Life In 19x19

That said... I'm developing a strong opinion regarding the games of the Deepmind people. I think they're as worthy of preservation as those of, say, baron Okura, Kim Ok-kyum and others. Will they ever win an even game against a Honinbo? No. But they made history. So, if for some reason you don't ...

I haven't seen any Hassabis games but Charles Matthews (who taught Demis go at Cambridge University) may know of some. My memory of what Charles told me is that Demis was actually rather a weak player, but he was in ay event interested in too many other games to concentrate on go. I think he was a ...

No, that is not why to study tesuji problems but that is why to do tactical reading. When there are no tesujis, tesuji knowledge does not apply. Tactical reading during tesuji / techniques problems is too partial by far to enable good tactical reading (or to enable suitably trained subconscious ...

But it is false. While first gaining one's solid shape and techniques knowledge contributes ca. 2 - 4 ranks from 12 kyu to 1 kyu, it is not the most important. Tactical reading and endgame calculation are both more important and enable more ranks. For reading, you have your "confirmation" in the ...

Why do you characterise tesuji as the most useful? Ca. 3% of the moves are tesuji. What one first needs is plain ordinary moves. Of course, my aforementioned book is hardly about techniques or shapes at all because they are needed for only 5.5% of the capturing races. 50% are those solved by ...

While writing the above, I had a look for a fairly obscure tesuji book. By a pro!

I see it is the one mentioned on https://senseis.xmp.net/?PracticalEndgameTest4 by Magari 8 dan, a pleasant person. So, that sort of material.

What do you mean by "the 'technique of the game', not flashy stuff"?

So suji in Japanese means technique, maek in Korean seems to have scope suji + tesuji . In the problems in Teach Yourself Go there are what a reviewer called "small scale stuff", which might include a throw-in to gain one or two ...

Over in another thread , I saw:

I'm not a big advocate of books written by amateurs but I'd strongly recommend "Cross-cut Workshops" and "Counting Liberties and Winning Capturing Races" by Richard Hunter.
As an occasional (and rather bad) chess player, I don't have an issue with books by ...

I have not read Shimada's endgame texts; given your earlier hints and his rules texts (of which I saw some in English), he might have described some basics or maybe a bit maths.

I'd recommend a bit of caution with your nuances here. You will recall that Emanual Lasker, in the throes of planning ...

Sonoyama is also the name of the Cambridge club's 13x13 tournament, the trophy being donated by a Mr Sonoyama so maybe he also contributed to the library.

I believe there is a conflation here. There was a collection of books donated to CUGoSoc by a Japanese visitor to the University of Cambridge ...

On a quite different topic, a few times recently - for reasons I cannot fathom - your teaching venture in Uganda came to mind (and with it the name Omweso???). How has that panned out over the past few years?

I still have a contact at Makarere University, I believe - nothing recent. They have a ...

Fujisawa does not give explicit names to shapes, but far from being a drawback that is a big plus in my opinion. The obsession with shapes is a major fault in western go. It leads to an obsession with the static over the dynamic, which haengma partly addresses by going the other way.

Fair enough ...

This is a game between Qian Gongnan and Li Haimen - not players of the first rank.

Thanks, John - interesting. I was thinking strongish amateurs.

The date of the game is not known but would probably be late Qing (think Honinbo Shuwa) when Zhou Xiaosong would have been king of the castle (and on ...

Speaking of books, in a way. Michael gave a pushing battle variation for game 25.

One of the very early games available in the West was in Falkener's Games ancient and oriental of 1892:

https://archive.org/details/gamesancientorie00falkuoft/page/244/mode/2up

Clearly Chinese because of the cross ...

Charles, I was laughing at your sarcasm.

Did get that. Another case for the emoji for deadpan humour. :lol:

I've been enjoying Redmond's series and have watched all of them.

The least we can do! I'm trying to get rid of go books now, rather than accumulate them, but I'd like to make room for ...