The Super Meijin tournament was announced earlier this summer with the purpose of bringing together each countries respective Meijin title holders to compete for a Super Meijin title. Whether this will be a yearly or continuing event is still undecided. However, it has already received a lot of attention in its short amount of time. The tournament format is in what Asians call ‘reverse knockout.’ [Players draw straws to determine the first match-up and the remaining player receives a bye that will function as a loss. The loser of the first match will face the person with the bye, and the winner of this match will move to the grand-finals.]

Each countries respective title names and holders are as follows:

China: Mingren, Gu Li, 9p

Japan: Meijin, Iyama Yuta, 9p

Korea: Myeongin, Yi Ch’ang-ho, 9p

The tournament began with Gu Li and Yi Ch’ang-ho drawing the shortest straws to decide the first match-up, with Iyama Yuta receiving the bye.

Their game opened up with good examples of some recent joseki trends. The middle game saw the aji of these josekis being used and an exchange happen on the bottom right/side. Gu Li (W) fell behind to the surprise of some and initiated a large ko. Yi Ch’ang-ho had a few more ko threats and was, thus, able to win the ko fight. Quickly thereafter, Gu Li resigned.

Game record: http://www.mediafire.com/?o2azo81e9qo9e42

Some post-game interviews followed:

Question (Q): Can you please discuss this game?

Yi Ch’ang-ho (YC): Before White started the ko on the upper side I felt that Black was rather comfortable. After the ko started I was sure that I had more ko threats.

Gu Li (GL): I did not play very well in the opening. The exchange in the lower right was not good for White. I started the ko because I felt behind in territory, and choosing not to fight would not have worked. In the end my ko threats were insufficient.

Q: How has your condition been recently?

GL: Recently I have been very busy, continuously playing matches for the Asian Games selection tournament, but my condition is actually pretty good. However, today I did not bring my strength to bear.

Q: What is your outlook on tomorrow’s game with Iyama Yuta?

GL: Being able to play games against these Korean and Japanese masters makes me very happy. Being able to play more games like this would be a good thing.

Q: Can you please discuss the game?

Iyama Yuta (IY): These two players are both very strong. I felt that White had a good position in the opening, but Yi Ch’ang-ho fought hard to get a favorable position. It is a pity that Gu Li lost.

Q: What is your outlook on tomorrow’s game with Gu Li?

IY: Five years ago I played a match against Gu Li, but I was still very young, and the disparity in our skill was very great. After five years of effort I feel that my skill has improved. Tomorrow I will be confident and strive hard in my game against Gu Li.

-http://sports.sina.com.cn/go/2010-07-24/16525118706.shtml

The next morning Gu Li faced off against Iyama Yuta, while Yi Ch’ang-ho waited to see who his opponent would be in the grand-finals.

The game began with an interesting series of opening exchanges by both players, with Iyama Yuta ending with a large moyo. After one successful invasion on one-half of Iyama Yuto’s moyo, Gu Li attempted a reduction on the other and ended up in a dangerous situation. However, through some tight maneuvering and use of his famous fighting skills Gu Li found his way out and was nearly able to reverse the situation. They fought two ko fights and both came out pretty close. However, Gu Li was able to outplay Iyama Yuta in the endgame sealing the game with a 4.5-point win.

Game record: http://www.mediafire.com/?b2cyq81o8dw2py4

The grand-finals will be Tuesday morning with Gu Li versus Yi Ch’ang-ho. The WBaduk client should have the game live; and the Chinese website zhibo.56.com has been suggested to stream the event live on their weiqi channel: http://zhibo.56.com/tianyuanwq.

Who do you think will win?

Lastly, here are some Chinese commentary videos over the first two matches, with more to likely come up after the grand-finals.

