Quotation reference:
viewtopic.php?p=155648#p155648SmoothOper wrote:
did RJ, give any high level ideas for contrasting approaches. Say, why he chose to write a book titled "Fighting Fundamentals" rather than a book called "Calm Fundamentals"?
A book on the "fundamentals of peace" is in my too long wishlist of books to write, but not urgent at the moment. Quite a few of the fundamentals of fighting as well as territorial positional judgement (another book) are applicable also to peaceful positions.
Nevertheless, the question remains why I have written Fighting Fundamentals before, say, Fundamentals of Peace. The reasons include:
- Before starting to write the book, I had enough conceptual material for it.
- Ca. 70% of the middle game positions include fights, i.e., the topic is important.
- There was a pretty low fraction of described versus possible go theory about fighting and decision making in the middle game in the (especially English) literature.
These reasons were good motivation to write the book.
High level ideas for contrasting approaches? This can mean several things. Maybe you ask whether the book discusses, on a high level, whether to choose a fight or peace? Well, yes, also that; there is a related principle in the book:) However, it does not extensively compare war and peace.
daal's review points out that the book teaches a functional approach, but does not teach much about the shapes of moves. E.g., elsewhere you might read the advice "attack with the keima". IMO, such proverbs and belief in shapes are misleading, because various shapes can serve the same purpose, and the same shape can serve attack, defense, or combined attack and defense. I do not recall by heart if the book states something like this explicitly, but daal has described the book's approach well.
WRT to different approaches, namely reading and positional judgement, I do not see them as contrasting to fighting principles. Quite contrarily, the book encourages combining the different approaches.
If, however, you expect another book about calm fundamentals or different players' thinking to have approaches in contradiction to the book's concepts on a high level, you can learn sooner or later that every player 6d+ or professional has a profound (conscious or subconsious) understanding of the concepts, although part of them had not been in the earlier literature. One can postpone becoming familiar with the concepts, but one cannot avoid them, because sooner or later one meets strong enough opponents being aware of them. Therefore, IMO, your query for contrasting approaches on a high level is better replaced by combining different high level approaches and replacing too specialised approaches (such as proverbs about shapes) by more powerful concepts.
E.g., when the book states the principle that important groups should maintain stability, it does not create any contrast between fight and peace, but allows application in both positional environments.
In other words, I can also say to have written the book to allow application to fighting and peaceful positions the part of theory that does not specifically depend on fighting aspects. Of course, there is also theory inapplicable and irrelevant for peace, e.g., when a principle refers to unsettled groups.
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RobertJasiek
