Review: The Road Map to Shodan, Volume 2

[HermanHiddema]

Herman, it is very easy to write such a book, and I could do it in less than a week. However, my aim is not to enjoy only readers wishing only short-term improvement, but my aim is to enable readers to improve well both in the short- and long-term. Knowledge learnt as a 10k must still be very useful as a strong kyu, low dan and high dan.

Such is possible also by means of easy-to-read books in this book's writing style (except that I would avoid dull text of the "move 3 here, then move 4 there, then that move 5" type). However, it is not done well with weak, partially wrong principles. It must be done with strong, mostly right principles. For the easy-to-read reader's joy, there is no noteworthy difference between "Defend your weak stones" and "Defend your weak important stones", but for improvement potential the difference is great.

There is a second objection: Such a book's "attractive" writing style pretends that one could become dan with very little effort. This is not so, because much more knowledge is needed than can be conveyed in a few such books with only little contents. Either a player must read lots of such books or he must accept also books with denser contents. (Or seek quite a lot of knowledge from other sources.) E.g., it must be spelled out what distinguishes a weak from a strong group, because such knowledge is essential for becoming a dan player.

I am quite sceptical that you would be able to change your entire writing style in a week and produce a book in a style that has thus far been entirely alien to you.

Other than that, you are mostly creating a false dichotomy between "attractive" and "educational". It is quite possible to write material that is both attractive and educational.

You example is excellent, and shows exactly where your thinking goes wrong. To the dedicated student, the difference between "Defend your weak stones" and "Defend your weak important stones" is that the second phrase contains a superfluous word. It is obviously implied that the weak stones to be defended should be important. By adding this word, you make the text denser without adding value.

Furthermore, you are effectively telling the reader: "Unless I spell this out for you, you would be thinking: Oh look, these stones are not important, but since they are weak, I should apparently defend them anyway." So it not only makes the text denser, it also makes it condescending.

[quantumf]

You example is excellent, and shows exactly where your thinking goes wrong. To the dedicated student, the difference between "Defend your weak stones" and "Defend your weak important stones" is that the second phrase contains a superfluous word. It is obviously implied that the weak stones to be defended should be important. By adding this word, you make the text denser without adding value.

I disagree with this point. Perhaps as a 4d you have forgotten about this disease, but kyu players (and weak dans such as myself) have a profound instinct to save every group of stones, and seldom consider sacrificing them. A more eloquent phrase than "defend your weak important stones" can probably be found, but the principle is important.

[RobertJasiek]

I am quite sceptical that you would be able to change your entire writing style in a week and produce a book in a style that has thus far been entirely alien to you.

You are sceptical because you do not understand. It is not a matter of learning a new writing style but it is a matter of willingness to teach little, partial, lowly organised, sparsely commented knowledge.

To the dedicated student, the difference between "Defend your weak stones" and "Defend your weak important stones" is that the second phrase contains a superfluous word. It is obviously implied that the weak stones to be defended should be important. By adding this word, you make the text denser without adding value.

To the dedicated student. Yes. But... not every reader already is a dedicated student with the necessary go theoretical background.

To the naive student, the short form of the principle has the effect one sees in every beginner's game: He knows by himself that he must defend his own stones and he is pretty good at noticing some of his weak stones needing defense (although he might also defend some that look weak to him but that are not that weak). Therefore he defends his weak stones because they are weak. Weak stones near strong opposing stones or the weakest stones of otherwise safe groups so that also the weakest stones survive. The beginner defends because he does not know that he should defend only important stones.

Since every player has started as a beginner, this beginner's mistake continues to occur among many SDKs. They still make this mistake because they still apply "Defend your weak stones" instead of already having a clear knowledge of "Defend your weak important stones". There is no automatic implication the efficient linguist envisions. Explicit teaching of the aspect "important" is essential.

A book teaching basics must not be written only for those few lucky bright people having the insight by their own, but the book must reveal the same also for the broad majority. Otherwise very many SDK readers of such a book continue to make the same beginner mistake.

Stylistically, the word important is superfluous. Semantically, it is mandatory.

"Defend your weak important stones" is efficient language use, because it combines three principles:

"Defend your stones" (And do not defend your opponent's stones.)
"Defend weak stones" (And do not defend strong stones.)
"Defend important stones" (And do not defend unimportant stones.)

Each of these principles is essential.

