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I am reading this SmartGo Book currently on my iPad. I cannot recommend it highly enough as the overall level of the Go World reviews are, of course, excellent and the convenience of having it all on the iPad with the dynamic diagrams (or whatever the correct term is) is worth it even if you, like me, have the original magazines. However, in Game 4 of the first Kisei there is an interesting series of statements. They revolve around White's move 12 below.
"White 12. In the pressroom, Takagawa Shukaku, the referee, said to Go Seigen: 'Looks like a new move.' Go just inclined his head sideways and murmured, 'Well.' Actually, Go had played this shoulder hit in a game with Hashimoto Utaro before the war. Go had followed it up by pressing at 21 [ez - 21 was at "a" in the diagram above], so, strictly speaking, White 14 is the new move. Asked to evaluate the result to 17, Go laughed: 'It's a new move, so that's unreasonable.'..."
A couple of things are interesting here. One is that in the analysis in Go World 1, White 12 does not warrant any comment at all. There is says, "Black 11 is unusual. In the sequence to 41 Hashimoto seems to have come out behind..." So the commentary in the book is from a different source, newly translated and added.
The second point of interest is that in Go World 3 Abe Yoshiteru analyzes White 12 as a "new joseki", commenting that a similar shoulder hit had been seen before against the 3-space pincer.
Needless to say, when faced with this sort of stuff, there was nothing for me to do but fire up Kombilo and GoGoD and check "the facts, just the facts". Well, sure enough, the facts are all wrong!
White 12 is not a new move. It was first played by Kubomatsu Katsukiyo in the 1928 Oteai against Hasegawa Akira. It was subsequently played by several people, including Sakata who played it against Sekiyama Riichi and Kitani in the '40's and '50's respectively. But notice who did not play it! Neither Go Seigen nor Hashimoto Utaro featured in any of the pre-war games (realize that GoGoD is as authoritative as it gets on Go Seigen's career games). That brings us up to 1966 when Fujiwara Shuko played it for the first time. Now it gets real interesting because he played it in the Honinbo league against... Takagawa Shukaku (who seems to have forgotten about it)!
The comment in the book ends with the statement "[White 12 doesn't seem to have become established as a joseki. It didn't make it into the Ishida Yoshio Dictionary of Basic Joseki or the Takao Shinji revision.]" This is true enough. On the other hand it did warrant six diagrams in the revision of the Igo Daijiten published in 1977. That work included the 1966 Takagawa-Fujisawa game as a reference diagram.
I am not sure what to call this. It is not an errata in the sense of a printing error. But it was certainly a fun bit of research!
_________________ Dave Sigaty "Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..." - Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21
Posts: 4511 Location: Chatteris, UK Liked others: 1589 Was liked: 656
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Actually, one of the moves I find fascinating in the original diagram is - I'd have been somewhat thinking about the cut at , but would probably have played where Black played, or played at . However, for I'd have almost definitely played the atari on top first, or cut directly. The connection at feels solid and thick as anything, but also somewhat slow and unnecessary. It makes a following cut feel funky to me, even though after some further analysis it seems really rather supportive.
There's nothing unique particularly about the shapes on the board, but the move order and timing reminds me how weak I most likely am still, and how I have a habit of ignoring thick / honte moves in exchange for what I optimistically call dynamism.
Fascinating bit of research, but even just that diagram was a mini-enlightenment
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xed_over wrote:
Is there an actual book "The Games of Fujisawa Shuko" (no batteries required)? Or did John Power write this as an eBook only?
Of the 40 game commentaries in the SmartGo Books version, you can find 38 in old Go World issues. The other two are new commentaries by John Power. So almost no batteries required. But the digital version offers a number of advantages besides the convenience of having all those games together, such as splitting long figures into logical segments, and being able to replay the moves directly in the diagrams.
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ez4u
- I'd have been somewhat thinking about the cut at 
, but would probably have played where Black played, or played at 
