My experience is that amateur hobbyists are the ones who really take care, because they love the subject. That does not make them immune from mistakes, of course, but I think they make fewer mistakes than the pros. At least, just as qualified surgeons sometimes saw off the wrong leg, media pros do make egregious mistakes.

I was watching a major British TV detective series episode last night (Jonathan Creek). From the sets, locations and number of actors used, it clearly has a big budget. One scene purported to show a museum exhibition on Shinto. Apart from all the ridiculously wrong names and attributes of the gods, the highlight was an area marked in huge letters suidou (written gauchely by a non-native and with the last letter back to front), which was presumably meant to refer to a mystical "way of water" even though there were no water-related elements around. What it really meant in that context was "Water Mains". For those who think I really am grumpy, I can assure you this had me in stitches and I have no intention of sending a "Disgruntled from Tunbridge Wells" letter to the BBC. But, just as qualified surgeons sometimes saw off the wrong leg, pros do make mistakes.

In fact, many years ago I saw a new book by a major publisher as the centrepiece of a window display. It had a single Japanese character for the cover. It was upside down (unintentionally). After that, I started to keep track of the use of CJ characters by non-CJ natives and discovered, over a fairly large sample, that there were a huge number of mistakes, although it was extremely rare for anyone to use the character sideways. My hypothesis was that a random choice was going on and so I expected a 50-50 split, but in fact the odds of it being upside down were about 8 times of 10 (that's a probability of 0.8 for imnotreallyabuddha).

I assume you've seen this?

http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/

I hadn't seen it (and hadn't even thought to look). It's a nice corrective to all those jokes about funny Oriental English. I have noticed that the scene where a tough lowlife wearing a tattoo in characters is arrested by a police officer who eventually tells him it means something like "I've got piles" has become something of a cliche in tv and films, but when I walk down Oxford Street on a sunny day, which prompts lots of bare skin, I see it's pretty close to real life. Are tattoo artists playing with fire? I suppose it would be fun to be a fly on the wall at a tattooists' convention.

Regarding the relation between Takao's 21st Century Dictionary of Basic Joseki with the previous edition (Ishida's Dictionary of Basic Joseki) Kiseido writes,

"Although [Ishida's dictionary] has now been superceded by Takao Shinji's dictionary, it does not render Ishida's dictionary useless. One of the features of Ishida's work is the numerous references to professional games in which many of the josekis listed were used, a feature that does not exist in Takao's compilation."

Yes, and, Ishida's edition also diagrams the fuseki where the joseki are used, gives further analysis of the joseki in the context of the those games, and gives further variations of the joseki relevant to the choice and use of the joseki in those games. Hopefully a reviewer of the Takao edition will comment on the relation between the two editions.

http://www.kiseido.com/Dictionary.htm



Thank you for your interest in my post. I will do my best to give you what little data I have at me fingertips to support my opinion. After 47 years of playing Go, it is difficult to say exactly how you came to know the things you know, and one can always be mistaken.

The 1k KGS player "emerus" seems to know a lot of joseki. Emerus is the coach for the 1-5k players in the KGS room called "The Study Room". I go to him with my joseki questions and have been extremely impressed with the breadth of his knowledge. The Study Room manager, revtaro, tells me that emerus knows over 350 joseki. I'll bet it is a lot more than that. (I am talking about "fully fledged" joseki here. And, I am not counting the variations you have to know to really know the joseki.)

It seems to me that most of the serious 1k+ players on KGS make extensive use of the game data bases (like gobase.com) to study joseki. There are also more advanced and more complete joseki dictionaries than the Ishida/Takao dictionary that stand between the Ishida/Takao dictionary and the study of joseki through the study of their use in pro games. It seems logical to me that the importance of the Ishida/Takao dictionary to the study of joseki would diminish once one is in the KGS dan level.

Like the title says these are "Basic Joseki". Yes, some, though my no means most, are a little scary to play in my games. But, they are easy to understand when working through them in the book, so, I play them every chance I get. So far, this has both helped me make progress in the ranking system, and it has helped me win games.

I knew most of the joseki in the Ishida edition when I was 1d AGA in 1991. Most of the joseki in the Takao edition come straight out of the Ishida edition (at least, that is my current impression). This means that I used to know most of the joseki in the Takao edition. And, the 1d players on KGS today are a lot stronger than the 1d AGA players in 1991.

