Life In 19x19

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.

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.

John Fairbairn wrote: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.

I see. Good point.

From the blurb on the back cover of the book:

Joel Sanet wrote:Most Go teachers analyze positions to death, occasionally laying out sequences that show how the analysis would change if a stone were shifted, but the functional dynamics of such changes in position are never really addressed. Mr. Yang teaches the fundamental meaning of stones so that you can take a position you have never seen before and
understand what it is you should be trying to accomplish there and the best way to go about doing it. Mr. Yang has an uncanny ability to make complex situations seem simple by showing the basic principles involved.

Much of the material in this book is definitely not available in English language Go literature. In fact, I doubt that this material can be found anywhere in the world because Mr. Yang did not formulate these ideas until after he arrived in the United States in 1986. He once told me that when he taught Go in China, his students would say, “Yes, Teacher, I believe you.” After arriving in the US, however, he began encountering students who said, “Yes, Teacher, I believe you, but why? How is it that a small change—one line up or down, left or right—can make such a drastic change in the analysis? There must be something fundamental going on here, but what is it? I don’t understand.” This forced Mr. Yang himself to think about the meaning of the moves. The result of those thoughts is the book you now hold in your hands, a truly Western theory of Go.

To those readers who have never had a lesson with Mr. Yang: Be prepared. Your approach to the game of Go is about to be transformed.

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

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

I'd say so. Probably well up to 1k.

I don't own a copy, but have read it a few times (and had a workshop that effectively went over a few chapters in it) but I think it is a great book that covers a lot of important topics. And the fuseki priority system is great. Whenever I'm finding myself lost in an even game opening I try to think back to that and usually don't embarrass myself too much on the strategic level.

Bruce "More Yang, less Yin" Young

John Fairbairn wrote:I'm guessing the flaw is in equating "study of strategy" with accepting "advice" or "fundamental principles" (or proverbs).

None of the books on strategy I have read (The Yang book, The ABCs of Attack and Defense by Redmond, Attack and Defense by Davies, Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go by Kageyama) suggest that following proverbs is a substitute for studying strategy. Most such books offer a fairly in-depth analysis of the application of their principles and often follow that with illustrative problems to study. Nonetheless, my impression is that following strategic principles, such as play at the junction of two moyos or deny an opponent a base or move from the weaker group when attacking or force before defending or avoid bad shape etc., etc., generally leads me to put stones in places where I'm often happy to see them later on in the game. While it's not enough to want your stones to stay connected or your opponent's separated, these sorts of desires are the first steps in finding a good move. John Fairbairn's "coarse" fundamental principle, of striving to make one's stones work together, is I suspect appropriate for those to whom the more explicit principles are self-evident.

From the blurb on the back cover of the book:

but then the cynic in me thinks authors/editors sometimes make Go books (and other books) sound more exciting and unique than they really are - they're trying to sell it after all. Shodan seems to be their favourite carrot to dangle, for example. That's why detailed reviews by readers (preferably with reference to the rest of the Go literature) are invaluable since, in theory at least, they have less bias.

John Fairbairn wrote: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.

Opening, middle game and strategy are accessible by principles and other general methods very well. I plan to write books about those topics later. Currently especially middle game and strategy are hardly covered by general approaches at all. Maybe this causes your current impression on the impact of books on those topics. I promise this state to see dramatic changes!

every piece of opening or middle-game strategy advice I've ever seen comes somewhere with either an exception or a caveat.

This will be so for quite some centuries to come. Middle game strategy is very complex even if structured well by principles. Early research in structure and principles cannot produce what might at some time centuries later become a final theory. With a final theory, principles without exceptions might be found then. More likely though, it will still end as a sort of classification that cannot be any further compressed and reduced, quite like, with the current possibly final theory, there are 3 types of ko intersections and not just 1. Nevertheless, principles and classes have the potential of simplifying thought structure as well as anyhow possible.

(a) take a coarse-grained approach, and (b) justify every action you take in terms of time.

This is over-simplifying:) At the very least, we need also (c) justify everything planned on a higher (strategic) level on the level of tactics.

