Robert was kind enough to give me the opportunity to read and review his book, "Tactical Reading". Here is my review:
My initial impression of the book content - as well as Robert's prompt delivery - was positive. Shortly after I had started reading the electronic copy of the book, I received a hard copy in the mail.
Book Construction One of the first things I checked was the binding: it was high quality. Contrary to some other go books that I have (e.g. Yilun Yang's Ingenious Life & Death books), the binding is sturdy. The typesetting was of high quality. All-in-all, the book is put together in a very professional manner. The only thing I found odd about the construction of the book was that the title along the spine of the book appears to be upside-down compared to most of the other English books that I have. This is minor, but it was a bit odd to me.
Book Content I'm not aware of any other book that covers the theory behind reading. "Tactical Reading" is split into two main sections: (1) Reading Theory; (2) Problems. There's also a brief introduction section at the start of the book.
I will start off by saying that the problems are very good. I'm around KGS 1d at the moment, and I enjoyed them. At my level, the problems require a bit of thought, and even if you are not KGS 1d, you can follow the principles in the book to obtain a solution. Robert mentions in the introduction that the non-full board positions are his own creations (with some of the full board positions being taken from games on KGS).
What is unique about "Tactical Reading" compared to other problem books is the section on "Reading Theory". At first, I was somewhat skeptical of the book, because I believe that problems are necessary to improve one's reading ability. I was happy to read in the introduction of the book, however, that Robert also expresses the importance of practicing reading the reading principles outlined in the book.
What I Liked I've never read any of Robert's books before, but if I were to sum up the content of the "Reading Theory" section of the book in one word, I'd say that it is "accurate". Robert outlines a systematic method for reading, which is applicable to any situation that you might find on the go board. He explains the idea of obtaining an aim for a given player, and also explains the concept of direction in reading - when to go forward, when to go backward, what information to propogate, and when to consider a new candidate move. Robert also outlines a simplified form of reading, which can sometimes be helpful, known as "Test Reading", where only a threshold number of moves are considered.
And of course, as I mentioned above, I enjoyed the problems. I think that the problems were an excellent addition to the book, providing a good way to practice the reading theory outlined in the earlier sections of the book.
Critical Feedback While I do feel that Robert's method for reading is accurate, in a sense, it is somewhat obvious. For anyone that has experience in doing go problems, the systematic process of selecting candidate moves, exploring them, propogating information as to whether a given branch succeeds, etc., are all familiar. Furthermore, having studied breadth-first search and depth-first search myself as a computer science student, Robert's formal definitions of this process didn't seem to provide new ideas that I wasn't already familiar with.
In particular, the process of systematically iterating through candidate moves and exploring them is already something I knew how to do. But key to this process is selecting what Robert refers to as "interesting next moves". But very little is said to describe how to identify "interesting next moves". Secondly, in discussing terminal positions, the book explains that "non-obvious" statuses should be explored. "Obviously inferior" moves are also ignored for the sake of simplification. In my opinion, the process of systematic iteration and propogating of information is the "obvious" part of reading. Ideally, I would have preferred to have additional discussion on how to actually identify which moves are "interesting"... And perhaps how to clearly see whether or not a status is "non-obvious".
What is "interesting" or "obvious" can be better understood by practicing reading, but nonetheless, these concepts are key to Robert's algorithm for reading.
Overall Impressions Overall, I am impressed with Robert's thorough explanation of reading. I think what he's written is very accurate. The problems are very good. I don't think that the section on theory provides much new information that experienced go players don't already know. So in a sense, I think that the problems he provides are more useful toward improvement than the section on reading theory.
That being said, reading Robert's section on theory was actually helpful to me, even though I thought that it was obvious. Namely, it's an excellent reminder for me when I am "stuck" on a go problem: even if the problem seems impossible to solve, the solution is there. I can systematically find it using the method Robert defines.
Sometimes a problem seems impossible, but it is always solvable when you go back to the basics. Robert's book outlines these basics (even though the process in itself is basic).
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Additional information
Name: Brian Kirby Strength: ~KGS 1d
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