I now am relearning the joseki that I used to know. I have had to re-learn a lot of things after my brain injury in 2003. After my brain injury, I dropped from 1d to 10k.

Even back in 1991, most of the American 3d+ players that I knew had exhausted their study of the Ishida dictionary and were mining the Japanese Go journals to continue their study of joseki.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?DeaconJohn

John,
Many thanks for enlightening me.

My experience is based on laying and observing KGS games. I have seen only very basic joseki used in most kyu games I have watched. It may simply be that upon reaching 1 dan that most player study joseki intensely. But I strongly feel that there are many also reach dan level mostly by adopting good shape. For many, such as myself, my memory is so incredibly unreliable, that learning joseki is a painfully slow process. I am 3k on KGS an expect I know maybe 20 or 30 joseki. But that may explain why I do not progress of course, although failure to concentrate and getting too emotional are the normal reasons.

We know you like to think of yourself as the self-appointed resident cynic on L19, but how do they sell a supposedly out-of-print and heavily pirated book?

Go accommodates many playing styles - that is one of its beauties. The talk appears to mandate that dan players must know dozens or hundreds of joseki. Yet joseki is just one component of games. Does a limited knowledge of joseki prevent one from becoming a dan player?

If you play with a good feel for shape, but simply do not have the ability to learn and remember many joseki, you may prevail over those who can remember joseki, any loss of momentum in the joseki more than made up by superior play beyond knowledge driven play.

In essence, there are many ways to skin a cat - many ways and styles of playing Go.

My guess, which still is complete speculation, is that it represents the influence of databases.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Does this mean that you assume the references exist in the Japanese original but were not included in the translation in order to continue to sell the original? This would be trivial to test.

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

My guess / unsubstantiated opinion is that hyperpape is right. Skipping the game examples in the Takao Shinji update seems to be a good decision now that it is easier for people to do their own database search. I think it also improves the readability of the book, so its a positive move.

Could you use Chapter 1 from both editions (Ishida pages 2-15; Takao pages 2-10) to illustrate this?
I'm not sure I'm seeing what you meant.

Many of them do, but not nearly all. I personally use that kind of database more for entertainment than for serious study.


Really? Could you give me an example? I've never heard of any other dictionary that is even nearly as comprehensive as Ishida, be it in English or some other language.


As a KGS 1 dan, I'd say this is definitely not true! In fact, I would say that studying Ishida/Takao before reaching KGS dan level is not very efficient. Better study tesuji and tsumego.


Mechanically playing a joseki at every chance you get is a terrible idea and shows that you do not understand joseki at all. You have to play the move that fits the whole board, whether or not that happens to be the one variation that you memorised. In my experience, tesuji and tsumego is much more helpful than joseki study at kyu level.

That said, the best of luck in regaining your strength! Cool that you're still enjoying go after such a setback, major respect from me .

_________________
My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

If you know 350 joseki and you're only 1kyu, I wonder what's gone wrong with your game. YY syndrome?

_________________
North Lecale

And amateurs can spend enough time on the subject.


Perhaps amateurs' mistakes are more "reversible" than professionals' mistakes. May be that an incorrect amateur sequence leads to the same result as a correct professional one, because a mistake with black is compensated for by another mistake with white.
Usually professionals' mistakes are non-reversible.

_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

How do chromosomal abnormalities lead to joseki obsession?

(My emphases.)
So he does not really know them.

Interesting question. Has two meanings, the literal meaning and the intended meaning.

Reflections on the Intended Meaning.

Probably not good to study Go too much as long as your rank is shooting up. Just play. And learn from reviewing your own games and watching what your opponents do.

Eventually, though, many players "plateau" before they reach 3d. For such players, study helps. Tseumengo first, of course, but everything else too.

Study of joseki is good because it gives "tried and true" examples of things like shape and various tseuji and thinckness and sabaki and invasions and L&D, etc. I am including corner enclosure invasions and side joseki here. The proverb "joseki are for forgetting" is a good thing to remember, but, it is not always true. Every now and then a joseki has a move in it that you just want to memorize.

Study of joseki is also good because it helps you play your joseki better in games. One could argue that this is, or should be, a secondary purpose. I have seen reasons given for both sides of this argument.

Reflections on the Literal Meaning.

