Speaking of positional judgement, another of the books I bought at the EGC was The Best of Kido: The Art of Positional Analysis published by Hinoki Press. Regarding your recently expressed interest in Japanese go literature, I thought I might mention it. Basically what it is, is a collection of commented games from the mid 1980s, a dozen each by Kobayashi Koichi and Takemiya Masaki plus 5 more by various top pros and a few brief articles by Otake Hideo. In some of the reviews the authors discuss their own games, but in most cases, the author apparently chose a game that they found interesting for some reason or another. I'm not going to get into the discussion of what makes a book brilliant, or even what makes a book Japanese, but suffice it to say that this one presents top level go thinkers presenting their detailed thoughts (the reviews average 10 pages each) about top level games. I haven't read too much yet, but from what I gather, Kobayashi's positional analysis consists of counting at certain points in the game and deciding on the best strategy to continue. Takemiya's analysis is both highly opinionated, and highly entertaining. His first piece begins with the header: It's Enjoyable to See People in Agony, and in it he goes on to rip apart a game between Kobayashi Koichi and Kato Masao.

Here is the game:

Here is how the review starts:

There is No Nuance


Later he says of W16: "I suppose that if I were to be allowed to frankly state things, , I'd say that the feeling of not wanting to lose has taken precedence here." He then shows what he would have done and writes: "...and the go board is divided exactly in half. Well then, come in and invade! It would be that kind of fight.
I imagine that my way is the correct one."

Soon black's play likewise meets his disapproval and with the result on the bottom right up to move 39 he writes: "In the actual game, the stones got sealed on the inside, an awful outcome that makes one not want to continue. The outlook in the game is for an equal contest, I guess."

The book bears quite a bit of similarity to O Rissei's Catching Scent of Victory and while I'm not expecting to learn too much from it, I find reading and playing out the games and variations to be an enjoyable pastime - though it does often confront me with blunt judgements of the type "this is an unacceptable result for white" that I am unable to verify.

It's worth noting that Hinoki Press appears to have switched bookbinders - the improved quality is immediately apparent.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Yes, and thereby...



...it does not fulfil its title well, as far as I could see from a quick glance at the EGC. There is no detailed counting of territories, evaluation of influence or statement of positional options.

...it does not fulfil its title well, as far as I could see from a quick glance at the EGC. There is no detailed counting of territories, evaluation of influence or statement of positional options.[/quote]

Good that it wasn't in Japanese. BTW, Kobayashi does a count - albiet not extremely detailed - in every game, but I do agree that the title was not well chosen.

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Patience, grasshopper.

IIRC, the counts are not shown as diagrams to the reader, who does not want to learn that Kobayashi can count but wants to learn how to count, I hope.

True indeed. On the other hand, I did find myself trying to figure out how he arrived at his figures, so even if it's not particularly explicit, I'm sure you'd agree (with Tabemasu, for example) that figuring something out yourself is one of the most reliable ways of learning.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Having had to figure out most by myself forced me to invent, discard and improve go theory all the time and so finally enabled me to write go books. For the purpose of simply learning go theory, it is the by far slowest method. It is MUCH faster to learn directly from the results of knowledge exploration.

I find it a little weird when pros like Takemiya (11 major titles) criticize pros like Kobayashi (39 major titles) and Kato (31 major titles) so vociferously. Playing "without nuance" seems to have done well.

This was back in 1986 when Kobayashi didn't have quite so many titles under his belt, and Takemiaya referred to him as "young Kobayashi." It also seems that the brashness of his comments was mostly for entertainment value and didn't come across as particularly spiteful.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Takemiya has a good sense of humor, so I'm guessing a lot of it was said from that perspective.