Life In 19x19

S0nge wrote:Hello again,

I am just wondering if we can hope for a summer 2024 edition ?...

Second this!

John Fairbairn wrote: a new twice-as-big edition of Go Consultants.

That's really good news ! I was looking for this book without success.

John Fairbairn wrote: Despite that it is on my to-do list. Honestly.

That is good to know. Thanks for your answer. I hope I'll be able to buy it soon.

John Fairbairn wrote: I'm very curious why you do it this way. I can sense some value in it, but I've never come across it before, so my opinions are still unformed. Care to elaborate? (I have recently found a new game by Shuei, incidentally.)

My answer won't be that interesting, I am afraid.
After the reading of Meijin of Meijins, I was genuinely willing to discover Shuei's games and to feel, at my level at least, how beautiful they can be. So I bought Games of Shuei, and really enjoyed it ; just by reading it I had something like an aperçu of the games. However, that is obviously not enough. I also wanted to follow your own advice, that I red somwhere in this forum, to go through many games, in order to develop some kind of intuition. I remember you told about an exercise in Japanese magazines, with a single game diagram to replay as fast as possible. That way you have to build some intuition to look for the next move. I wanted to do so with Shuei's games, so I needed full-game diagrams.

My first idea was to buy the database and print the game files, but story began around January 2023, so I was thinking "the latest edition was summer 2022, let's wait for the next one, it should be there soon!...". Meanwhile I decided to write down the games first, in order to have full diagrams to play through in front on my board.

I don't know if it is good practice or not, but I actually enjoy it. It makes me fore familiar with the games. In total I went through many Shuei games four times (not at once, obviously!):
1 - A first time by just reading the book and looking at the diagrams. Enjoyable, but I can hardly say I remembered any move nor understood the games by just doing so. This is probably not good practice, but I did it anyway, before I decided to replay the games.
2 - A second time writing down the game on a game record. Sometimes I really pay attention to what is happening, sometimes I just write the numbers mindlessly.
3 - A third time, ideally the next day after step 2, playing the game on a board, with the game record under my eyes. Some parts of the games I discovered there, some others I remembered from the previous step- maybe this way, it helps building some intuition, making me more familiar with it?
4 - Sometimes, just after replaying the game, I have some questions about one move or another, so I re-read your commentaries with fresh eyes, knowing a little better what is at stake in the game.

Obviously, it makes me really slow. I took me the whole year 2023 to go through 90 games of Shuei that way (my game record has 90 sheets).

One good point of this method, however, is that of the two important steps (2 and 3) ony one really need me to focus (effortful study!). Some days (generally, it's at night, after work...) when I am too tired to replay a game (because I have to actively look for the moves, sometimes over a long endgame or a complicated ko battle with ko threats all over the board), I am somewhat relieved that I did it the day before, and so this time I "just" have to take my pens and write the next one. I think it helped me to somehow keep the rhythm.

In the process I could observe some changes in my own games, some moves, extensions or shapes that I was not using before appearing instantly in my mind...


I am doing the same thing with a "Go Seigen" theme now, still with a 90 games objective : I have gone through Archers of Yue, Old Fuseki vs New Fuseki, Kamakura, and I just began to write the first 10-games match with Fujisawa Kuranosuke in 9 Dan Showdown. I am really willing to find some other games not in the books I own, though, like the ones against Karigane Junichi.



And now you make me curious about this new game of Shuei...

Hi Songe

Your answer IS interesting. Thank you for sharing. As it happens, I think it will be especially useful for you when reading the new Go Consultants. I say that because, as part of my own proofreading, I had to go through the entire game in a way that has some important overlap with the way you work. The point is that it is a single book on one game and so there is a lot of commentary (6 humans and one AI). To give diagrams for all of the variations talked about would just result in a blizzard of diagrams and resulting go blindness. Instead, I have mixed diagrams with use of coordinates in text. I found that this did indeed result in effortful practice. It makes you concentrate, make you focus, makes you think about the moves, and is rather easy to do. At least as far as I was concerned.

The other change in the new version of the book is restoration of all the historical anecdotes. They are not obviously related to the game, but there can be fascinating insights. For example, comparing Honinbo Doetsu precepts with the way the more modern players talk about the game shows some remarkable pro-level parallels, but also significant differences (e.g. time management). But at the purely pedagogical level, the change of pace from the relentless commentary provides a sense of rest and then revitalisation in the reader.

Go Consultants will be sent off to the external proofreader in a coupe of days. I can't be sure how long he will take, but on past performance I think you can expect the book to appear in a few weeks.

The new Shuei game was a rengo, so not so interesting. But there were also new individual games by the the likes of Shuwa and so on. I found it interesting (that word again!) that I could easily tell it was a game by Shuwa when I was transcribing it. Shuei is famously esteemed for his style, but I think of all the players I've looked at, Shuwa is possibly the easiest one to spot. I think this is because he is so different from the players around him (a characteristic he shares with Go Seigen and Huang Longshi). I think your method of study will be giving you the same sort of feeling for individual styles.