Unit 1 - Choose the Big and Valuable

I have read unit 1 and shall write a summary. It consists of 4 subunits which each are a principle itself and all together forming the main principle to 'Choose the Big and Valuable'. The principles are summerizedly explained below.

1. Avoid premature endgame.
Do not play too early local endgame moves. View the whole board and find the big, important, or urgent areas; play there.

2. Choose the bigger space.
A bigger gap or space is more valuable than a smaller one. Identify what is bigger as you know which 'A' on the right is bigger (A A); again, play there.

3. Move to the wider direction.
Move to the wider, more valuable direction when developing territory or moyo, securing life, strengthening a weak group, or when attempting to achive multiple intentions stated.

4. Attack or defend the bigger group.
When confronted with a choice of attacking or defending different groups, invest your stone in the bigger group. Never overlook or ignore the important weak group.


A Question

In page 25 Dia. 1.2, you wrote 'Black got carried away. Once he started to make a mistake, he continued with the same kind of mistake, trying to make two eyes where there is space for at most one eye' with a diagram partly as below.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . O O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | X X . . 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | X . X X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O O O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | X X X O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O O O . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

My dictionary (the 'Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary' otherwise it would be specified) defines your use of 'carry' as below.

be/get carried away
to get very excited or lose control of your feelings
I got carried away and started shouting at the television.

I'm not sure whether it makes sense in your context.

_________________
Wait, please.

@MJK: Are you saying that the scenario described is not one in which it's possible that black lost control of his feelings?

Eg. "Black got carried away lost control of his feelings. Once he started to make a mistake, he continued with the same kind of mistake, trying to make two eyes where there is space for at most one eye' with a diagram partly as below."

_________________
be immersed

Lol...
If a non-native-english-speaker reader can be confused by the english of a non-native-english-speaker writer, maybe a non-native-english-speaker observer can chime in...

So my verdict is: Robert's usage of 'carried away' is perfectly correct in this case, I think.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

OT stuff

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

True, but by giving it too much, by showing too little discrimination, you are devaluing the meaning of the 'like' functionality for everybody.

Consider:
If every other person got a gold medal, what would the value of gold medal be?
Or from reality: if every moron football player scoring an extra point is called a 'hero', how do the people who actually deserve this description feel? What is the value of calling somebody a 'hero' if you use the term for the guy brining hot coffee for the whole office in the morning, just because you happen to like hot coffee? What does it say about the meaning of the word 'hero'?

The bottom line:
Something like the 'Like' functionality has more value when you apply stricter guidelines of when you use it. If people just 'like' everything they consider slightly funny, or whatever - half the posts or more will get the 'like' label, and nobody will pay any attention to what is 'liked' and what is not. And 'Like' will become meaningless.

Well... you do what you do, no problem, I just think that this is what the guy meant. At least - this is how I have read it.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

No irony or sarcasm intended. It's nice to get a thumbs up. I took the time to answer a language question, and you showed appreciation. It makes me more likely to do so again.

Bantari and I are often on the same page. Just not this time.

_________________
- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

Dang... oh well, I am not perfect, no matter what people say.
Thanks for clarifying. I think I was projecting slightly, for which I apologize.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Pls forgive me, Robert, this will be my last [OT] deviation (at least in this direction )




For any deeper discussion of this we should move into another thread.

Thanks, Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

I have to say I'm with Wineandgolover on this one

Consider:

What if everyone thanked you every time you did something for them? Being thanked would lose all... actually that would be pretty nice.

I much prefer to think that the likes I recieve are from people like Bonobo who seem to just be saying "I enjoyed your post and wanted to let you know".

Edit: This was written before the suggestion to move to another thread.

I understand your point. But I disagree.

There are cultures out there which stress excessive politeness. People say 'thank you' and 'please' all the time... is it nice? I don't know. How do I tell when somebody is really grateful and when he simply follows convention? So in such cases - other indicators are needed... a deeper bow, a warmer smile... and then *this* becomes what makes you all warm and fuzzy inside, what makes you feel appreciated. Somebody saying 'thank you' for everything you do becomes meaningless or even a nuisance.

Same here. I think that the 'Like' functionality is there to denote posts which are somehow 'special' to you... and then it means something. If every other post is marked as 'special', then what is special and what is ordinary? The meaning and value gets diluted.

Bottom line:
If we all did 'Like' every other posts we run across, for whatever reason, each post would have been liked by 50 people or so. And then I ask you - would anybody care if a post was 'Liked' or not? It would be meaningless. Right now, only one person is so generous, and so it is no big deal. In theory, however, if you do not place strict and narrow guidelines on how you evaluate things, your evaluation becomes less meaningful.

