for us to provide an answer. I agree, Zhou Yuan is an amateur and a subpar author. His commentary is appropriate for weaker players such as you however.

I bought just today three books by Zhou Yuan ("How not to Play Go" and "SDK Game Commentaries vol. 1 & 2)...

There's no reason to be sad about this. His books are fine, easy to read, and I've learned something from all of them.

Samura wrote:

zaqxswcde wrote:cyclops, your question is slightly interesting, but its hard for us to provide an answer. I agree, Zhou Yuan is an amateur and a subpar author. His commentary is appropriate for weaker players such as you however.

I bought just today three books by Zhou Yuan ("How not to Play Go" and "SDK Game Commentaries vol. 1 & 2)...

I’ve read and enjoyed “How not to Play Go” and <gasp> I believe I have even learnt something from it. So, all is fine, isn’t it?

Magicwand wrote:i suggest that you dont waste your time with kyu players game commentary.
you will learn much more by studying professionals.

One of my favorite sets of go books is Takagawa's "Go Reader" series in five volumes (in Japanese). (Out of print, but I know that the Yale Library has a set. ) One thing that I greatly appreciated when I was studying it was that Takagawa took many examples from kyu vs. kyu games.

Pro vs. pro games show you good moves. Well commented kyu vs. kyu games show you moves to avoid, and why.