The book First Fundamentals has just arrived and is available:

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/First_Fundamentals.html

Sample pages:
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/First_Funda ... Sample.pdf

Table of contents:
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/First_Fundamentals_TOC.html

Cover:
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/First_Funda ... _Cover.png

Review by the author:
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/First_Funda ... eview.html

Since I will attend the European Go Congress from July 21 to August 5 and cannot process orders during that time, people wishing to purchase directly from me can do so either until tomorrow CET 19:00 summer time (EST 13:00 summer time) or starting again on August 6. Until tomorrow CET 9:00 a.m. summer time (EST 3:00 a.m. summer time), I can accept a choice for insured letters; tomorrow afterwards I can process only uninsured letters.

The book will - in limited quantities - also be available during the European Go Congress and soon from retailers.

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Review by the Author


General Specification

- Title: First Fundamentals
- Author: Robert Jasiek
- Publisher: Robert Jasiek
- Edition: 2012
- Language: English
- Price: EUR 25 (book), EUR 12.50 (PDF)
- Contents: fundamentals
- ISBN: none
- Printing: good
- Layout: good
- Editing: almost good
- Pages: 212
- Size: 148mm x 210mm
- Diagrams per Page on Average: 4.5
- Method of Teaching: principles, entertainment, examples
- Read when EGF: 30k - 4k, most suitable for 20k - 8k
- Subjective Rank Improvement: ++
- Subjective Topic Coverage: - (fundamentals in general), ++ (fundamentals for beginners)
- Subjective Aims' Achievement: ++


Aims

First Fundamentals has two aims:

- It helps beginners to rise above their current level and become intermediate players as quickly as possible.
- It helps intermediate players to abandon their remaining beginners' mistakes.

Here, 'beginner' does not refer to 'absolute beginners', who have not completed their first 50 games yet. In 2012, 'beginner' is roughly associated with EGF double digit kyu level and AGA or KGS 5 kyu or weaker. The book can be useful for intermediate players up to circa EGF 4 kyu, AGA 1 kyu or KGS 2 kyu.


Contents and Concept

Besides the topics apparent from the table of contents, there are a few more. 'Attack and defense' is carefully discussed in several chapters and studied from different perspectives. The basic shapes and principles for 'josekis' are presented. The relevant chapter explains the decision process of 'reading' ahead move sequences. The book does not presume preliminary knowledge; the few used terms such as moyo, efficiency or sente are explained.

The author studied some 100 beginners' games to identify, without exception, all the important, regularly occurring beginner mistakes, which are responsible for almost all of a player's lost points during his games. The mistakes are illustrated in the many examples taken from or motivated by beginners' games, and are compared with correct moves and sequences.

The fundamentals of go theory are taught as principles, which are very simple, clear and concise. Besides principles in the headings and a few minor principles, the 58 major principles are stated very prominently in the text. If the reader has seen a book about fundamentals stressing their importance but hardly explaining them or teaching some but hiding them in the text, this book does not disappoint him: it includes each needed principle and makes it very easy to find "Choose the bigger space.", "Do not attack yourself.", "Capture important groups firmly." and all the other principles. Every major principle is followed by a general explanation, half a dozen to two dozen examples and their comments. This presentation allows the reader to understand and learn easily one principle after another.

Each chapter is preceded by an entertaining short story, which serves as a parable for a key idea to be learnt in the chapter. Every chapter starts with an introduction and concludes with problems, which allow the reader to test his learning success.

By teaching just all those principles needed to surmount all the important beginners' mistakes, First Fundamentals fulfils its aims and enables the reader to improve quickly.

While most diagrams are simple, a small fraction of the examples or problems may be too advanced or contain too many moves for a beginner's taste and may be welcome more by intermediate players. Consider this salt as a motivation for becoming stronger. Is there any other limitation? Since the book teaches all necessary topics, it does not compete with pure problem books, whose sheer number of problems allows a more exhaustive practical training of reading and life and death. The converse is also true: reading alone is insufficient. A beginner must know what to read and which mistakes to avoid, and the principles of First Fundamentals reveal this essential knowledge completely.


