The Four Common Sense Principles that Amateurs Can't Grasp
Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2011 8:46 pm
The Japanese title of this book, by Takemiya Masaki, is アマが理解できない４つの常識. The publisher is MyCom (2009), and it is ISBN978-4-8399-3094-3.
For the purposes of this review, I will assume that Takemiya himself wrote the text, although I am well aware that ghostwriting is a common practice. There's no way of knowing, short of asking the man himself.
The book has three sections: first, introductory remarks and advice about getting stronger; second, chapters about each of the common sense principles alluded to in the title, and finally chapters of problems, one chapter for each principle.
The opening chapters contain similar material to other books by Takemiya, and the general thrust is that if you want to get stronger you need to change your attitude. He says losing is a good thing, because you can learn from it and not repeat the mistake, and that you should play where you want to play. This is not to play tenuki all the time, but rather to have the innocent attitude of a child - children are not worried about making silly moves, and so try out all kinds of things and learn quickly. Adults, in contrast, have their pride. If you play where you really feel like playing, then you will make mistakes and learn from them. For studying, Takemiya specifically recommends solving easy tsumego, playing over professional games, and learning basic joseki (and he adds it's okay to forget them!). As for amateur faults, he identifies territory surrounding, ignorance about status, failure to distinguish necessary and unnecessary moves, and the willingness to make bad shape.
This leads to the four principles.
1) Play where your opponent would like to play (相手の打ちたいところに打つ）
2) Don't surround territory (地は囲わない)
3) Be aware of status (身分をわきまえる)
4) Don't make bad shape (愚形を作らない)
To understand what he means, you need to look at the examples and work through the problems. For example, my interpretation of status is that he means being aware of relative strengths and weaknesses, and positional judgement, rather than merely knowing if a group is alive, dead or unsettled. In other words, the principle is to be very aware of what is really going on over the whole board. Likewise, it becomes apparent from the chapter on not surrounding territory that there is a big difference between a big move and a passive move.
For me, the chapter on shape was especially interesting. He convincingly demonstrates that playing in good shape can gain a lot of points over time, while making poor-shape moves, even if they seem to have an excuse, generally lead to disappointment.
I really enjoyed this book. Takemiya's writing is colourful and easy to read, but never long-winded - he gets to the point. There is a sunshine feeling to his prose - I`ve never met him, but I get the strong impression of a person who sees the bigger picture, and isn't given to worrying. When reading in a second language, it helps a lot when the author manages to communicate an endearing personality through his words. The problems are challenging, but never incomprehensible, and they feature very realistic game situations. I recognised a lot of my own real-game mistakes in the "failure" diagrams!
The book is printed on sturdy paper, (roughly 8x5 inches) and is well bound, and has a thick dust-jacket with a picture of a puzzled-looking Takemiya on the front, who is presumably wondering why amateurs just can't grasp that common sense...
I think the problems in this book would be useful to anybody, even if they did not know any Japanese, provided they knew which section of the book the problem came from, and how to identify "correct" (正解）from "failure" （失敗) diagrams. Obviously, though, the more Japanese you know, the more you will get out of the book.
I will leave you with the obligatory sample problem.
It's black's move. Do you play on a huge scale with A or do you play the big point at B?
For the purposes of this review, I will assume that Takemiya himself wrote the text, although I am well aware that ghostwriting is a common practice. There's no way of knowing, short of asking the man himself.
The book has three sections: first, introductory remarks and advice about getting stronger; second, chapters about each of the common sense principles alluded to in the title, and finally chapters of problems, one chapter for each principle.
The opening chapters contain similar material to other books by Takemiya, and the general thrust is that if you want to get stronger you need to change your attitude. He says losing is a good thing, because you can learn from it and not repeat the mistake, and that you should play where you want to play. This is not to play tenuki all the time, but rather to have the innocent attitude of a child - children are not worried about making silly moves, and so try out all kinds of things and learn quickly. Adults, in contrast, have their pride. If you play where you really feel like playing, then you will make mistakes and learn from them. For studying, Takemiya specifically recommends solving easy tsumego, playing over professional games, and learning basic joseki (and he adds it's okay to forget them!). As for amateur faults, he identifies territory surrounding, ignorance about status, failure to distinguish necessary and unnecessary moves, and the willingness to make bad shape.
This leads to the four principles.
1) Play where your opponent would like to play (相手の打ちたいところに打つ）
2) Don't surround territory (地は囲わない)
3) Be aware of status (身分をわきまえる)
4) Don't make bad shape (愚形を作らない)
To understand what he means, you need to look at the examples and work through the problems. For example, my interpretation of status is that he means being aware of relative strengths and weaknesses, and positional judgement, rather than merely knowing if a group is alive, dead or unsettled. In other words, the principle is to be very aware of what is really going on over the whole board. Likewise, it becomes apparent from the chapter on not surrounding territory that there is a big difference between a big move and a passive move.
For me, the chapter on shape was especially interesting. He convincingly demonstrates that playing in good shape can gain a lot of points over time, while making poor-shape moves, even if they seem to have an excuse, generally lead to disappointment.
I really enjoyed this book. Takemiya's writing is colourful and easy to read, but never long-winded - he gets to the point. There is a sunshine feeling to his prose - I`ve never met him, but I get the strong impression of a person who sees the bigger picture, and isn't given to worrying. When reading in a second language, it helps a lot when the author manages to communicate an endearing personality through his words. The problems are challenging, but never incomprehensible, and they feature very realistic game situations. I recognised a lot of my own real-game mistakes in the "failure" diagrams!
The book is printed on sturdy paper, (roughly 8x5 inches) and is well bound, and has a thick dust-jacket with a picture of a puzzled-looking Takemiya on the front, who is presumably wondering why amateurs just can't grasp that common sense...
I think the problems in this book would be useful to anybody, even if they did not know any Japanese, provided they knew which section of the book the problem came from, and how to identify "correct" (正解）from "failure" （失敗) diagrams. Obviously, though, the more Japanese you know, the more you will get out of the book.
I will leave you with the obligatory sample problem.
It's black's move. Do you play on a huge scale with A or do you play the big point at B?
