Boidhre wrote:Another possibly inane/unsuitable for my level question!
I've come up with two ideas: Studying joseki and watching the games of stronger players. Any other ways out there? Are there any good tsumego sets for teaching this? I realise this is a huge and extremely complex topic and I'm really only concerned with the fundamentals but I haven't seen much directly addressing this aspect of learning in the game and honestly I'm fascinated by the concepts of efficiency and shape in go.
Let me stick my neck out and define shape.
1) The local relationship between stones of the same color.
2) Good shape. An efficient local relationship between stones of the same color, typically in the presence of opposing stones.
Usually when players talk about shape without qualifying the term, they mean 2).
There is an amateur misconception that shape is static. In the second sense, it certainly is not. It is forward looking.
Shape is not an extremely complex topic. I would not even consider it to be complex. Forcing your opponent into bad shape may take tactical skill, of course.
But shape is on the whole easier than tsumego or tesuji. Good shape is often a prophylactic against the opponent's tesuji, and it sometimes involves tesuji to make it work. But on the whole it is easier.
When I was an SDK I bought a book on shape, which was an eye-opener, but now I do not have a book that even has shape in its title. I was fond of that book, but lost it along the way. Your instincts are right that you can learn shape from studying joseki and professional games. It helps to have some guidance, though, to understand the aspect of efficiency. All too often players will observe that a certain configuration of stones of the same color occurs in joseki or pro games, and jump to the conclusion that that configuration is good shape. They ignore the context, and do not understand why that configuration is efficient. In a different context it could be bad shape.
Examples later.
