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 book I've seen even try to attempt the topic of fighting "Mastering the Basics: Fight Like a Pro." Since this seemed more like an instructional book on fighting, I was definitely looking forward to seeing what Jasiek had written. Hope this review helps and let me know if you ever have any questions!

Descrip­tion: When it comes to fight­ing, many play­ers are often con­fused with the prin­ci­ples behind fight­ing. In this book, Jasiek tries to answer all the essen­tial ques­tions about fight­ing. This book cov­ers a wide array of mate­r­ial that is more suited for the very stu­dious players.

Review:

Like many other play­ers, when I first saw the title of this book, I wanted to get my hands on it as soon as I pos­si­bly could. How­ever, while the idea of hav­ing all of the “fight­ing fun­da­men­tals” cov­ered in a sin­gle book sounds entic­ing and attrac­tive, there is way more than meets the eye.

In order to under­stand my review on the book and how it relates to you, it is crit­i­cal to first empha­size the fol­low­ing: fight­ing is a com­pli­cated topic. And when I say com­pli­cated, I mean it is prob­a­bly by far the most com­plex and intri­cate of all the top­ics in go. Other things in go like joseki and fuseki can be explained rather sim­ply with rel­a­tive ease. Fight­ing, how­ever, is a far more dif­fi­cult ani­mal to tackle. As a result, the thing I want you to real­ize from the get go is that fight­ing in go does not fit into easy prin­ci­ples like “approach from the wider side” the way you want it to.

Sec­ondly, I want to clearly state that my learn­ing style is per­haps dif­fer­ent than the aver­age go player. If I were to use the anal­ogy of a bird learn­ing how to fly, I would have to say that there are a num­ber of peo­ple out there who would learn fly­ing method­i­cally. In other words, they might learn to flap their wings first, and then maybe learn about air cur­rents and how they impact flight pat­terns, etc. How­ever, I am more of the jump out of the nest and learn to fly on the way down kind of per­son. I pre­fer expe­ri­ence and prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion over deep the­o­ries that require sig­nif­i­cant time of study.

With that said, Jasiek has done a great job in pro­duc­ing the first Eng­lish go book to really try and approach this mon­stros­ity of a topic. As you can see from the table of con­tents, there are so many dif­fer­ent aspects of fight­ing that Jasiek cov­ers. And to be hon­est, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if there were a lot more that could be writ­ten on. How­ever, as far as my per­sonal expe­ri­ence goes, I have to say that work­ing through the book felt a lot like the time I took organic chem­istry in college.

What do I mean by that? Well, at the very fun­da­men­tal level, I accepted and under­stood the basic logic behind what was being taught. There were rules and gen­eral prin­ci­ples that applied to why things worked the way they did. Before I knew it though, I was drown­ing in a sea of dif­fer­ent the­o­ries, terms and intri­ca­cies that over­whelmed my brain and it didn’t take long before I started los­ing inter­est. “If you attack here, you must keep in mind of X; but also real­ize that Y might impact Z in a way that impli­cates the life of X and Y.” *dizzy*

The thing to real­ize is this: fight­ing is com­pli­cated. And while Jasiek has done a great job try­ing to orga­nize it into dif­fer­ent sec­tions and try to break every­thing down into prin­ci­ples, it doesn’t change the fact that fight­ing is a multi-faceted skill that will not improve sim­ply because you read a book. There are so many aspects that go into it: your read­ing abil­ity, your posi­tional judgment abil­ity, your life and death, etc. So unless those are up to par, fight­ing will still seem like a chaotic whirl­wind that you won’t be able to make much sense of.

At the end of the day, while I per­son­ally had a dif­fi­cult time absorb­ing the mate­r­ial in the book, this book is truly a mile­stone for West­ern go lit­er­a­ture in its effort to pio­neer a way for us to learn about fight­ing. And to be hon­est, I think that I might just be a weird out­lier who doesn’t have the dili­gence or tenac­ity to absorb the mate­r­ial. So if even a small part of you believes that you have the per­son­al­ity and learn­ing style suited to ben­e­fit­ing from this book, then I would dis­re­gard my expe­ri­ence of the book and rec­om­mend you get it when­ever possible.

For the full review, see my blog at BenGoZen!

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http://www.bengozen.com

Since the book overwhelms you, you might try three months of application in your games those parts of the book you just recall without effort. Afterwards, read those parts of book again that you do not apply yet.

You are at a rank where many concepts are still pretty unfamiliar. Until 1k / 1d, players become familiar with the basics of most concepts. Strong amateur dans have a fluent (possibly subconscious) knowledge of every concept and the book's principles, except for the few invented by me (whose application must be at least in the subconscious knowledge of professional players, since I see them applying those principles). In other words, if you want to become a dan player, you cannot avoid those concepts and principles. Why not use also the book for learning and understanding them?

You want to be a bird learning to fly by dropping out of the nest, but I think that nevertheless you must have aims in order to learn flying well: in a storm looking for food while being hunted by an eagle, surely you have the aims to cope with the wind, find some food and escape the eagle. And already we have a principle in which you want to achieve X, Y and Z.

Although you characterise the book's principles as depending on several parameters, I have just checked and found only 6 such advanced principles, such as "A decision between reduction or invasion, and about how deep it can be, depends on life status and the balances of territory and influence.". Most of the principles in the book are simpler from "Sacrifice non-essential stones." to "A player invades the opponent's region, if this leads to the most favourable changes of the territory and influence balances.". The newly born bird enters the snake cave without thinking, while the experienced bird first assesses the territory.

Of course, I agree that the book is more suitable for the studious reader than for the bird. Can birds learn to fly well by just doing it? I am not sure. It reminds me of Ishida Akira's description of a kyu player creating overdeveloped shapes. Until I studied fighting carefully, I had been such a kyu player... Cho Seokbin: "I don't understand. Why do amateurs fight just for the fun of it?"

Great advice Robert. I definitely plan on revisiting the book when I am a bit stronger and able to really sit down and absorb the material. I'm certainly looking forward to the day where I am able to see things clearly the way you describe. =) And when I do, you can be sure that the review will get a revision to give perspective from both sides! =) Thanks again for your advice!

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http://www.bengozen.com

Hi Ben,

Reading your review I am reminded of the example of teaching a five year old how to ride a bike. The five year old does not learn by having all of the physics principles in play explained to him. Or by reading a book. The kid learns by doing.

A long time ago a strong player told me I needed to learn certain things in the middle game one can't get from a book. It is probably why it takes so long to get strong at this game. Even the strong computer Go programs learn these days by Monte Carlo simulations - they can tell you the right move but not necessarily why it is the right move.

Not that there should be no book learning, but that it needs to be generously supplemented with practice and help from stronger players.

Just my $0.02.

Take care.

Mike