I think that math might be a good example of illustrating the importance of studying the fundamentals. It's hard to jump into a calculus class without first having learned how algebra works.

I guess one question might be, "If I'm having a hard time in my calculus class, would it be useful for me to go back and study algebra some more, even though I've studied it before?". I suspect that Kageyama might say, "Yes".

I don't have solid proof that something like that would work. But it does seem possible. Sometimes I play a "brain training" game on my Nintendo DS. One of the ways you can train is to repeatedly perform simple arithmetic operations every day. Of course it's easy to perform addition and subtraction. But I wonder if studying them intensively trains your brain in some way.

Back on the subject of go, maybe studying simple go problems repeatedly, for example, can be more beneficial to improving than studying a single super-hard go problem for days. Maybe reviewing nets and ladders repeatedly will help you to see them more easily in your games.

It's all speculation, but I don't see a reason to really doubt this possibility, yet.

_________________
be immersed

I don't think that "desire to learn" is a binary attribute. With enough desire, a lot of people could probably do a lot more than what they do.

_________________
be immersed

The efficacy of overlearning is well established.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I don't either. But a lot of people have a desire to be shodan without much desire to learn go.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

It's important, entropi, to remember that for Kageyama, "mastery of the fundamentals" does not explain the difference between the average amateur dan and the average amateur kyu. Amateur dans may have improved their reading abilities, memorized josekis, and built up a lot of chutzpah, but Kageyama's contention is precisely that they get stronger while playing the most outlandish, nonsensical moves.

Whether that's right or not is open to question, but clearly "I saw a bunch of dans playing and I didn't see them playing any fundamentals" doesn't constitute a critique of Kageyama... that's really his point.

Let me have another stab at a definition:

From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fundamental:


I think point 1 is spot on for the go usage. You have to know the basics before moving to advanced things.



Well put

Many amateurs (myself included) like to skip some of the fundamentals in order to study more "interesting" things. That's not only true in go, it's the same for basically any skill. E.g., in my other hobby, bowling, most players don't really like to train the fundamentals (free pendulum, straight release, ...), they just like to play. It's understandable, playing is more interesting that standing at the foul line and making pendulum exercises. And you also get better by playing a lot. But if you want to get really good, you have to learn it anyway, and starting with the fundamentals is more efficient than starting with advanced things

I like this quote. I've gotta admit that sometimes I'm guilty of this, myself.

Ironically(?), I find that momentum gets things rolling. When I start studying go more, I enjoy it more and think less about rank. When I start thinking about rank more, sometimes I start studying less, and like go less.

At least with me, this type of momentum has a big effect.

_________________
be immersed

The fundamentals are the most important thing in any skill, the approach is pretty much the same everywhere, that's why Kageyama gives examples from baseball and from cooking. They're basic techniques from which everything else is built, and you need to be really good at them and practice them all the time. In music, scales are one of the fundamental techniques and playing scales is a common way to practice.

The best and most obvious example from Kageyama is the long ladder with which he starts the book. Ladders (i.e. the ability to read long non-branching sequences) are extremely fundamental to go, yet people neglect them. I certainly didn't feel like reading that ladder out! But that's exactly the wrong approach. Instead of working on my fundamentals, like reading ladders, I preferred to read about stuff like advanced opening theory on senseis. Entertaining, but not nearly as useful.

- Study all topics WRT fundamentals.
- Get the fundamentals as completely as possible. (E.g., don't overlook particular fundamental principles.)

I don't interpret Kageyama that way at all. First, as has been pointed out, reading ability is definitely included among the fundamentals that Kageyama emphasizes. How much of this is the result of hard work vs. innate ability is another topic, but it is still fundamental.

My interpretation of Kageyama is that he is mostly warning against the habit of seeking out increasingly exotic moves and strategies in order to win, rather than working on basic skills (fundamentals that include reading ability) so that it is possible to win with normal moves. I feel that attitude is poignant because there does seems to be skill range where players really try to "out-weird" each other.

