John Fairbairn wrote:
I have a feeling that the waters got muddied a little.
The thread started (I infer) from a possibly unsupported claim that Takagawa was a good player to study if you are an amateur.
Thanks John. First, I meant Ferran, not you, but I already regretted making a sour remark because Ferran is not responsible for the time I decide to spend. It's just that I tried to take a positive approach to his lament and was a little disappointed that it didn't spark any further engagement of his. Instead, I cherish - and should - the engagement from others, like kvasir, dust and now yourself.
John Fairbairn wrote:
The thread seems to have tried to assess that initially but later (and not necessarily because of Dieter's own comments) went down the rabbit holes of comparing Takagawa to AI and then Takagawa to Go Seigen.
Indeed, analysis by AI took over, and that's because I like to do that
. I'm ambivalent about the usefulness of that myself. I'd prefer Michael Redmond being with me instead of KataGo, to help me understand the flow of the game, but KataGo it is and I'm immensely grateful for that.
John Fairbairn wrote:
So we are left with the still unsupported claim that Takagawa is the one most worth studying. Yet we can make progress with that, we'd still have to examine HOW we study him.
The hypothesis I took from his style description is: "If you want to learn how to play for influence, avoid complex fights and then win in the endgame, then replay his games to learn how he, as a professional, does so". The ten games I studies only partly confirm that hypothesis. The biggest problem I encountered was unexpected: nearly all of the games I chose were no komi. "How to win a no komi game as Black" now seems a better idea for the study of those games.
John Fairbairn wrote:
A possible approach is to start by eliminating those who are NOT worth studying.
I'd say Go Seigen is top of that list! Precisely because of all those magical qualities given above. By all means play over his games for enjoyment, and I know several people who have done that, some more than once. But you have to understand that watching Messi play does not lead you to play like Messi. Even Messi's team-mates train with him, work with him, can ask him questions, and are top pros themselves - but they still can't play like Messi. If you are more interested in playing football than watching it, and so go to a coaching class, the coaches won't even try to teach you Messi's tricks. The most they will say is that if you work as hard as him, you will improve.
Having formerly replayed many Go Seigen games, I agree, while I did take from those games the idea to play a high stake ko and win a game by winning it or losing it in a smart way.
John Fairbairn wrote:
And, as a sort of confirmation of that, I can't recall ever seeing any go pro advising anyone to study Go Seigen (in the stylistic sense we are talking about here).
Could you tell me again how T. Mark Hall gained two stones by "merely" transcribing them?
John Fairbairn wrote:
But do you know something, it is very rare, in my experience, for pros to advise studying any one player's style. The nearest to that would be various comments lauding Shuei. But if you look at those carefully, you will more often than not find that the pro is saying something like, "I admire Shuei", which is far from saying, "You should study him."
Shusaku sometimes pops up, but he's a special case. For one thing, he died young and never made it to the top. For another, he was the object of an obsession by a fellow Hiroshima-ite, Ishigaya Kosaku, who published and actively promoted a large collection of his games. Since, at that time, there were no other large collections of one player's games readily available, it made sense to point to these games of Shusaku - not because he was the best but because he was available. Furthermore, he was recommended above all because of his style of playing that ensured that he never lost with Black, because there was no komi. That is now something of a lost art. So, again, play over his games for entertainment, by all means, but studying to improve probably means looking elsewhere.
There was a time when Takagawa was lauded to players in the West as the one to study. That was (being cynical about it, perhaps) because go was being pushed in the West by the Japanese Foreign Ministry, and Takagawa was the pure Japanese Honinbo (Go Seigen not being allowed to play in the Honinbo at crucial times). Truth to tell, western players were seen more as dogs who could almost walk on their hind legs, and so were given simplistic advice to learn some tricks. But's that's not necessarily a bad thing, even today. Almost all top pros are better than other top pros for reasons that even these other top pros haven't yet fathomed, so a much simpler model does seem called for.
