You should get this book. I have read it and it completely changed my perception on strategy and positional judgement in Go. This book is better, and has been more beneficial to me than any other Go related book I own. If you are a single digit kyu do not hesitate find this book.

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“I’m here to play go and chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of gum”- misquoted duke nukem

Fundamental principal sounds like someone very important
Author is Yilun Yang, not yulan.

thomas thombuss. same thing you knew who it was lol

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“I’m here to play go and chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of gum”- misquoted duke nukem

I just wonder how come it seems to be the only book on Slate and Shell that doesn't have sample pages...

The Fundamental Principles of Go is cool, it's the only go book ever translated into Finnish.

http://www.suomigo.net/wiki/GoTaitopelinPerusteet

Cheers,
Vesa

I have this, but I wasn't that impressed with it - so I do wonder why people love it so much (it's quite possible I just don't get it). I mean, I started reading it and in the first chapter (I think) I thought it was repeating stuff from "In the beginning", then there's some problems. The choice of Joseki chapter is quite nice. The invading enclosures chapter also pretty useful looking but I already had a copy of "Enclosure Josekis" (also covered in Get strong at Invading? I can't remember). So perhaps I've not read it in enough detail or am too weak a player to understand it, but what was the best chapter for you?

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I am John. John-I-Am.

The first chapter is worth the price of the book. Heck, even the summary of the first chapter is worth the price of the book.

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well it seems a fine book & I don't regret spending the money on it but could you explain why chapter one is so much better than "In the beginning?" more depth? better explanations? .. the way some people talk about this book sounds a little over-enthusiastic to my British ear (no offence intended).

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I am John. John-I-Am.

It has been a while since I read "In the Beginning", so I can't really compare the two. What I can say about Yang's book is the ranking of opening moves that I don't recall seeing in other books. It allows me to make snap judgements in the fuseki. For example, knowing that a shimari or kakari in a non-symetrical corner is bigger than a side move unless both corners face toward it saves me 5 or 10 minutes of fuseki analysis.

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- Advice like this sound gospel to me. There are professional players who would approach "4x4, which manages the corner in just one move" stone instead of making shimari. I've also tried this, and the ensuing fight has allowed me to play shimari on both 3x4 corners, result which "can be regarded as rather passive for white".

I await volume II: "Exceptions to Fundamental Principles" by Toge.

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Remember reading somewhere that this book is basically interchangeable with "Basic Techniques of Go" - if you have one you don't need the other. I'm getting a sense that this may not strictly be the case.

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Where've you been? Zatoichi could slice the board in half, put it back together again and rearrange the position so fast that no-one even knew he'd drawn his sword - and he was blind. ~ John Fairbairn

Who are these people, and which schools do they run?

And talking of schools seems like a good excuse for mini-essay time.

It has long been my sense that it is possible in go to improve continuously in almost every aspect by continued study, except in the fuseki and in middle-game strategies. Study tesujis, life and death, endgame counting, joseki and you will progress and never go backwards, except for extraneous reasons such as tiredness or age.

On the face of it, this split between strategy and tactics seems natural. But what seems unnatural, at least initially, is that when you study strategy you often go backwards. For example, you read advice that it is good to make territory by attacking. You try attacking and, sure enough, you get a great thrill from chasing the opponent round the board, but he lives and you end up with less territory than you used to get before. I'm guessing the flaw is in equating "study of strategy" with accepting "advice" or "fundamental principles" (or proverbs). Fuseki and middle-game strategies probably don't distill down to fundamental principles very well. Unless someone can do some sort of multiple regression analysis to isolate the dominant factors reliably, progress in these areas is probably best done in the school of hard knocks rather than in books.

Furthermore, it is my impression that if you do study strategy pragmatically, whilst you do improve, at the same time you come to realise there is more and more that you don't know. In other words, you see what a great game go is, I suppose.

I used to latch on to pithy sayings such as Go Seigen saying, "The corners are always biggest". My equivalent of the school of hard knocks, playing over his actual games, led to me retort, "Oh yeah, so why don't you follow your own advice?" I'm not sure that it would be an exaggeration to say that every piece of opening or middle-game strategy advice I've ever seen comes somewhere with either an exception or a caveat. So, now, pithy sayings just wash over me.

Still, there must be ways to become better at strategy, so what are they? My own impression is that attaention has to be diverted to two somewhat unintuitive approaches. One is to accept a much coarser grain of advice. The principle that is most "fundamental", if I dare use that word, may be simply to strive to make your stones work together. Looking instead for fine-grained advice - the ultimate folly of which is learning joseki by heart - means you end up playing just as a wide receiver or a tight end when you really want to be a quarterback.

The other approach is timing. This is rarely mentioned as a fundamental, except obliquely. I have seen, for example, recent go features that talk about TOP - time, opportunity, place. Apart from putting time first, however, time has not really been discussed there very well. I imagine this is more of a journalistic gimmick to borrow some new management-school jargon than a serious attempt to discuss the topic.