I don't think at any point Kageyama suggests that improving the fundamentals is an easy process and he is certainly not the one saying that it is possible to get to xy dan in no time. His "bitter truth" is that improving fundamentals hard but unavoidable if you want to improve. Your "bitter truth" is related to individual differences, which certainly do exist.

If you include reading ability as a fundamental, I think your post actually demonstrates that you have strong faith in this fundamental, but you have doubts about how much working hard can overcome invdividual limitations and you have doubts about the value non-reading fundamentals. I have some doubts about those things myself.

Perhaps you can post one of those Korean games you mentioned and say which moves you think are not following the fundamentals. It will be interesting to see if it is more the loser or the winner that feels the need to deviate from them. Of course you can't tell much from one game, but it is possible that there are more fundamental moves that one might suspect.

Are you sure? I see a lot of haengma concepts in that book. Chapter 3, "The Stones Go Walking" and Chapter 4 "The Struggle To Get Ahead" get right to the core of some basic haengma.

There are some advanced books that contain the word "haengma" in their title, but there are also some very basic ones. Many consider haengma a fundamental.

My personal "fundamentals":
1. Think enough! ( You should be able to replay your game more easily when you can recall the meaning of your moves)
2. Train your reading-power continously and use this power. ( See Point 1 )
3. You will never make a 9-Dan-error. Most of your errors are of fundamental nature. Analyze!
4. Knowledge that you can understand completly is a subset of fundamental knowledge. Study all you can understand in order to get a broader understanding of meanings and the pontenzial of your moves.
5. Do you think that you have learned or even mastered a topic? Fine. But some months later you can study the same topic again. And again you will learn something.
6. You can't call a move a good move until you have considered alternatives. ( See Point 1 )

You learn to understand. But understanding is never absolute. Problems arise when you try to use higher-level concepts without a neccessary good understanding in the more basic skillz.
Example: To make proper use of probing moves on a shimari. All possible variations should end in a good result.
When you are just trying out and your group is killed, you have obviously neglected something "fundamental".
Of course, there is no progress without effort. But you cannot go wrong when you study basic skillz. But when you study contents like probing moves you can "learn" false things, when have not mastered the basic skillz, yet. Than you have wasted your study-time.

To think on a higher level, you have to save the time on the lower level. I think that is another good reason for studying the fundamentals.

The ability to learn is imo another point. I can understand "Study the fundamentals" can be interpreted as "Study all the simple things, with the desire to learn everybody can be a shodan". I cannot agree. In fact, such statements can cause frustration to some players.
But when you think on the proverb "The journey is its own reward" it makes sense again.

- I can support this method. I've been doing hundreds of easy problems at WBaduk and already I can see that the readiness to read sequences has come to surface in my games. I believe brain is like a muscle in that its workout improves the result. All that matters is that you visualize positions and consider possibilities for you to become the kind of person that visualizes positions and considers possibilities.

As for easy vs. hard problems, I like to think easiness as a function of solving time. "Thoroughly internalized" problems can be solved in a matter of seconds. As if you were playing blitz. There are some kinds of problems that are hard to figure out, even though the tesuji used in them is common. I want to practice those problems over and over to begin internalizing them. Internalized tactics can then be readily used in real games, because they come to mind. This is the point where horizons can be broadened and solving more complex problems becomes naturally possible.

So here we have an experienced, scholarly, helpful, and well-respected L19 poster who sees no need to recommend any book published in the past three decades (or maybe longer if you are dating from the Japanese editions?) when the question of fundamentals comes up. It's like a go publisher's nightmare. But there's something to be learned from that. Like in many disciplines, the real fundamentals rarely change...

It is true that the fundamentals do not change. But the real reason that I did not recommend any recent books in English is that I have not read them. However, Maeda and Sakata are classics. And they are not out of print in Japanese. Takagawa is, but I donated my set to the Yale Library. As a kyu player, I felt that I learned the most from Takagawa. His set is comprehensive, the writing is clear and logical, and there are a number of comments on kyu vs. kyu games.

