My result:For full disclosure, I have never even started much less finished much, much less won a game in my life -- neither against a human nor a computer. I am about 1/3 through Iwamoto's beginner book. Those questions were the first Go "problems" I have ever attempted. I did not randomly pick answers from question to question but rather thought about each one and picked what I truly thought was best, despite my ignorance.

So it might be worth taking this test with a grain of salt. In my case at least "you may improve by studying different things" translates into "you may improve by doing any study at all."

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The Master said, To stuff oneself with food all day without worrying about anything, is difficult indeed! But what about weiqi players then? It is better to be one of them than to do nothing!

Yeah, identical.

This reminds me of walking along the street in San Francisco in 1974 with a chess friend. A pretty girl came along and begged us to come with her to answer some "personality" test. (I think that she was promoting dianetics--that is, Scientology.) I took it semi-seriously and answered things like my life goal was to master the Benoni and Dragon (black chess defenses I played). My buddy answered randomly. Latter, sans girl, we compared notes to see that we got the exact same "analysis."

BTW, no one has commented on my original reason for looking at John Fairbairn's list of professional styles. My fault for not making it clear, however, that I was looking for a pro whose games I might be able to (sort of) follow without annotations. Perhaps it should not be called a pro style, but I don't know how else to refer to play that might be simpler for me to follow.

I've had good luck following the games of Iyama Yuta (whose play I greatly admire), though they have a tendency to get much more complicated when he falls behind. Of course, no professional game is going to be without complication. But the games of his I have reviewed are certainly more clear than those of Lee Sedol, for example, who just seems to make territory magically evolve from go stones.

While I know you're looking for games to review without annotation, I highly recommend reading through a few of An Younggil's commentaries on Go Game Guru. I find his writing style quite lucid, and reading through a few professional commentaries has helped me know what to look for in uncommented games.

Thank you for your suggestion. And I only said unannotated because of my GoGoD games.

How about the development of Go technique? If a new chess player wanted to see how that game has developed it would be pretty easy to start them with this historical sequence: Paul Morphy (quick development for overwhelming attack), Wilhelm Steinitz (smashing unjustified attacks), Aaron Nimzowitsch (hypermodern school of controlling vs occupying the center), Mikhail Botvinnik (Russian opening research all the way into the middle game), and Garry Kasparov (modern EXTREME emphasis on obtaining the initiative). Such a sequence of games would be much easier to understand than jumping straight into Magnus Carlsen's latest games. LOL

Is it possible to find "simpler" (or more "naive") Go play, or would such even be useful?

@ jeromie

I just subscribed to gogameguru's free email updates, so thanks again!

There is nothing wrong with playing a particular type of game on purpose, e.g. moyo, territory, fighting, etc. But you have to try to understand why the moves you choose work in the game. I often see players deliberately make a san-ren-sei even when their opponent has thickness which erases the influence. Sometimes it's just not proper to try to make a big moyo and you have to be flexible. Takemiya certainly understands this.

You may be interested in this site:

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

It has a good selection of historical games. This page, http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go_meikyoku.html , has a reasonably small number of famous games dating back several centuries.

This page, http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go ... ikan0.html , has links to pages about many players, whose pages usually link to their games. At the bottom you will find links to the four houses:

本因坊家 Honinbo
井上家 Inoue
安井家 Yasui
林家 Hayashi

The rough equivalent to Steinitz in chess is Honinbo Dosaku Meijin (本因坊　道策 名人), who understood the game like none of his contemporaries. You also want to check out Shusaku (本因坊 秀策). A creative player of the 18th century was Sakaguchi Sentoku (坂口　仙徳). (There is also a later player with the same name.) And no other player has had more influence on go in the last 100 years than Go Seigen (呉　清源). It would be no exaggeration to say that every pro alive today is directly or indirectly his student.

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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.

Yeah, I downloaded Go on Go (https://www.usgo.org/files/pdf/go-seigen-book.pdf), but figured it would be over my head for awhile yet. And thank you for all of your suggestions and links!

I took this test probably when I was around 15-18k and got passive.
I took this test again at around 8-9k and got passive.
I took it today (5k, maybe going on 4k) and got something different!



I definitely like territory and always have. I wonder if my earlier results of passive were just me not knowing how to do this so well and playing slow but overly secure choices.

PeterN