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Positional Judgment 1 - Territory Review
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Author:  bengozen [ Thu Jan 02, 2014 8:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Positional Judgment 1 - Territory Review
Posi­tional Judge­ment 1: Territory

Introduction: Hey everyone! My name is Ben Hong and I am currently ranked about 3K AGA / 4K KGS. Prior to reading this book, the only other real exposure I've had to this topic is Cho Chikun's "Positional Judgment." So I was looking forward to learning about this topic from a different perspective. Hope this review helps and let me know if you ever have any questions!

Descrip­tion: Ever won­der how play­ers man­age to esti­mate ter­ri­tory? And with ter­ri­fy­ing accu­racy? Well look no far­ther, with the first vol­ume of Jasiek’s Posi­tional Judg­ment, you can get an inside look at the inner work­ings of how play­ers make these accu­rate esti­ma­tions. It’s filled with numer­ous exam­ples for you to prac­tice, but be wary, this is def­i­nitely not for the light hearted! On the other hand, rest assured that you will be sig­nif­i­cantly stronger at posi­tional judg­ment than most play­ers out there if you can mas­ter the mate­r­ial in here.

Review:

When I first started read­ing this book, the first thing I noticed is that the lay­out of the book is very clean. Exam­ples of this include shorter para­graphs, proper spac­ing between para­graphs, proper usage of bul­let points and num­bered lists, using bold appro­pri­ately, etc. And though this might seem like com­pletely irrel­e­vant, but I per­son­ally believe that poor book lay­outs make it dif­fi­cult for the reader to read and learn the mate­r­ial prop­erly. And since go lit­er­a­ture is still matur­ing, it was great to see Jasiek’s books tak­ing a step for­ward in the right direction.

The sec­ond thing that I couldn’t help but notice is the count­less exam­ples that Jasiek uses in this book. This is a wel­come change to books that con­sist of lots of texts and expla­na­tion for a few dia­grams because weaker ama­teur play­ers like myself ben­e­fit more from increased expo­sure as opposed to one extremely detailed and high level analy­sis. And though I would have liked to have seen more exam­ples that uti­lized smaller boards to accli­mate the reader to the mate­r­ial, the exam­ples are great and will pro­vide plenty of mate­r­ial for the stu­dious reader.

Now of course, there is the ques­tion of how the con­tent is. I have two words for it: extremely thor­ough. I’m talk­ing text­book thor­ough. I mean if you just look at the table of contents (listed in my blog's review), you’ll notice how Jasiek breaks up posi­tional judg­ment into dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories. In addi­tion, there are even math­e­mat­i­cal argu­ments for things like why basic endgame kos are worth 1/3 point. This is great because you can always be sure that Jasiek will back up his state­ments with evi­dence and proof. And though this might be a lit­tle over­whelm­ing for play­ers like me who are ner­vous about posi­tional judg­ment, this gives the reader the oppor­tu­nity to come back later and gain a more in-depth under­stand­ing of cal­cu­lat­ing ter­ri­tory if desired.

In addi­tion, I would have to say that Jasiek does a good job mix­ing in some the­ory and new terms on the topic of posi­tional judg­ment. For exam­ple, one of the inno­v­a­tive con­cepts that I found rather sim­ple and pro­found is that posi­tional judg­ment relies on peace­ful reduc­tions from the out­side as opposed to com­pli­cated fight­ing vari­a­tions. And in terms of new ter­mi­nol­ogy, Jasiek intro­duces the term “qui­es­cence” to try and fur­ther explain con­cepts within posi­tional judgment.

As a gen­eral overview of the book, I would have to say it is incred­i­bly com­pre­hen­sive and thor­ough on the topic of posi­tional judg­ment. It is incred­i­bly in-depth and detailed in regards to its expla­na­tions of spe­cific top­ics and can be rather advanced if the reader is look­ing for a broad overview of posi­tional judg­ment. So while any per­son who reads and fully mas­ters the con­tent in this book would become VERY good at posi­tional judg­ment, it can be a bit scary for play­ers look­ing to casu­ally learn about the topic.

Synopsis:

What did I enjoy about the book?

    Effectively uti­lizes page lay­out and text ele­ments to deliver his message.
    It is extremely detailed and uses a method­i­cal and pre­cise approach to show how Jasiek cal­cu­lates territory.
    There are so many exam­ples! Exam­ples galore!

What did I gain from read­ing this book?

    Intro­duc­tion to new terms and ideas regard­ing posi­tional judgment.
    Bet­ter under­stand­ing of how strong play­ers arrive at their posi­tional judgments.
    More con­fi­dence in my abil­ity to count, while know­ing I have a long way to go.

What is the for­mat of the book?

    Text­book. Con­cepts are intro­duced and are accom­pa­nied by numer­ous exam­ples along with a few prac­tice prob­lems at the end of each sec­tion as well.

What aspects can be improved on?

    There were momen­tary lapses when I thought the gram­mat­i­cal structure/syntax was a lit­tle off, but this might be due to the fact that I come from “Amer­i­can English.”
    Per­haps this is a chronic issue I have, but I would have liked to have seen more introd­c­tory level prob­lems to accli­mate play­ers who are not accus­tomed to judg­ing 19x19 board positions.
    This may be per­sonal taste, but I would have pre­ferred to see the game infor­ma­tion for all the dia­grams be placed in a Ref­er­ence sec­tion instead since it makes the prob­lem a bit clut­tered and hard to find the per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion to the reader (i.e., Black to play).

Is this book easy to read?

    This book con­tains a wealth of infor­ma­tion and is prob­a­bly appro­pri­ately seen as a text­book. As a result, don’t expect it to flow like a con­ver­sa­tion or a casual lec­ture from Kageyama and such. It takes time to read and digest. In fact, I will need to go through this book mul­ti­ple times before I can say I feel I know the mate­r­ial well.

Bot­tom Line

    An incred­i­ble step for­ward for the Eng­lish go lit­er­a­ture com­mu­nity on posi­tional judgment.
    The most method­i­cal and detailed book on posi­tional judg­ment that I’ve read thus far.
    Totally worth every penny if you’re inter­ested in gain­ing an in-depth under­stand­ing of how posi­tional judg­ment works.

For the full review, see my blog at BenGoZen!
Author:  RBerenguel [ Fri Jan 03, 2014 12:40 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Positional Judgment 1 - Territory Review
You beat me to the review... I've been trying to find a chunk of time large enough for writing and revising mine since last year!
Author:  bengozen [ Fri Jan 03, 2014 4:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Positional Judgment 1 - Territory Review
You should still post and update yours! I think users are always looking for multiple opinions after all! :D
Author:  RBerenguel [ Fri Jan 03, 2014 6:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Positional Judgment 1 - Territory Review
Absolutely, I will post my review. I just need some time to write it, it's most in my head already :D
Author:  happysocks [ Sat Feb 01, 2014 11:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Positional Judgment 1 - Territory Review
Thanks for the review Ben, quite interested in this book. Look forward to yours RBerenguel. From the sounds of things it's good news there will be a Positional Judgment 2.
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