Gu Li, 9p – Yi Ch’ang-ho, 9p

专辑:常德杯世界名人战古力VS李昌镐华以刚讲解

http://www.56.com/w37/play_album-aid-8302925_vid-NTM2OTIzMjk.html

专辑:常德杯世界名人战古力VS李昌镐华以刚陈盈讲

http://www.56.com/w37/play_album-aid-8302925_vid-NTM2OTM0MTY.html

专辑:常德杯世界名人战古力VS李昌镐华以刚陈盈讲

http://www.56.com/w37/play_album-aid-8302925_vid-NTM2OTQzNzI.html

Gu Li, 9p – Iyama Yuta, 9p

专辑:世界围棋名人战第二轮古力VS井山裕太曹大元

http://www.56.com/w98/play_album-aid-8307080_vid-NTM3MzA3OTM.html

专辑:围棋名人战二轮古力VS井山裕太曹大元讲解

http://www.56.com/w98/play_album-aid-8307080_vid-NTM3MzEzMDI.html

专辑:围棋名人战二轮古力VS井山裕太曹大元讲解

http://www.56.com/w98/play_album-aid-8307080_vid-NTM3MzI3MDE.html

I noticed that most recently our go community has cooled down quite a bit. I know the controversy over becoming legitimate made some tempers run hot, and the recent loss of Jim really put a damper on the momentum of our group. Because of that, I figured it was time to find the time to write a blog and try to get some things moving. Of course, while there has been some action over at our forums (http://www.oklahoma-go-players.org/phpbb/index.php ) (largely courtesy of our ever-striving Logan) it feels like some dust is settling on our group! (Perhaps it’s just because i’m not around for our meetings, and the mailing list died?!)

But all that aside, it’s spring break for me here in Japan. Unfortunately, the Go club here doesn’t meet over the long, two month lag between semesters, so I’ve been left on my own to study go. Since I didn’t get a chance to write about it, a number of you don’t know much about my experience with the Go club here in Japan.

The school I’m currently attending (Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto) is home to what seems to be Japan’s strongest college Go club. The club meets “officially” twice every week on the 5th floor of the old Student Union building, where no classes are held, and most of the rooms have cracks in the walls and patches of paint missing here and there.  The club room, floored with mistreated tatami mats, draws club members at most times of day, most every day. The room is filled with floor boards, floor cushions, books, trophies and go stones both in bowls and scattered across the floor. At any one time, there are usually 9 floor boards out, with another 5 or 6 stacked against the wall, and far more bowls of go stones then should be necessary. Usually, several of the boards have unfinished games from kifu, the left overs from game-discussion, and random shapes that were built across the intersections of a nearby board while somebody had a conversation. The walls are covered with signs that read things like, “Offer even games to kyu players as much as possible!” and “Let’s do our best to throw away our garbage!”

While there are a number of kyu players involved with the club, all of the regulars are above 3 dan. The guys that I usually met when I showed up at random times to play a game or look through some kifu are a group composed of a 3d, a 5d, two 6d, and occasional appearances by 7d and 8/9d. Considering that my Japanese, while at a proficient level, is far from fluent, and I’m still a little unfamiliar with the dialect used by the club members, the Go club can be a pretty scary experience.  But I’ve also fallen in love with the atmosphere, and I wish I could bring it to the States.

I showed up for the first time one Monday evening, and opened the heavy metal door that blocked the room from the hallway where the music students were practicing. Stepping in and removing my shoes, I found a group of 6 or 7 Japanese guys gathered around one go board, their necks swiveled towards me so they could stare intently. I took off my shoes, and stepped up onto the tatami, and said weakly, “I can play go.” A hint of understanding passed through the group, but they were still not sure how to react. I noticed that even through the heavy door you could still hear the muted sound of Japanese flutes and traditional Chinese stringed instruments. Aside from that, nothing was happening.

Lucky for me, at about the same time, the club president, who I had contacted a week or two before, walked in behind me and said “Oh, you must be the one who e-mailed me. Join us, please,” before dropping off some books and leaving again. It was settled, my presence was a controlled thing. They all turned back to their board, and I quietly went to join them. I had planned to spend the whole evening sitting and watching, largely ignored until the group got used to me. They asked some initial questions, like “You can play go?” “what’s your name?” and “how strong are you?”