Conclusion

First Fundamentals fills an urgent gap in literature, which existed between books for absolute beginners and books for intermediate players, and meets the demand for a detailed explanation of all the fundamental principles beginners must know to rise quickly above their current level.

Got my copy of this and Joseki: Fundamentals on the way. Very excited about these books. I recommend those interested to check out Robert's generous samples. Congrats to Robert on the new book!

Congrats to another large volume of Go teaching material Robert

As someone very keen to recommend beginners resources, I thought I'd read through the sample pages you provided Robert, and a few things struck me.

1) It doesn't read all that fluidly - it gives the impression that it's been written by someone for whom English isn't the primary language. That's not a particular barrier, because it's still very readable, but it might be something you want to look at if you intend on doing further revisions in the future.

2) A lot of the logic and statements made in the sample pages give me the impression of a lack of awareness of the beginner's state of expertise. Examples:

Page 120, example 65: This sort of placement actually tends to require quite high level judgement. The reading examples you give are a good few stones above the top end of the range the book is aimed at, which means a beginner can't use the same justification to decide on the accurate placement of expanding his moyos. I'm curious as to your feelings on the best way of explaining to a 15k without great reading skills how one should decide on the optimal placement of moves in these sorts of positions.

Page 121, example 67: I think most beginners would actually be aware of a move inside being a waste if it was unnecessary, and I wonder if the problem in question was the fact that the beginner couldn't read that it was clearly a wasted move. It's easy for a dan player to go "Well, clearly you don't need to defend here", but it's less clear for a beginner - the method by which this would be deduced isn't very clear to me.

Page 167 examples 41 and 43: I would be surprised if many DDKs could evaluate the error of the position in 41.2, as even reading on a few more moves it is unclear exactly what is possible for both sides. The idea of capping in example 43 is exactly my sort of move, but every beginner "knows" not to create elephant jumps with the weaknesses in shape, and the continuations for each side are not shown in the sample pages.

I think I would have failed to understand the justifications for most of the examples at 10-15k level, but I'd be interested if people around that level who have purchased the book disagree with me, as it's quite possible I'm entirely wrong.

3) There are some rather strong claims, such as: "40% of all beginners make one or two important shape mistake per game and 20% make several such mistakes. If players fail to occupy an urgent shape point, then they continue with that mistake during several successive moves because they do not understand the urgency. The frequencies of violated principles are as follows: 35% valuable shape points, 35% efficiency, 5% pushing from behind, 5% double advantage shape settling, 5% empty triangles, 5% josekis, 10% miscellaneous."

From my perspective, some of these stats (aside from their accuracy), have a lot of overlap. Valuable shape points / double advantage shape settling / josekis will have large overlap, and efficiency / empty triangles / josekis will too. Obviously the sample pages are a fraction of the book, so my comments are to be taken with a very large grain of salt, but I notice very little in the sample pages refer to tesujis / squeezes / other reading/tactical specifics - all of which I would have said are extremely important study for that grade level.

4) Some of the continuations marked as normal/expected include moves that appear to be violations of certain principles that are often instilled into beginners, without explanations as to the tactical reasons for them being proper in the cases presented. In my experience, teaching a principle and then having variations that seem to contradict said principle often cause confusion

I would be very keen to read reviews on the book written by those of the sorts of rating ranges being targeted, or even from anyone who has purchased it, as it would be nice to have another viewpoint (it's hard to put much weight on any review written by the author, for obvious reasons). Presumably no-one has this book to read and review yet?

This. I'm right in the middle of the range Robert is aiming at, this move was interesting to me, the sense I made of it was I'm playing where my opponent would prefer to play to reduce. Could I read it out though? Not a chance. But if I was asked to pick a reduction point for this moyo this would be very close to where I'd pick. That's as much sense as I can make out of the move though and I'm probably missing a lot.