Yet there are at least three elements of strategy where timing is at the core. They are closely interrelated. One is sente/gote. Another is miai alternatives. A third is patience.

Patience is the least appreciated in the west, in my view. Possibly this is because so many Japanese take it as a given that they never bother to discuss it. Since most of our literature has been borrowed from the Japanese, that lacuna has carried over, to our detriment. Patience is especially valuable in the middle game. It distils down to concepts such as the honte, but also, to use the example I gave above, if you do follow the advice to gain points by attacking but bolster it with patience (e.g. quietly play a move elsewhere but in the eventual path of the flight of the stones), it gives a way to manage a complete game.

As to sente/gote, this is one of the most discussed topics in western go. We even get bogged down in arguments about whether there is a difference between a kikashi (forcing move) and a sente kikashi. You very rarely hear these discussions among oriental players. Instead, you hear talk about things like sente no gote and momentum (choshi). You can easily get a western player to understand these concepts, but (in my experience) the commonest reaction is simply, "Oh yeah, that" and then discussion of sente kikashi is resumed. These other concepts are, at best, tucked away into the recesses of the toolbox instead of being always on instant stand-by in the tray at the top.

Miai alternatives in strategy I have seen mentioned countless times, usually in the same breath as Honinbo Shuei. But I don't recall ever seeing them discussed. Again, it is very easy to understand miai once you are shown them in a specific game. But it is a real devil to work out how to create them regularly in your games. Here, too, I believe that the key to unlocking understanding is a coarser-grained approach, but I have yet to find it.

In fact, in general, I believe that the most fruitful approach to fuseki and middle-game strategy is to make your "fundamental principles": (a) take a coarse-grained approach, and (b) justify every action you take in terms of time.

I agree with this post for the most part - particularly about justifying your actions. But I think it stands to reason that there are different levels of justification that one may adopt in selecting a move.

At a very high level, one might justify playing 5 points above the star point in this situation "because Yilun Yang told me to". Conversely, at the very lowest level, one might justify playing the intersection because they have read out the entire game tree, and have considered every possible move they could make along with every possible response that the opponent could make, thereby ensuring that they have selected an optimal move.

Particularly in the fuseki and middle-game, it often isn't possible to get at this lowest level of justification. From that perspective, somebody that has read a book on "fundamentals" has a vague road map of what constitutes good play.

But I believe that the lower you can delve into the depths of justification for a move - the more possibilities that you consider - the more likely you are to find a better move to play. So in that sense, books on fundamentals may prevent people from diving deeper into the depths of go, and finding out for themselves what is really a good move.

But from my perspective, I cannot help but think that these "fundamentals" that are passed down from professionals give people a very high level of justification for their play. It's just that oftentimes, the deeper you can dig down into your justification, the better move you can find.

So I guess in short, if I had to add one thing to what John has already mentioned, I would say that the justification that is mentioned in part (b) has multiple levels. And the more thought you put into your justification - the more moves you consider - the better off you are. Fundamentals that you read in books can point you in a rough direction, but after that, self reliance will probably prevail.

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be immersed

Kirby - without disagreeing with any of what you have said, I think you may have latched on to a meaning I didn't intend. When I said "justify every action you take in terms of time", I didn't mean spend a lot of time looking for good moves. I meant that you had to try to bring the time-related elements of strategy (sente, miai, patience, etc.) into your thinking about a move.

Hi JF
Would the Chinese go term 保留 bǎoliú (retain; preserve) fit into the category of timing as mentioned? There is not a lot on this subject on SL but I do know that there is a Chinese book on this subject. Haven't really read much of the book yet as there are lots of other more urgent areas in which I want to build up my skills.

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A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

tchan: I can certainly imagine cases where baoliu would be used with a strategic time-element nuance, yes. But I have not seen it treated as a special topic.

Still, it reminds me of another example where English loses out a little in translation. The bao character is the basis of the Japanese word mamoru. This is almost invariably translated as 'to defend'. It's hard to criticise that, but there is behind it the idea of defending prophylactically. Or, if you want to be even more intellectual, it means exactly the same as Greek prophulaktikos - 'guard before'. The 'before' brings in the time element.

Ordinary, merely responsive defending, as in you punch, I duck, is ukeru in Japanese. The point is, when a Japanese reads a comment that tells him mamori is a good move, he is inferring at once and with no effort that the move is also a sort of honte, and he knows that is probably a good idea, so he finds it easy to accept. When a westerner reads the same piece translated into English, if it just says "defending here is a good move", there is no nuance and his natural instincts possibly scream, "Defend - no way, I want sente!" It is possible, of course, for a careful reader eventually to grasp the full Japanese meaning, but it does require an extra layer of effort that may often go unmade.

I see. Good point.

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be immersed

From the blurb on the back cover of the book:

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Someone on senseis says it's for 6-12k. Is it useful for stronger players?