When I told them I was ranked 2k on kgs, they looked fairly surprised, and finally, one of them offered me a game. From the way that they were talking, I wasn’t sure if my challenger, Endo-san, was much stronger than me or not. I sat down to play him, grabbed one of the nearby bowls filled with many different kinds of go stones, all slightly different, and we did nigiri. I took white, and we moved through the opening without my being able to tell how strong my opponent was. In the early middle game, I started to lose my advantage, and when I pressed for a lead I started to fall apart everywhere, bit by bit. Towards the late middle-game, shortly after I had failed to capture an invasion after just barely missing one of the longest sequences I’ve ever read, I asked about how strong he was. He looked up, as if to confirm I had said something, and then, “About 6 dan.”

The game ended in a resignation, and was followed by a game review that I could only partially understand do to my poor Japanese and the wide vocabulary used to explain each situation.

From that experience onwards, I showed up whenever possible, and the club members challenged me one after another, until at last the 3 dan, who had entirely ignored my presence, stepped in as my mentor and started playing me whenever I showed up. As it stands now, I can’t wait to go back to club. But I’m not prepared to go back as I was the last time I left the club room. I’m still working towards the goal I set two years ago (the same goal who’s deadline I’ve missed 3 times, now:) shodan.

And so my summer studies have begun with a slew of life and death problems and tesuji problems taken from some books that have been just recently published in English. The Egnlish series, published by Kiseido, is called “Graded Go Problems for Dan Players (http://www.kiseido.com/dan.htm) and a number of you probably are already familiar with the title. While I’ve come to believe that no Go book is “necessary” to get better if you spend a lot of time playing and thinking about stronger games, but if you’re one of those people like me who feels they get a lot out of problem books, then this is probably a good series for you, and I would recommend it.

Of course, I’m also keeping my game watching up, and I’m trying to study situations that pop up in the stronger games. The one that I want to put up here is a pretty common one, and I’m fairly sure that everyone has heard of it. But my question for you all is this: are you confident about your ability to quickly find the solution?

The English name for the shape is “The Carpenter’s Square,” and, rather than linking you to an answer site, I invite you all to build out these variations on a board and try to understand them. I encourage you all to resist looking up the answer for as long as possible.

Black to play. Alive, Dead, Seki or Ko?

Black to play. Alive, Dead, Seki or Ko?

Black to play. Alive, Dead, Seki or Ko?

Black to play. Alive, Dead, Seki or Ko?

Well, that’s about it for now. Have any of you been seeing some interesting sequences in your games or the games you watch? Everyone still playing? Eatwisdom signing out.

See you next time, space cowboy. . .

http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/fhoninbo.html

She’s also the female Meijin:

http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/fmeijin.html

and holds the Daiwa Ladies Cup

http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/dlc.html

but Umezawa Yukari is the female Kisei.

http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/fkisei.html

Rui Naiwei successfully defended the Women’s Myeongin in Jan.

http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/fm.html

and recaptured the women’s Kuksu in February.

http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/fk.html

In China, Tang Yi is the Female Xinren Wang.

http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/fxr.html

In the top US tournaments the US Open and the Ing Masters, women compete on equal terms with the men. Feng Yun, for instance, does well, as has been reported in the AGA e-Journal.

The ancient Chinese masters historically stressed the opening. It’s a pity that in ancient go they did not abolish “placement;” that is, placing two stones of each color on the board [on diagonally opposite star points] prior to starting the game. This practice limited variations in the corner, which in turn limited variations in the opening.

Go spread to Japan during the Sui-Tang period (around the 6th or 7th century, AD). Eventually the Japanese abolished the practice of “placement.” There was more room to twist about in the opening. Add to that the many variations in the corners, and all sorts of openings develop, unfolding on a magnificent scale. Following actual practice, they accumulated all sorts of knowledge and produced a new theory of the opening. But China of those times was still stuck in the old ways. “Placement” was still in use, and the opening was fairly simple. Through “placement” black and white were mutually split apart. This type of position is beneficial for fighting. Although China’s masters often brought up good deployment in their books and talks, it’s a pity that in actuality it was their nature to put all their effort into being good at fighting.