If I had a worry about this book it'd be its conciseness and denseness of information considering it's aimed at beginners. The language used didn't bother me overly. It looks very interesting and I'll probably pick it just because I'll probably be able to glean a few useful things from it every few stones from a look at the example material.

The British English proofreaders made good efforts also on style but did not rewrite every sentence. After the congress, maybe you can explain more how fluid text looks like.



After having studied 119 beginners' games, I am very well aware of their level of understanding. The book does not treat the readers as duffers though. Rather, I also offer some examples for intermediate level 1) to motivate beginners to reach that level and 2) to give intermediate players something interesting for them. Compare the "salt" comment in my review. IMO, a book does not really help a player to improve if it offers only examples that are very easy to understand for the major intended readership (here: beginners, i.e. European double digit kyus); then the readers would stay amidst level of those consistently too easy examples. There must also be an aim for reader: "I want to understand better also the more advanced examples!"

(A pure problem book with nothing but problems can (but need not) be different. - Compare the Kageyama's last chapter's reading problem. It is salt for the typical reader.)



Although it is possible to apply high level analysis, it is not the level of analysis I teach in that example, where I compare the inefficient anxious move with an efficient move as an application of the studied principle: "Develop territory and moyo boundaries efficiently." From the example, the reader sees that fear can lead to an inefficiently developed moyo boundary. This fundamental understanding does not require high level analysis.



Please read what is written: "Black 1 is a very efficient move." Indefinite article! I do not even discuss the topic of "decide on the accurate placement". What is being discussed in the example is an understanding of roughly where an efficient move can be.



Finding the OPTIMAL placement is for dan players. See above and notice the "a standard strategy" hint on p. 121. I teach the reader the basic idea - not the dan player's way of finding the optimal sequences.



Whether he could not read or had another problem - it amounts to what the book describes as "fear without reason".



Because you do not see the above mentioned principle in the sample.



The reader of the book has already read p. 60 and its principle "Do not double-attack yourself." in the chapter Avoid the Impossible. So he is better prepared than you expect him to be from seeing only the sample's pages.



The book does not teach every minor "knowledge" of beginners but concentrates on the major mistakes. One of them is a failure to choose the big and valuable.

I do not want to confuse beginners by showing continuations when this is not necessary. It is a decision requiring just reading depth of one move. As an application of the p. 166 principle and its following paragraph, the beginner is enabled to choose the correct direction and therefore the move A. Simple!



At least, you can try to appreciate those principles you see in the sample! The examples are applications of the principles - they are not illustrations about your prejudiced opinion on my teaching method in the book.



Good point, but the statistics (which are based on counting of all those mistakes I saw) are meant as guidelines. I have assigned every mistake to the most important kind. There is no added value in teaching beginners "Say, 17% of the valuable shape point mistakes are also double advantage mistakes". A beginner must understand that valuable shape point is one of the two by far most frequent kinds of shape mistakes.



There are too many traditional assumptions of what constitutes useful teaching of beginners. Over-emphasising opening theory is another such example.

1) The chapters 'Reading' and 'Life and Death' have something of what you miss.

2) Apart from the missing shape knowledge taught in the 'Shapes' chapter and the occasional tesujis occurring throughout the book, there is suprisingly little need for tesuji knowledge. Such knowledge is much more needed for intermediate players.



Why? Many diagrams carry tags such as 'mistake' or 'correct'. Many more than you can guess from the sample.



Even better, reviews 3 months after reading the book, because the intention is to enable fast improvement.



IMO, a beginner can make only one mistake: To await reviews instead of reading the book immediately and becoming several ranks stronger until the reviews appear.

When my review says that the book corrects all important beginner mistakes, then that is no joke. I have simply included EACH principle necessary to avoid those mistakes responsible for almost all the points beginners lose during their games.