Praise is a gift not to be withheld, but not to be given lightly neither.
That's all I am saying.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

My take:

1.) When you get a "like", even if it's from someone that gives out likes freely, there's at least an indication that they didn't hate what you had to write.

2.) If you care about your "like count", then I see Bantari's point in that the number of likes you have loses its value (if it had any to begin with).

3.) I think there's another dimension, and that is who gives you a like. Getting a like from a like-happy user does show that they agreed with your post, but maybe comes to become accepted as normal. Getting a like from someone who usually hates your guts seems to indicate, "Well, this guy usually hates what I have to say, but we seem to agree on this front."

Regarding the last point, I feel that there are cliques (to a mild degree) on the forum, so it's often common that person X says something, and persons A, B, and C, who usually like what person X has to say. As is usually the case with arguments on the forum, maybe person Y disagrees with person X, and persons D, E, and F, who usually like what person Y has to say commonly like Y's points.

After endless arguments on the forum, this comes to be expected, and you can say, "Oh, X posted. Of course A, B, and C like what X has to say.", and you don't think much of it. But what's significant is when you see D and E like what X has to say, and then you can think, "Hm. That's odd."

---

Aside from likes, I feel the same phenomenon happens in the many arguments that happen around the forum. X makes an argument, A, B, and C chime in to express their agreement. Y counters, along with his cronies D, E, and F.

After awhile it all starts to lose its significance...

_________________
be immersed

Back on topic: I was very surprised by this part.



So we should put value before urgency? Or does it just mean when the groups are about the same strength?

Bantari, Wineandgolover and all other lovers:

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Robert's usage of carried away is fine here. In this kind of context it is usually just means someone kept on going down the same path regardless of the mistakes they were making because they got obsessed with something and lost sight of all else. E.g. "I got carried away trying to kill his group and overextended myself and ended up too thin when he made small life." It's another way of saying someone became emotionally committed to a certain path as well. Another usage is for when someone is enjoying something too much and overindulges. There is often the dictionary definition of a phrase like this in English where its actual usage is far broader than this due to language moving faster than dictionaries can keep up with.

For the intended readership of the book, "urgency" and "relative strengths" of groups often are still too advanced topics. For them, it can simply be a matter of group size. Among the groups to be attacked or needing to be defended, attack or defend the bigger group.

For advanced players, this idea is still valid, but one would actually bother to consider determining and comparing group sizes. For beginners and their mistakes, the simple advice "bigger" suffices. When they make such mistakes, then it is often obvious which is the bigger group, but they simply do not consider which group that is (or they would not make the related mistake).

I was advised by the auther not to continue the same manner of stating the principles and briefly explaining them, due to copyright issues. He said 'the book lives from the principles, and I need to protect my commercial interest' and that 'it is fair if you state approximately 1/3 (or less) of the book's principles'

My personal opinion is that I have never thought summarizing 20 pages in 10 lines would have problems with the copyright. However, I do not consider it appropriate to object to the auther, and I decide to stop writing in this thread, rather than writing 3 lines (or less) instead of 10 lines.

_________________
Wait, please.

Please don't stop! I believe many people would be and are interested in your opinions on the teaching style, the comprehensibility, the quality of the principles presented and so on. I don't think Robert's objections are unreasonable. If you tell us each and every of Robert's principles, why would any of us buy his books? Is it not feasible for you to discuss particular subjects without summarizing all of the content? Tell us what you find good and not so good. You are one of the few strong players who has shown interest in sharing your opinion of Robert's work (John Fairbairn has also done so, for example here). Don't stop now!

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

Why? To understand what Robert means by the principle. Are they truly so simple that they need no explanation? I once bought a book about proverbs, despite the fact that I'd heard every one of them before. Why? To better understand their meaning.

This is a truly impressive case of an author shooting himself in the foot. Robert incessantly discusses how great his books are, which of course lacks objectivity and credibility. So finally (!) a third party comes along and begins a detailed analysis, which could support the author's claim of supremacy. And the author swiftly shuts it down.

Seriously, this discussion was free publicity, which should have been embraced.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

_________________
- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

It's one thing - as daal pointed out - to write down your personal experience with the principles and another thing to give away the whole key-principles, which presumably make the book what it is.

I really like to hear more about how applicable or understandable the principles in general are after the first reading. And in the end if it is beneficial to buy and read this book. All on a personal level with maybe some anecdotes about how one progressed while reading this book and if there were some real eye-openers.

So, please write a review not a summary =)

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

See post 21. MJK presents excellent and concise explanations which may in fact be easier to digest than the original presentations.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.