The English go literature is so extensive now that there must be excellent books that cover the fundamentals.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Not to be argumentative or inflamatory, but the statement that there are no fundamentals is simply silly, and likely meant to be inflamatory.

What are fundamentals?

I would say Reading, Whole Board Thinking, and Reading.
Tesuji is nice, but you can find a tesuji with reading.
Joseki are simply very very well known paths of reading performed and reperformed by professionals and used as shortcuts.
Direction of play is a combination of reading (if I play here, this is the result that I think will follow) and whole board thinking (does this result look good for me? What does the board look like afterwards?)
Everything boils down to Reading, Thinking, and Reading, usually in that order.

Fundamentals are the things that you eat, breathe, and see in your sleep. If I showed you a dead shape and asked you to name the key point, you'd be able to point at it without fail. But that key point, that very basic tesuji, is based on reading, and knowing that reading inside and out. This is a fundamental. Know that fundamental, and you know one of the thousands of building blocks that a pro uses without conscious effort.

Without fundamentals, you are swordfighting with a bad stance, you are climbing a rock with shifting handholds.

I feel Kagayama brought up fundamentals not as 'see here, this is what makes a pro', so much as 'see, here, this is what makes a game of Go.'

When people say 'study fundamentals' they mean, more bluntly, You're making errors in reading, errors in basic, building block level choices, that should be beneath you. The choice of cross cut or extend, the choice of stay connected or leap out, there are many choices, all of them based on reading.

I often find certain points in my game hard, not because my opponent has played some brilliant move that I hadn't considered, but because my opponent played something I looked at, and dismissed as bad for them. Playing too close to strength, playing a cut that shouldn't work, playing a half a dozen weak groups in the opening. These are all 'fundamental' mistakes to me. They're things I wouldn't do, because I believe in my decision making matrix that dismisses these moves as 'too small for now, too risky, too painful to save'. But proving that belief, that can be very, very dificult. And it all comes back to reading.


It is true, fundamental ideas to me, may not be fundamental to you, or anyone else in the world.

We all play our own game of Go. Unlike Chess, where there are codified openings and set in stone responses and gambits and lines that have been played and replayed until high level players are almost always playing someone else's favourite line... Go is a game of creativity and personal choice.

Is it better to strive for thickness or territory? That depends on your style of play.
Is it better to disrupt your opponent, or extend your power? That depends on your style of play.
Fundamental things to my game of Go may not be fundamental to everyone else.

Do you suppose the fundamental precepts of cosmic theory go are the same as the fundamentals of 3.3 opening theory?

Never the less, the originators of these ideas had fundamental ideas in mind when they set out to build their styles of play.

Here's your problem... you're reading Kagayama

Fundamentals definitely exist. That is why pros constantly can talk about complex game situations and make even beginners feel like they are learning something. The stronger you get, the less it becomes "don't do this, this is bad- trust me, I read out all the variations" and the more it becomes, "this is an inefficient shape. It restricts this group's liberties/strengthens the opponents stones/separates black's groups/does not work with your other groups." Pros always seem to be talking about the simplest things and everyone feels enlightened learning from them because of that fact. You will get stronger through reading, yes, but until you understand these abstract, but fundamental, concepts, you're not going anywhere fast because you don't know what to read! Humans have a limited reading ability. You are pretending as though pros can just sit down and look at the game like a supercomputer. No doubt they have amazing reading capabilities, but most of them developed those just like any other player over time and though it is greater, it is likely not orders of magnitudes greater.

Alternatively, if you say they can *just* envision the game better, it starts to sound like you're the one who believes in unexplainable magic that makes people better and that you're just "unlucky" you were born destined to be bad at go. They just understand the fundamentals better than you- they can tell that a shape is inefficient or heavy at a glance and infer problems that may arise because of it, or draw inferences from analogous shapes and situations. If you simply don't play a bad shape because you know what one looks like, you don't have to read those thousands of trees of moves that go with it.

In my experience, this happens in the kyu range, and then it goes in reverse as you start going past 1d. You eventually do have to read everything out, because good shape doesn't always work and bad shape sometimes does.

Mostly yes, partly not.