As reported earlier, the evidence since about the year 2000 hints at the contrary. In particular, I won most H3 games (part of them the pro was playing simultaneous).



Nonsense. In particular, 7k is a ridiculous example for argument against a 5d player.

Compared to professionals, when writing books, I have disadvantages and advantages. Disadvantage: my reading is relatively slow, so developing diagram sequences is slow. Advantage: I have spent 30,000+ hours on go theory research (besides my similar time spent for becoming stronger).



Do not make arbitrary claims.



Nope. Not just something, but a lot. Not just one book but several books. (Will Magicwand ever realise that I have written more than one book.)

Nothing is more welcome than a challenge about book quality based on comparing contents. However, Magicwand never dares to enter such discussion waters. Whenever confronted with factual discussions about comparing contents of pro books versus my books, he escapes crying "You are a very weak player!". In fact, he is just following this discussion pattern again, now comparing me to 7k players.



What is annoying is criticism avoiding factual comparisons of contents.

RJ,

Don't nitpick.

You are a weak enough player in go. I don't care whether you are 4d or 5d, you are still a lot weaker than a Taiwanese 1p.

You will improve in nothing by your way of thinking.

_________________
Amsterdam, soon.

Great, and what about you?

Oh, sorry.

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Amsterdam, soon.

Robert, I know I shouldn't, but: the evidence is that players stronger than you do not win on 3H against strong professionals. http://www.361points.com/blog/tag/shusaku-cup/

So your only real hope is to construe "professional" as 1p, and hope that there is some country where the 1ps are more than a stone weaker than the top professionals.

Good luck.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I know.

This says nothing about my skill to use handicap stones well in real world games.

But more to the point: if you find some 9p professionals (or lower ranks of known 9p strength) who want to play serious handicap games against me during, say, the next European Go Congress (except during the main and 13x13 tournaments, which I would not skip for that purpose), then, of course, I am prepared to beat them! (That is, to find out who is right:) )

To be fair, most pro-books are not written by the pros themselves just like presidential autobiographies are ghost written. Of course if a book doesn't have an associated pro's name, might make the book a little suspect.

1) Is there evidence for this rumour? I see this rumour spread since at least the mid 90s, but is it true?

2) Somebody claiming authorship on the book cover takes the associated responsibility for the contents!

How would you know if you couldn't read it?

Nakayama is well known to have written with Takemiya on these specific books.

Other books are mostly a guess, but it would not be surprising that professionals with extremely busy schedules would not write the books they are credited with. I just hope they at least have time to review what's being written in their name.

1) I could, of course, read the diagrams and move number / diagram number related references to diagrams (such as move sequences in the text).

2) The texts are sparse. The books are teaching only / almost exclusively by examples. For such books, it is particularly easy to get almost all of the contents regardless of not being able to read the pure text bits.

3) When I starting learning from diagrams of Asian books as a 5k, I had problems because then I still had no confidence in distingushing "good for Black", "slightly better for Black", "equal" etc. positions. Already ca. 4 months later, as a 1k, I had almost overcome this problem. Therefore, it is much easier now to concentrate on finding out which contents the author appears to teach by a move sequence or a series of move sequence diagrams.

I think you may still be overestimating your ability of what you're getting out of diagrams without explanations.

Probably I get something that the author did not intend to teach and do not get something else that the author wants to teach:)

Right, you're not commenting on the book but what you can come up with on your own. Since you're much weaker than the author, you won't get as much out of it.

LOL. You are implying a book quality many times higher than is typically found! For the usual rather low quality relative to what a strong (pro) author could be able to teach (according to our dreams of principally possible pro teaching ability), it is reasonably easy to get much of what is taught from reading the diagrams but not the text. (Occasionally, this may happen to be not the case. But usually it is straightforward to interpret and learn from a diagram-heavy book by only their diagrams.)

So would your claim be that you have the strength of someone who would need 4 handicap stones, but you believe that your ability to use those stones is such that you would not need them?

_________________
Occupy Babel!

My claim is that I have a solid understanding of how to use handicap stones. (Even when taking or giving H9 against 130 komi:) Have you tried my little invention? It is good for practising dragon kills without being so unnatural as the fill all the first lines except 1-1 game. A necessary skill for cosmic go!)

robert: how many professional players have you played serious money game?
i have many many times.
i feel that i can win in 3 stone and lose....
and they offer 4 stone...and i still lose.
finally they offer 5 stone...but that is also hard to win..

you have not seen strong players yet.

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

This thread is starting to go way off topic.
It's not about whether RJ's games or skills is comparable to Takemiya's Cosmic Go or to other pros.
It's about offering suggestions for material which will help the starter of the thread understand Takemiya's style of play.
RJ suggests that his games may be useful and that is his suggestion.
Attacking his suggestion is not useful to the starter of the thread.
Why don't we offer more suggestions which are constructive rather than controversial and keep within the spirit of the forum rules.
Of course if you want to continue the tangent discussion, you are welcome to start a new thread as long as we stay away from personal attacks and keep within the spirit of the forum rules.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

To disagree, RJ asserted facts from a book about Cosmic Go that he could not understand. We don't need a discussion on it, but it has to be stated after his opinions on the book, so people don't give them too much credence.