Joseki can be studied because they are interesting in themselves, not primarily because you hope they will help you get stonger.

About chromosones, personally I like to see deeply into things so that I can feel that I really understand them. It is quite possible because my chromosones, genes, genetic material, whatever, is different from others. It is possible that my tendency towards OCD is genetically inherited too. If so, I prefer to think of the difference as just part of the way we are all different from each other, not as an abnormality.

No offense taken, though, Javaness2. In fact, I was happy to answer your post because I like the KGS player Javaness a lot and you have a similar name.

Absolutely! There was very little English language Go literature back them. Ishida was one of the best books available. It was not at all uncommon for a 1d player to have studied, or at least be familiar with, every Go book published in the English language. I had about 5 fully commented professional games available to me. They were my second most valuable study resource. I also learned a lot by watching what my opponents were doing when they were stronger than me. Whether or not this is "study" is hard to say, but, it helped me more than any other single thing.

As I mentioned, many players at the 4d level had so completely exhausted the English literature that they had to turn to the Japanese Go journals. In one game I met a joseki variation that had only been published a few months earlier in a Japanese journal. I played my side of the joseki correctly in the local context, even though I had never seen it before, but misunderstood the significance in the global context and so lost the game. The journal article explained the global significance. (The article was translated into English several months later; that was how I found out what had happened.)

Another huge difference was that it was vastly more difficult to get to play Go with other people back then. A greater emphasis on study was required for those who wanted to improve. I attended every club meeting in the Washington DC area within 1/2 hour of my house and still could only get 3-4 games a week. I got a game every day at work, but, those were weaker players. Now I average at least 2-3 game a day!

The biggest difference was that there was no internet, no game database, at least not any that I knew of. DrStraw, one of the best American p-layers in Virginia, arguably the best at least for a while, says that he made huge progress by playing against himself.

On KGS, it is sometimes possible get free reviews of your games by stronger players, and free teaching games from stronger players. (For example in the KGS Teaching Ladder, in The Study Room, and in many other rooms.) There was nothing even close to this.

Today, there are many excellent teachers, like Kaz and Breakfast (Alexander Dinertchen) who often give lectures for a small fee (the price of admission to the KGS+ club). There was not enough interest in America to support the few Asian Go professionals who tried (and failed) to make a living teaching Go in this country.

For reviewing your own games, there was nothing like the sgf files and the CGoban KGS sgf editor. Often you had to record your own games, or remember them. Remembering them turned out to be more efficient. This was good for fuseki study, but not very helpful for complicated middle game fighting - the crux of the game. It was to difficult to get the complex positions exactly right from memory, at least for me.

This gives you some idea. There were many little things that we take for granted today and that were not available in the 1980's and that make a huge difference.

I apologize for being ambiguous. He "knows" the variations. Not that he has memorized them, but, he can reproduce most of them, find the "trick" to punish or whatever. Yes, he "really knows" them. At least that is my impression. Hope that clarifies what I meant to express.

Hmmm, I will comply with your request for some concrete examples if some day time permits me to do that.

To explain what I meant. I have both editions of the dictionary. I opened them both up and started going through them joseki by joseki and word by word. I found a lot of the text from the old edition was "cut and pasted" into the new edition. This was not suprising, and it is not a bad thing.

The preface to the new edition, if I remember correctly, says that many of the diagrams were lifted from the old edition. This is a good thing (imo) because it makes it vastly easier to compare the two editions. Many joseki take more than one diagram. If the diagrams were broken in different places, or if the text said the same thing in a different way, it would be vastly more difficult to compare the two editions.

I was hoping that this exercise would bring my knowledge of joseki up to date. This has happened a little bit, but, not too much. Even though there have been many new "joseki" (perhaps in the broader sense of the word "joseki"), discovered over the last 20-30 years since Ishida's edition, only the most common, most basic, and most well established of them are in this book.

There are three main benefits that I obtain from the exercise of comparing the two editions. First, it helps me review the Ishida joseki that I used to be familiar with. Second, it gives me confidence that (most) of the joseki that I learned from Ishida are the same now as they were then. Third, I understand the joseki better as I work though them again. I know more about shape and tseuji and L&D now than I did in 1991, so I can understand the joseki better now than I could them. (I don't do so well in play because my mind kind of fuzzes out while I am reading out variations.)

Hopefully this clarifies what I was talking about.