In comparison to Japanese masters of the time, the great champions of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) could be said to be “sword fighting” masters (in an age of guns and cannons). Later generations brought the game records of the great champion of the early Qing, Huang Longshi, to Japan. [available from
Mindzine] Some of the members of the Japanese go world said that Huang Longshi was 11 dan, but others said he was no more than 3 or 4 dan. Although these two appraisals are different, actually very different, they seem to both have merit. It is just that their bases are different. One is estimated based on his fighting strength, and the other is estimated based on his method of deployment.

In 1960, under the instigation of vice-premier Chen Yi and Mr. Matsumura Kensan, China and Japan began a go exchange. By that time, “placement” had been abolished from the board (in China). But there was a tremendous gap in knowledge between the Chinese and Japanese masters as far as the opening was concerned. This was because the older generation of Chinese masters not only had teachers who carried forward the art of play from masters of the later Qing dynasty, but also had learned to play go using “placement.” Furthermore, the newer generation of masters were obviously the students of the older generation. To catch up with the Japanese in opening play was not something that could be accomplished in one or two years. But how important is the opening to the whole game?

This competition was to continue annually. Chen Yi set a target of surpassing the Japanese within ten years. At the beginning, the difference in strength between the Chines and Japanese players was close to two stones. After a couple ofo years, a group of young players had matured, and at the same time the older masters had improved. In 1963, Sugiuchi Masao, 9 dan, captained a touring group visiting China. Under the condition of receiving the first move, Shanghai’s Chen Zude achieved an excellent score of five wins in five games. At that time, Chen Zude was only 19 years old, and was a representative of the first group of masters raised up after the liberation (1949). His play was very bold, strong and resilient. You could say he was good at fighting. His victories were gained through tactics.
Was it true that the Chinese players opening play was without a single redeeming feature?

No, having played with “placement” for so many years, there had to be something to it. The consummate master of the go world, Wu Qingyuan (known professionally as Go Seigen) developed his singular style from the study of ancient Chinese games. He dominated Japanese go circles for decades, and he had the greatest number of innovations in the opening. Since boyhood, Chen Zude had played over hundreds of ancient games, and studied many of Wu Qingyuan’s games as well. Wu Qingyuan is good at using the “star points,” such as “three stars in a row” (in Japanese, sanrensei) and “opposite corner stars” [in Japanese, tasuki-hoshi]. Chen Zude especially likes “opposite corner stars.”

Look at the diagram where each side has two “placement” stones. Isn’t this “opposite corner stars?” If play follows this pattern, can’t all the techniques in the old books be applied? Chen Zude was nurtured on this sort of play. A long time ago these techniques were ingrained in his mind until they became his techniques. We might say that the Japanese masters have produced volume after volume of opening theory. They can recognize all sorts of positional arrangements on sight. But when it comes to this sort, they may still lag behind the Chinese. This way, doesn’t strength and weakness in the opening take a sudden reversal?

The majority of Chen Zude’s wins were gained by adopting this approach. His command of the “opposite corner stars” was getting stronger and stronger.

According to Japanese custom, black’s first move should be played in the upper right corner, as in the following diagram:

This leaves the upper left corner for the opponent. Then, white can play in his lower right corner, expending the least amount of effort, like white 2. This way, black 3 can always make “opposite corner stars.” But Chen Zude’s “opposite corner stars” (opening) was very strong. The Japanese players understood this secret. Thus, by expending a little energy, extending their right hand further forward, white 2 can occupy the corner where black 3 stands. With just one move’s work, the “opposite corner stars” is foiled. So the “opposite corner stars” is too vulnerable.

There should be another opening pattern to supplement the “opposite corner stars.” Furthermore, this supplemental opening should not be vulnerable to being foiled.