(Probably, I do not participate in the discussion during the European Go Congress.)

I'm not a linguistics expert by any stretch of the imagination, but after the congress I'm more than happy to offer my feelings and opinions, for what they're worth



How do you differentiate between being aware of their level of understanding and noticing the moves they make and ascribing the justification to those moves yourself - i.e. how much of the interpretation of the moves made are based on your guesswork of why they have done them as opposed to an actual understanding of the thought processes they had behind them?



I partially agree here. However, in this example you've compared a very passive move with a very balanced move. More often than not the precise placement ends up absolutely vital. If you place the stone two spaced further towards the middle, it starts to become unbalanced. At what point does the beginner assess when he's getting into the habit of overstretching simply because he's trying really really hard to be as "efficient" as possible? When the opponent invades successfully and the beginner gets nothing of value from the exchange, how does the beginner understand whether or not he failed to punish his opponents overplay that followed his balanced and reasonable framework move, or whether his move was simply too far out in the first place? My experience is that it is the grey areas that require the most teaching help, as opposed to the Black and White examples. I have read many books where my thoughts have been "well, yeah, that's obviously superior to the other move, but why not here, or here, or here? How do I know what I'm looking for when I choose the best place, or do I just think I've got lots of stones so I'll slap my stone somewhere out here-ish and hope it's not too thin?"



I promise I did read the words Ok, is efficient. Why? Why, if further out is efficient, is 2 spaces further out not even more efficient? Why is two spaces less far out not efficient enough? How do I know? These are the questions I want answered if I am to understand how to make efficient moves as opposed to trying to play effectively by wrote from the examples I saw in a book.



Ok, fair enough, forget the word optimal. In the example there are a number of places I would consider with some justification. A beginner may have three times as many places, and may be totally unsure how to make a justification for any of them. How does a beginner equip himself with the tools to make sound justifications for his moves - as with the previous comment, what questions should he be asking himself to answer (as best as he can) the question "how far is too far?"



My point was that, for him, the fear was with reason. It is unlikely that a player will play a move like that (even a beginner), without some thought behind the move, even that fear is erroneous. Telling someone that they have nothing to fear won't prevent them making that mistake again, as they'll unreasonably fear it in the same position each time.



This requires an intuitive understanding of the problem. Even at low dan levels, I would have to spend quite some time reading that position, even beyond the end of the continuation you displayed, before being happy that there was no way of avoiding the fact it was creating a "double-attack yourself" position. It could easily look like quite a reasonable way of seperating White's stones and creating a good attack from an apparently weak position to a mid-SDK, let alone a DDK. The principle you are promoting I think is _absolutely_ sound, but I wonder how easily the example expresses it to someone weak enough not to read out the continuation you have displayed and then further continuations from there.



My prejudiced opinion? That's a bit unfair isn't Robert? If I was prejudiced that your teaching method was inadequate, I'd never have read through all of your sample pages in detail, neither would I have bothered to comment. I'm actually very keen to see these principles explained in beginner friendly ways, as I really want to see more excellent teaching material for beginners. I promise all the criticisms are intended constructively, and I'm really hoping some 5-15k KGS players on here might contribute to tell me where I'm wrong or right in the points I'm making (for both of our learning experiences).



Isn't "premature endgame" and then big point examples precisely a form of opening theory? I think basic opening theory is very useful, although I agree going into too much detail is unhelpful - although that goes for every other aspect of the game too.

1) I fully accept I haven't seen those chapters, they may quite adequately cover all of this.

