This may be of interest.


It's funny you mention this. My ideas about how to teach and learn Go are heavily shaped by the experience of learning how to draw. If you're trying to learn how to do something, it helps to turn your games into exercises and play around with that element of the game until you're familiar with it.

I'm not sure what you mean with "No Mind". Do you mean to say that one should not think about why a specific move was played, but instead replay it without thinking and concentrate on the visual aspect to train ones intuition? Is it bad to unconsciously guess the next move each time?
But you said it's obviously different from the "No Mind" of playing blitz games. So I somehow understand it wrongly, because it seems very similar to me. When you play blitz games without thinking too much you just play the area that looks good, by your intuition.
What is the difference between the two states of mind, in particular how do I achieve the correct state of mind?
I only found some zen instructions when googling "No Mind"; I don't have to meditate before replaying pro games, or do I?

I'm too busy to explain this, but it has nothing to do with meditation. Assuming you drive, you will have experienced a version of it yourself. You drive up the motorway and suddenly realise you have covered 100 miles but have absolutely no recollection of anything during that period. Yet you reached your current point safely and so your mind must have been working in a state of alertness unencumbered by conscious thinking. If, on the other hand, you had set out on your journey worried about your bank balance and had continued gnawing away at this problem as you drove, the chances of a prang, or at least frightening another motorist through erratic behaviour, would have been considerable.

There is a difference in studying go games because there you have to set your mental switch to 'absorb' rather than 'radiate' - but for that you already know Google is your friend (though giving your conscious brain a workout, too, and deriving the answer for yourself is no bad thing).

Since starting about 6 weeks ago, I've gone over an average of 10 games/week. I started by focusing on games of Shusaku, Go Seigen and Yi Se-tol (I wanted a player from each of the big three go countries and a bit of era mix), but lately I've been looking more at Cho Chikun because in my games I've been adopting a territorial style and I thought Cho might be a good one to look to for "advice." I'm still convinced that this is an excellent way for someone of my strength to view professional games, and whether it is helping my go or not, I am finding this way of approaching the games to be both enjoyable and inspiring. I've been seeing some great go and I've been spending enough time with the games to appreciate and admire the moves to the extent that a 5k can. I realize I won't get any converts until I reach at least 1d, but over this 6 week period I've stopped playing afraid and have won 2/3 of my games. Looks like I might need a new rank.

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Patience, grasshopper.

In my case I inevitably get 100 miles down the road but have absolutely no idea whether I locked the front door when I left. No Mind? Been there, done that!

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

FTFY

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

No, not really!

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

I think you're missing RBerenguel's joke here.

So am I. Wanna give us a hint?

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Patience, grasshopper.

My thought was that he changed ez4u's exclamatory statement to a question since the subject of ez4u's comment was that he'd question whether or not he'd actually done something (eg. locked the front door). In the same manner, making his statement as a question, perhaps, adds uncertainty to the statement, indicating that he's not even sure if he really did it...

Maybe someone with a better sense of humor has a more elegant interpretation.

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be immersed

Yeah, I had roughly the same interpretation as Kirby.

Perhaps "Been there, done that!" expresses rather more certainty than warranted if you're not always sure whether you locked the door a few hours ago, so RBerenguel jokingly changed it to "Been there, did that?!" to reflect that.

I see Cho and territorial paired quite often, but I think there's a fundamental misperception here. At least I do see many weaker players acting like cattle ranchers in the Wild West, rushing to stake out claims and boasting "this is mine, all mine, as far as the eye can see and then down to Rio Grande". This is what they seem to think of as a territorial style. Others, a little more prudent, just concentrate on playing in the corners and on the third line, but they likewise think of this as territorial.

I have no idea whether daal fits into either camp, but Cho Chikun certainly does not. In his recent book (which we can assume had a lot of his own input because of the liberal use of "I") he first distances himself from two common preconceptions: (1) that taking territory makes you thin and you end up making the opponent thick and (2) josekis typically end up with a split between profit and thickness, and then he explains how the flaws in that thinking lead him to the notion that "taking territory is thick".

In other words, to talk about Cho's style as territorial and not mention thick is missing his point (and vice versa, of course). The territory he talks about taking is not just a matter of points - it is of a clearly defined type: it has to be thick.

He argues that more often than not, the outside thickness the opponent gets in return is actually defective and is therefore not truly thickness. In that case taking territory can be justified. However, it has to be territory taken in such a way it is strong enough so that when you attack that weak outside thickness, there is no danger of collateral damage to your territory.

It is also permissible to give the opponent solid outside thickness if he can't do anything with it, of course, or if it is overconcentrated. But in short he is really saying that outside thickness is usually overrated, rather than saying territory is underrated.

In addition, he is careful to point out that the ways you play against this dodgy outside thickness after you have made the territory can be broken down into various types. I'd speculate that most amateurs would just think of attack, invade and cut. Cho doesn't. One major term that comes up over and over again is eguri (gouging out) which by its nature gives the opponent a lot of outside thickness, especially rather later in the game than the joseki stage, by which time it is often easier to evaluate. He seems to see eguri as the main purpose of invasion rather than splitting or erasure, and he talks about evaluating the resulting opponent's thickness specifically after eguri as a prerequisite to considering invasion.

Amongst other themes, he also differentiates between attack and ijime (tormenting), and leaving nerai and aji is also a big thing for him. Another important theme is that having solid positions means you can often tenuki, which is important when you need to operate in the centre (which is a concomitant of his "territory taking is thick" style). He also focuses quite a bit on twisting attacks (karami) but mainly, as I infer, to stress that the timing of these attacks is usually premature. Premature play can lead to outside-thickness defects being patched up easily. Delaying the attacks, which seems to be a feature of his style, is possible because the opponent is not going to take time out to plug the holes, and of course because you have strong (i.e.e thick) positions, he can't really attack you so as to remedy his defects in a smoother way.

All of this seems much more outward looking than the mere acquisitiveness that is implied in the simple word territorial.

What book is this? I can't find any recent books by Cho Chikun. Maybe a 2005 Mycom book?

Sigh... Now you see why the subtleties of Go are so challenging for me. Well played, RB!

Meanwhile back to the thread...


I'll second that question!

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Territorial != greedy.

Since he is studying the actual games of Cho Chikun and not merely fantasizing that he is Cho Chikun, the misconception, if present at all, should be cured

As a side note, I have heard that, to be a good territorial player, it is important to have a very precise ability to evaluate what is happening in the game at any given point in time.

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be immersed

Do you mean positional judgment or something else?

I think positional judgment, yes. It is probably good for everyone, but I heard that it was especially relevant to territorial players.

I think I heard this somewhere recently, but I don't quite remember where... No mind???

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be immersed

Yes it's the 2005 book, but we are from different planets if you don't regard that as recent. After all, how old is go?

I reviewed the book somewhere else on L19.

My albeit primitive conception of a territorial style is to make solid positions early on without getting sealed in, and preferably to take at least three corners. This gives me two advantages. First, I am ahead on secure points, and second, since I don't have to worry about my groups, I am free to be flexible when choosing how best to counter my opponent's influence. If I can get a good chunk in the area of my opponent' planned points, it can become difficult for him, particularly because my solid positions can prove to be valuable in any of the resulting fights.

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Patience, grasshopper.