Or snake oil

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By more strong players sharing information in English.



My dream is scientific sharing of information instead of Edo-like celebreation of school secrets. However, actually I do not expect it to the full extent. Even I, who I like shared go theory, need to delay publication of some of my rediscoveries.



There have been counter-examples. (I do not recall them in detail.)

Such as Inseong Hwang...

For the umpteenth time, there was no such thing - neither celebration nor secrets.

The Honinbo school and others had hundreds of pupils, who spread across the entire country and who mostly made their living by teaching. Stop and think instead of "researching" for a moment - there were no tournaments.

Books were rare because they were expensive, and go diagrams in particular required new technologies.

The "Four Schools" were not the only ones. Others flourished.

The main schools had state sponsorship but still craved status and acquired this over the board in public, sometimes in games on which exile was staked. We still have most of these games - some secret!

That status enabled them to recruit the best pupils. End of conspiracy.

i look at books as putting a huge block of wood on a fire
it might help in the long term, but it takes awhile for it to feed the fire
i've yet to see anybody attribute any major or useful breakthroughs to books

Except for Korshelt and Lasker, the first go books I got were when I was 4 kyu. They were real eye-openers. From Takagawa I learned about attacking on a large scale. From Sakata I learned about efficiency. A book on shape changed my play quite a bit. It may have been by Maeda, I don't recall. Later on, from Lin Haifeng I learned about the relationship between variability and lightness.

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Eh? Is my example of 11 ranks in 17 months mainly due to books not good enough?

Old Italian proverb: 'Carta canta e villan dorme' - Paper sings while the peasant sleeps."

let's see a rank graph with a consistent number of games being played during that time period. include a breakdown of what you did and how it helped.

not trying to be difficult, but claims require evidence

Rank graphs are boring. Study my tournament results (and rank declarations) during that time. Although I was early in promoting myself 1/3 of a rank to get more interesting tournament games instead of playing 5:0 all the time and collecting the really interesting prizes because of promoting myself with a delay of 1/3 of a rank, my tournament results were well on average during that period. Examples:

I registered for the Berliner Championship as 8k, was 7k when the tournament started, almost beat a 5k, beat a 5k, beat two 2k, won my promotion to the 1d group, moved from 7k to 5k after 20 minutes of hesitation on recommendation of the last 2k I had just beaten, could hold my 5k in the club then, as a 5k beat one of the 1d players in the 1d group. Context: Until 9k, I had read only one book. From 9k to 5k, I read a few books. From 5k on, I read many books.

As soon as I was 3d (shortly after the end of the 17 months of 11 ranks fast improvement due to books), I could participate in the German Championship preliminaries (only 3d+ were allowed, except that I had been eligible as the exceptional 2d due to a special tournament result, but that was immaterial because I became 3d anyway) and scored 3:3. Context: I had read many more books until then.

Which books? I could only read those available at that time, and the selection was poor on average, with a few exceptions. I compensated that by reading some of those books very seriously.

I can't prove it, but I definitely feel Attack and Defence helped me gain a few ranks in the low sdk range. As for rank graphs, I think this one is quite a nice one to show that the China Go Trip made me stronger in summer 2007 (late June to late August).
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.j.s ... graph2.png

That's pretty impressive, for a few weeks of study.

How many books did you read during that time?

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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

In China? Not many. Maybe one or two in downtime in the apartment, but the study time was a mix of lectures, simuls, games, reviews and tsumego.

Ah yes.... the secret techniques of the master. Once you learn the secret move of the school, you defeat your arch rival easily. I think I saw that Kung Fu movie. Wait.... isn't that every Kung Fu movie?

While I agree some concepts may have been harder to put into writing instead of someone showing you an in person example, books have the advantage that you can go back and re-read the section multiple times. You can read it when YOU feel like you would be most receptive. You can learn at YOUR pace.

And now we get to add chat on the internet and forum posts? Historical archives of THOUSANDS of past games, pro games? How can any 'secrets' really still exist?

Secrets still exist because the internet is no 1:1 copy of everybody's knowledge somewhere. Maybe you under-estimate the amount of unwritten knowledge? E.g., despite my own good, explicit memory of go theory and my efforts to write down everything, I'd guess that still more than 95% of the go theory I know exists in my mind but I could not write down it yet. This must be similar also for other prolific writers. By far the knowledge is still only verbal / mental instead of written. This is different for go than for, say, sciences because the history of sciences has seen 2000+ more years of writing while go writing in significant volume is a modern novelty. Maybe after 500 years, there will be enough go writing so that only new research would still be awaiting discovery.

EDIT:

Archives of pro games do not replace explicit writing of go theory because the games themselves reveal nothing yet about reading, judgement, strategy. It requires commentary, analysis or more general theory to describe or apply these things.

If you can say it, you can write it. I in no way think everything that CAN be written HAS been written.... as it will never 100% all be written. But to suggests that it CAN be taught by speaking to someone, but those same words can not be written is a false assumption. I would even say that showing someone moves on a board can just as easily be drown out on paper. We have Kifu as old as 200 AD, so it isn't like people haven't had means to write down games. Explaining in words might become very long if it is written out, but it is in no way impossible.