2) I disagree. In my experience, tesujis and aji in common positions can account for 4-5 stones of improvement from 10-12k up to ~5-6k



I'm sure you believe that your book achieves all this, but that doesn't make it true (or false, either!). I'm not suggesting that anyone wait to buy the full book - depending on the continuation of this conversation, I may well look at purchasing the book anyway, either to review or simply to add to my library of interesting insights (or both). I always inherently doubt superlative statements like "this book corrects _all_ beginner mistakes" as I rarely see examples where they don't turn out to be exaggerations, and that naturally adds to my scepticism on other like claims. However, in the interest of open-mindedness, my aim here is to open the discussion to the sorts of players that the book is aimed at an encouraging discussions of the relative values of the way the sample pages are explaining principles and how effective those explanations appear to be.

I have bought the book and am currently reading the pdf version but at a very slow and leisurely pace. I can't really comment about the content yet but what I do find annoying is that the wordings for many examples are on a different page from the diagram of the examples. I keep having to flip pages back and forth to make sense of many examples shown in this manner.

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Matters are simpler: it is about applying versus not applying the book's principles.



See my previous answer on "standard strategy". (Sorry, I need to be short because I have not even packed my luggage and my train departs in 9 hours...)



A grey area such as Local Move Selection is not a problem of beginners but of intermediate players. Beginners do not fail because they place an extension one line further or not; they fail because they extend at a place so that they violate one of the book's principles such as "do not attack yourself". By avoiding such important mistakes, they can improve 90% of their game. Getting the grey areas right would correct the remaining 10%. This is for intermediate players.



See above, grey areas.



Apply the principles for efficiency! (I know, this does not give the optimum a dan player would find; for grey areas, see above.)

The problem of beginners is not to not find the optimum but to fail to think about efficiency AT ALL. The book teaches the reader to think about developing territory / moyo boundary efficiently AT ALL. This is good enough for getting it 90% right.

I trust beginners that much because I see their basic understanding of strategic planning, once they are aware of something (here: efficiency) at all.



By applying the book's principles. Once he will apply them and become an intermediate player, he can then study intermediate players' stuff such as what you just mention.



"Do I violate one of the book's principles?" (Such as "do not attack yourself.")



Have a look at the TOC:)



No, it just requires reading of the diagram's caption!



It is for both opening and middle game. It is (together with related, similar principles) pretty much THE opening theory a beginner needs.



Right, but recall that I use 'beginner' in the sense 'European double digit kyu', so AFTER a beginner has reached the, eh, grey area around being about 10k, he should indeed study tesuji (and some other things) to continue improving quickly THEN.



Recommended.



I encourage all strong players to discover any missing principle in my book, whose omission is relevant for an IMPORTANT beginner mistake, i.e., one occurring in a significant fraction of beginners' games and being responsible for a more than trivial amount of lost points.

This is correct, especially when viewing exactly one page at a time on a screen. The file versions of my books have the same layout as the book versions except for the inner and outer margins. The reasons are:

1) Numbers of sales of file versions or purchases of the book asking for file versions are not high enough to justify creation of a very different layout.

2) It is impossible to optimise all these at the same time: a) do not delete contents to fit the layout, b) always keep comments and diagrams on the same pages, c) avoid 35%+ large white spaces on the average page, d) avoid tiny diagrams, e) avoid many diagrams with many irrelevant intersections, f) avoid increasing printing costs and book price a lot.

While a simple problem book can use one diagram size for all diagrams and write very short comments only, a go theory book emphasising contents has much greater difficulty with the page-wise layout. Realistic solutions would result in ca. 35% more pages, 35% more printing costs and 35% higher book prices. IMO, such a solution does not meet the current market.

I have not read any of Robert's books. I do hope to read them someday when I have more free time. However, I must congratulate and thank him for selling PDF versions of the books at cheap prices. There is no use in publishing a book for beginners at prices that may discourage them.

By the way, have you thought about releasing your books on the SmartGo Books platform?