[HermanHiddema]

You example is excellent, and shows exactly where your thinking goes wrong. To the dedicated student, the difference between "Defend your weak stones" and "Defend your weak important stones" is that the second phrase contains a superfluous word. It is obviously implied that the weak stones to be defended should be important. By adding this word, you make the text denser without adding value.

I disagree with this point. Perhaps as a 4d you have forgotten about this disease, but kyu players (and weak dans such as myself) have a profound instinct to save every group of stones, and seldom consider sacrificing them. A more eloquent phrase than "defend your weak important stones" can probably be found, but the principle is important.

Players try to save those stones because they think those stones are important. Of course the concept of important/unimportant stones, and the option to sacrifice, is something a player should consider. But that is a separate issue from weak/strong stones. Separate principles should be handled separately.

[HermanHiddema]

I am quite sceptical that you would be able to change your entire writing style in a week and produce a book in a style that has thus far been entirely alien to you.

You are sceptical because you do not understand. It is not a matter of learning a new writing style but it is a matter of willingness to teach little, partial, lowly organised, sparsely commented knowledge.

I am not suggesting you "teach little, partial, lowly organised, sparsely commented knowledge", I am suggesting that you should write less dense, more attractive text, while keeping the educational content the same.

To the dedicated student, the difference between "Defend your weak stones" and "Defend your weak important stones" is that the second phrase contains a superfluous word. It is obviously implied that the weak stones to be defended should be important. By adding this word, you make the text denser without adding value.

To the dedicated student. Yes. But... not every reader already is a dedicated student with the necessary go theoretical background.

To the naive student, the short form of the principle has the effect one sees in every beginner's game: He knows by himself that he must defend his own stones and he is pretty good at noticing some of his weak stones needing defense (although he might also defend some that look weak to him but that are not that weak). Therefore he defends his weak stones because they are weak. Weak stones near strong opposing stones or the weakest stones of otherwise safe groups so that also the weakest stones survive. The beginner defends because he does not know that he should defend only important stones.

Since every player has started as a beginner, this beginner's mistake continues to occur among many SDKs. They still make this mistake because they still apply "Defend your weak stones" instead of already having a clear knowledge of "Defend your weak important stones". There is no automatic implication the efficient linguist envisions. Explicit teaching of the aspect "important" is essential.

A book teaching basics must not be written only for those few lucky bright people having the insight by their own, but the book must reveal the same also for the broad majority. Otherwise very many SDK readers of such a book continue to make the same beginner mistake.

Stylistically, the word important is superfluous. Semantically, it is mandatory.

"Defend your weak important stones" is efficient language use, because it combines three principles:

"Defend your stones" (And do not defend your opponent's stones.)
"Defend weak stones" (And do not defend strong stones.)
"Defend important stones" (And do not defend unimportant stones.)

Each of these principles is essential.

By mixing them, you muddy the waters. Teach each principle by itself, don't try to short circuit the process by trying to pack as much education content in as little text as possible. This language use is efficient only in the sense that you are using fewer words, but is at the same time inefficient at conveying the content by making the text needlessly dense and trying to teach multiple things at once.

[mitsun]

Principle A) Defend your weak stones
Principle B) Sacrifice your unimportant stones

Even though these principles may be contradictory, I think teaching along these lines probably facilitates learning for most students. Particularly if followed by clear examples of both cases.

Principle AB) Defend your important weak stones

This is a more comprehensive but also more complicated principle. Teaching along these lines is difficult, but perhaps facilitates learing for some students.

In either case, I suspect real learning depends on following up the statement of principle with a good selection of relevant examples. Then the learning would likely be good either way.

[Bill Spight]

I'm trying to understand Robert's vehemence. Perhaps every euro spent on this book is a euro that won't get spent on his. Sad, really.

I have known Robert online for almost 20 years. He is not a mercenary. He is a dedicated seeker after truth. Before writing his recent books he spent untold hours on the thankless task of attempting to decipher the Ing rules and the Japanese rules and to propose his own rules of go. He may have capitalized upon his rules expertise in some way, but if so I expect that it is to the tune of pennies per hour. Robert has a unique approach to go which is based upon ascertaining principles instead of picking up intuitive notions through examples and play. That his books have been well received indicates that he has been able to explain his ideas well enough to his readers and students, and that they find them valuable.

[Bill Spight]

As far as defending weak groups is concerned, when I was a beginner I followed Korschelt's rule of thumb, one eye and access to the center, which he apparently learned from Murase Shuho. It worked pretty well, although pros sometimes leave even weaker groups around. This rule of thumb gives a reasonable idea of when a group is strong enough to leave undefended.