Go with the Flow: How the Great Master of Go Trained His Mind
Disclaimer: Recently I was offered the chance to proof read this book a little. It is in the small category of Go books which don't contain any games. They claim that it is a best seller in Korea - original version published 2015. With the available audience in the 'West' I doubt it will reach that height, but I think that all Go players will enjoy reading it. It's a collection of little tales that explain how Go has shaped Cho Hunhyun's life.

The anecdotes are grouped into 8 different themes. They are sometimes dark, sometimes ordinary, sometimes touching, but always frank and open. You'll learn of his childhood, his study, his development through the professional world For me the most interesting stories are those which are about his relationship with his pupil and his teacher. I found it very readable, if you start it in the morning then you can certainly finish it before bedtime. The language as translated is very much american with a lean towards sporting metaphor, but that doesn't alter its accessibility. If you want something bad to say about it, well I did sometimes find the translation of Korean proverbs a bit clunky.


url corrected

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North Lecale

Maybe the URL was changed to

https://www.amazon.com/Go-Flow-Great-Ma ... d+His+Mind

Unfortunately, this is only available in Kindle format. The price is USD 11.97. Amazon has its usual preview Look Inside.

Cant buy with a german account anymore.

We live in the dark ages again.

Edit: Was able to buy in the kindle app on my tablet

Yes this is exactly the flaw with this book. I think that they plan a paper edition which should/could contain corrections.

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North Lecale

Hi Marcel, I also strongly suggested to them to be consistent with the naming order for Japanese names (family + given) --
( as an example, I said it would be very confusing to use Seigen Go (they decided to use his Chinese name) or U Cho ) -- but they rejected it. Good luck.

Same here.

Have you heard anything about the error corrections yet?

Hi Marcel,

The order of events is reversed: they first contacted me out of the blue. ( Did they approach you the same way ? ) Then, through our chats, the suggestions came up. If they first contacted you the same way, I'm guessing it's the same person: he said he is a publisher ( or one of the publishers? ) of the Korean version.

Hi Marcel,

Probably a different person; the person who contacted me has a different family name than yoon.

I bought the paper edition on Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/Go-Flow-Great- ... h+the+Flow I also noticed a lot of English grammatical errors and awkward sentences. There was, for me , a glaring error in go history, on page 37 when writing about the achievements of Segoe's disciples, Go Seigen and Hashimoto Utaro. It is stated that Hashimoto "... won the titles of the Honinbo Title Match, the Oza Title Match, the Judan Title Match and the Kisei Title Match ..." Of course Hashimoto played in the first Kisei title match, the only one in which he played, but he lost the match to Fujisawa. Despite all these errors, it was a good read, particularly Cho's telling stories about his go career and his thoughts about learning go.

Concerning one of the favorite topics here I note the first section of chapter five, "The Price of Speed". Cho discusses the effects of long versus short time limits. Long time limit games allow players to gain deeper understanding of the situation on the board and come up with efficient moves that can later spin off more strategically favorable moves. In short time limit games players depend on their experience and intuition. Noteworthy is his statement that despite years of training and experience the probability of making mistakes is higher in quick games and the quality of the moves is more likely to be disappointing than in games played over long hours. He cannot say which is better because it a matter of format. However he says "I will be blunt. Short games train the mind to develop depthless moves and shallow tricks. There is very little 'enlightenment' involved."

BTW, this book is free with a Kindle Unlimited account.

I enjoyed this book very much, but I did sense there was a lot of filler material that didn't contribute well to the overall message.

On page 137, when talking about foresight in Go, Cho discusses how the urge to seek immediate gains can be misleading. But he then randomly brings up the real estate crash of a decade ago: "For instance, why were prominent economists unable to predict the 2008 global financial crisis in advance? Why did banks take the risk of providing mortgage loans to people with low credit rating? Worse, how could they even think of selling subprime mortgage-backed deriviatives to investment banks?"

The last sentence made me laugh out loud.

It is an article of faith among many economists that there is no need to enforce fraud legislation because the efficient market will reveal fraud (a point of view espoused by "the maestro", Alas Greenspan, in the 1990s, despite the savings and loan debacle of a few years earlier). That the market will (eventually) reveal fraud is more than a half truth, but the way it does so may be to crash.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.