Not seriously. The extra time needed to change between book (PDF) / Kindle / ePub / SmartGo is 3+ weeks each - or it is almost impossible. See the latest c't (German PC journal) for the difficulties with Kindle format. Furthermore, to get meaningful results, I needed a suitable standard device for each basically extra format (iPad + Kindle + more). IOW, it is economic suicide. It makes sense only a) as a secondary market for (too) old contents, b) as a specialised market instead of books (see Redmond or Fairbairn), c) commercial interest is immaterial, d) generally frequently bought contents such as books for absolute beginners, e) trivial contents requiring very little time for writing so that time for creating another format is available or f) if the go population increases by the factor 5. None of that applies to me or my books.

(luggage packed!)

Now after the congress, regular business resumes.

I'm currently on chapter 6 and so far I have found this book outstanding for SDK. I guess the idea of "beginner" here is somewhat of the sort where anyone who isn't shodan can be considered a beginner. There are better books for people who want to learn the basics of the game as in what to do after you learn the rules. For this book, it's about the fundamentals of the game as in what should you know if you are SDK and want to achieve shodan. It is a wonderful idea for RJ to take a collection of amateur kyu games and to decompose them into principles which kyus need to understand. Best of all is the numerous examples associated with each principle he has identified. He takes positions which we might see ourselves playing and then he shows how they should be played. I get a feeling that it's like providing dan level solutions to kyu problems. Not saying they are professional level solutions but they are ideas and patterns which we kyus can easily apply in our own games. It's an eye opening book for SDK as it covers a wide range and has provided me with much food for thoughts. Although I would not recommend it for people who have not grasped the basics, I feel that those who have a soft foundation will find this book helpful in solidifying their launchpad towards dan.

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

As usual for fundamentals, their study is valuable also for stronger players than the intended core readership. E.g., Lessons in the Fundamentals is, IMO, written mainly for 12k to 7k but can be useful for players up to about 1d. First Fundamentals is written mainly for DDKs (above absolute beginner level) and players up to 8k; since SDKs without a firm grip on the fundamentals often still make the same mistakes, although less frequently than DDKS, the book is suitable also for SDKs.

SDKs need to know more than DDKs though. Therefore I plan to write also similar books with other, intermediate level fundamentals for SDKs. Yet later, books about the fundamentals for dan players will follow.

As tchan001 observes correctly, the examples' solutions are not professional level but amateur dan level. It is indeed my intention to keep things simple so that kyu players can learn more easily. Professional style solutions would be counter-productive for that purpose. In this book, it is often more instructive to show the consequences of continued mistakes than to let a player's sequence start with a mistake and continue with his perfect play from his second move on.

I am only at chapter 2, but have noticed the numerous examples. Excellent! That gives a lot of flesh to the bones.

As you speak in "plural" it seems that you are planning more than one book for SDKs. Sounds great! If it continues with the style of "First Fundamental", then I can't wait!

The current very rough planning is two books for SDKs and two more for Dans. Depending on study of sample games or conceptual separation from other book projects in the farther future, the number can vary. Please note that I have not started writing a next book yet. It is possible that I write other books in between, although the next fundamentals book is one of two most likely candidates.

I must say, I am always somewhat bemused by the popular habit of grouping DDK/SDK/Dan together as if they are a good target group for lessons. The difference between a 1k and a 9k is humongous, as is the difference between 1d and 7d or the difference between 10k and 25k.

1) Grouping DDK (above absolute beginner level) has made sense for the book's intended main readership because DDKs make pretty much the same important mistakes; mainly their frequency differs. (A few players have already learnt some particular aspects, for which they do not share the related mistakes any longer. The remaining made important mistakes are still the same.)

2) The indeed big strength differences 9k - 1k and 1d - 7d are a factor why I consider to write different volumes for low / high SDK and low / high dan as core readerships.

After reading the first paragraph of the sample you provided, I would never recommend this book to anyone. Less broken english more getting to the point please.

Also, let me know when one of the students of your teaching methods become a professional so L19 can award you with a "Greatest Go Teacher Ever" award.

Yawn!, please get on with your life. And thanks for the review.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go