And a model of what? A style??!!?? My own sense is that it is gigantic conceit for any amateur to try to affect a style. They just haven't got the technical mastery to employ any style consistently effectively.
Oh, I think so too.
John Fairbairn wrote:
Again just my gut feeling, but I strongly suspect that the best advice is to forget about even-game fuseki study and to play lots of high handicap games (preferably with stronger players but use big komis if necessary). Learn to use the handicap stones. That will teach you more than enough to deal with all sorts of fusekis. And those early Japanese writers in Go Monthly and so on, did recommend precisely that. But most Western players insist on playing only even games, and even those few who affect to enjoy them tend to be strong players who love flaunting their superiority (yes, I'm in a cynical mood, today!). So the result is that most dogs here still can't quite walk on their hind legs and still can't do any decent tricks. (But show us a tree and we can squirt on it!)
Someone on this forum advised me some time ago to play many high handicap games against KataGo or other AI, absence of strong amateurs willing to do so. I did that but I'm not sure if it was more useful than any other game. (not sure is no euphemism here, I mean not sure).
John Fairbairn wrote:
When I try to make sense of this situation, the best I can come up with is the notion that oriental players mostly learn from parents, siblings or schoolfellows, and in those situations, aided and abetted by the general culture, of course, they respect age differences and naturally play lots and lots of handicap games. Indeed, all the various biographies of pros I have read recount how they graduated from 9 stones to even games against, say a parent, and then were sent to a teacher, where the cycle of taking large handicaps started again (Takagawa falls into this category). In the West, however, we nearly always learn as individuals, and at an age and in a culture where we are disinclined to take handicaps as matter of false pride - I don't recall ever seeing a chess game at odds except in magazines, for example). That individualism makes us (unwisely, I think) reject handicap games in go, and even when we do play them, we are tolerating them, not embracing them.
In my early days, before Internet or AI, I did play a lot of handicap games and eventually overcame the best player in our club. Sadly he was only 6 kyu. I'm forever grateful to him but it took me a while and a few kilometers to find the first dan who wanted to play me. Later, when even teaching beginners, I had to tolerate a lot of entitlement of "no handicap please, I want to play the real game".
John Fairbairn wrote:
The best place I can think of for examining how pros learn is the autobiographical book by Takemiya in which he details his progress (with games, at first with his father) from 9-stones upwards. The book is in Japanese but I put the games in the GoGoD database, myself, so I know they are available.
It is hard to find a collection of high-handicap (5 stones upwards) games by one player taking large handicaps apart from that one, but it is easy to put together a collection together with various pros. I know because I've done that as well.
One good example to start with here might have been Takagawa taking 9 stones against Honinbo Shusai (GoGoD 1925-04-03a), and there are several 9-stone games by Takemiya. At 5 stones, there are Shusai v Fujisawa Kuranosuke (1930-12-13a), Shusai v. Fujisawa Tamotsu=Hideyuki (1937-01-13a), Segoe v. Sugiuchi Masao (1935-00-00a), Ino Seiho v. Kato Masao (1958-12-14b), Gu Shuiru v. Chen Zude (1953-10-00a), various with Cho Chikun, etc etc.
I can recommend these games because I databased them myself and so am familiar with them. My recommendation is based on the observation that the young pro nearly always won, but always did well stylistically (as you'd expect because they were mostly trial games to become pro). For that reason, you don't really need commentaries. Again, I know that because I've read them. You just have to latch on to the young pro's line of thought (e.g. splitting attacks or any other strategy that shows using the handicap stones together - there is never, ever any praise for just taking four corners, even if you win!) and then follow it through. The quality most often praised is consistency. That ranks much higher than finding the occasional tesuji or even efficiency. In contrast, when a pro gives an amateur a large handicap, Black's play tends to be riddled with mistakes and is devoid of consistency. The commentary tends to be a sift through the garbage pail. But once you can grasp how a budding pro, rather then an amateur, can play with a high handicap, you can see how he transfers those skills to lower handicaps (again there is much material in the database).
Very useful. Thanks!