***

The book title is a huge over-statement. "A few fundamental principles of go" would have been more correct but been less attractive PR:) Kageyama tells you to study fundamentals at all, this thread's book suggests a few principles of different aspects of the game and books specialized on fundamentals of a specific aspect of the game provide many more respective principles.

palapiku, each book on fundamentals is very useful as long as you do not already know them all. It is not a matter of your rank but a matter of your previous fundamentals knowledge. E.g., I had had neglected fundamentals up to 3d and then it was mainly the seemingly simple contents of my book that turned me into a 4d. If you should have had a different learning sequence like starting with an exhaustive knowledge of all the basic fundamentals, then presumably you would not need to learn them but whatever else you are missing instead. Find out by asking yourself carefully how exhaustively your current knowledge on fundamentals is!

RobertJasiek wrote:The book title is a huge over-statement. "A few fundamental principles of go" would have been more correct but been less attractive PR:)

Agreed!

The book title is a huge over-statement. "A few fundamental principles of go" would have been more correct but been less attractive PR

This is highly debatable and unfair. The book title on the front and back cover is actually "Fundamental Principles of Go". There is no reference to "all" or "complete", or even "many". If you go into a shop and the shopkeeper asks what you want, and you say "eggs", it doesn't mean you want to buy every egg in the shop.

Furthermore, the preface by Yang explicitly refers only to "various principles". In addition we may reasonably infer that the vague "some" meaning is intended because Yang is a native Chinese speaker, not least because the book says it was first drafted in Chinese and the author required help with the English.

It is true that the colophon of the book gives the title as "The Fundamental Principles of Go", but I think the above overrides that.

As to the PR effect of the absence or presence of the deictic, that really is in the realms of huge overstatement. People may have their attention drawn to a book by its cover (and even bad designs can have that effect), but I don't believe many people judge a book by its cover.

So, as my little grandson would be told when he disrespects his teacher, say sorry to Mr Yang

PS I have the book but it's one of very many I bought just to support the publisher and never read. In the light of this thread, I had a quick skim through in bed last night, and my impression is that it is a very good book, worth reading by even dan players, though, like my British colleague above, I was a bit bemused by the extravagant praise for Chapter 1. Chapter 4 looked the best to me, in the sense that it has stuff you don't see often elsewhere, although Takemiya has written well about this part of the game (in Japanese only, as far as I know). People like Yang should be encouraged, because the Chinese way of thinking about go seems more accessible to us than the Japanese way, and the sort of features that appear in Weiqi Tiandi show that they can achieve stunning quality. For some reason (haste, I suspect) they don't seem quite as good at sustaining that quality through to book length.

This is over-simplifying:) At the very least, we need also (c) justify everything planned on a higher (strategic) level on the level of tactics.

No. Adding (c) is overegging the pudding. Most of us are perfectly capable of using what you might call fuzzy lists. We automatically include (c) and other items in our thinking without rigidly specifying them. The items we do specifiy are specified for emphasis. Furthermore, when we add items to our fuzzy lists, those items themselves may be fuzzy, and so we understand well that while (c) may be an ideal, we are not bound by it. For example, when we make a honte, we may be saying something like: "It is impossible to work out the tactics here so I'll take a probabilistic approach and play a move that may not be the best but at least will keep me in the game well enough so that I can see better how things will pan out."

Re chapter 4: it's the part that I find the hardest to grasp, and this is probably true for most people at my level, because of the many variations and permutations. It certainly is worth studying closely.

Takemiya's Enclosure Josekis (published by Ishi Press, but now available in PDF from Kiseido Digital), covers some of that type of stuff, but only in the corners. Again, this is something I should probably study more closely, as better understanding of how to successfully invade these areas would be a powerful tool to have in my arsenal.

Worth noting is that Takemiya's Enclosure Josekis is very involved. I don't think the books compete--you read Mr Yang's first, then you look at Enclosure Josekis on the day when you feel like running a marathon.

John Fairbairn wrote:The book title on the front and back cover is actually "Fundamental Principles of Go".

I would be convinced by your reason but apparently there are at least two editions of the book. Here is a reference for the edition with the title having the definite article:

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