This is another one of those books that I picked up a long time ago, during my first year of playing. I really wasn’t very good, but I had the fire in me, and couldn’t help myself from buying books that I could use to try and get stronger. I actually have yet to finish this book, although I currently only have a few problems left. I picked it back up to start it over and work through about two weeks ago, and it’s had a lot to do with my recent improvement on kgs (I’m currently boasting something like 20 victories in my past 22 rated games.)

Who do I think this book is good for?

Well, really, I’d like to say, “everyone.” But I should let you know right off that this is a difficult book. Counter to my original beliefs, shape is a lot deeper than single stone guidelines like, “the empty triangle is bad.” Shape controls what is possible in fairly large areas of the board, and shape not necessarily problematic from within can run into trouble from the outside as groups start to interact closely, and with dangerous plays. This book pays close attention to appropriate shape as determined by wider surroundings, so in order to solve the problem section you need to be in the habit of exploring most possible outcomes. Playing it by eye won’t do it. I don’t want to discourage anyone from working to learn better shape, but maybe you should be at least in the ball park of 10k before you start messing around with the problem section in this book.  After all, even if you don’t exactly understand the answers, they should have an impression on you. Once you’re a dan player, perhaps this book would be good to brush up on some skills, but I imagine that it will be mostly old news.

My condition for using this book:

As I mentioned just a moment ago, you need to be in the habit of reading out most possible outcomes, all the while checking liberties, etc.. If you want to try to play the game, I would recommend spending a week or two doing life and death problems every day before you try your hand at this book. I’ve done a lot of life and death this summer, and the real reward has been getting used to trying to read all the possible outcomes, while keeping track of liberties. (Unfortunately, shortly after I stopped regularly doing these problems about a week ago, my play has become much more reckless, as people who have played me recently will attest to. I’m gonna abstain from playing for a little while, and then do some life and death problems for a few days before I start back up again, in order to level out. . .)

Life and Death problems will get you in the habits you need, and will also conveniently make you several stones stronger in the process. (For a book, I’d recommend 1001 Life & Death Problems, also in this series, reviewed in an earlier post.)

What’s especially good:

I think this book will make you think differently about sequences. The reward from this book is going to be much deeper reading, and safer structures in general. The kind of play emphasized in almost every problem is the kind that needs to be understood for higher levels of competition.

The division of the book is also good for covering different aspects of shape. It’s split into 4 sections. Chapter one, “The Efficiency of Stones” explores. . . well, efficient and inefficient shapes and structures. Chapter two, “Examples of Good Shape” talks about examples of good and bad shape. Chapter three is a set of 245 problems with answers and brief explanation.  Finally, Chapter four is titled “Example Games,” and demonstrates examples of shape from pro games, with accompanying diagrams.

Criticisms:

I don’t really have any strong criticisms for this book, with the exception that I think there are too few problems for this to be fully effective. 500 problems or so seems to be a little more spot on for introducing a wide range of shape, but that could also be a rather ambitious attempt, since it’s hard to find simpler examples of shape.

I’d like to note, however, that since this is the only problem book I’ve read on shape, it’s hard for me to decide what could be done better. I really can’t say how this book compares to texts like Haengma, which Joel recommended to me a while back, and I’m still interested in reading.

Rating:

I think I’ll give this book about an 80 out of 100, which is a high score on my chart. Just as a reminder, anything above 60 is worth a read through, and scores in the 80′s I recommend as an important text for improvement, perhaps worth owning, or going through more than once. In the case of this book, I’m sure that I’ll go through two or three times until I have a high ratio of correct answers.

Has anyone else read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts, both on the book, or simply on my review. If you haven’t read it, let me know how helpful this review was for you!

See you next time, space cowboy. . .

and keep eating wisdom.

-EatWisdom/ Gryning (Zack Kaplan- OU Go Club)

Here is a list of Shuko’s main opponents, the years they played,
and the matches for titles. If no title is listed, the games
played were mostly either League games, or part of a knock-out
tournament. The win/lose statistics differ depending on who is
holding the black stones in the early years, before they started
using komi. Note that three of his games with Sakata ended in jigo.

Shuko Go Seigen 1949-73
B 5 B 2
W 5 W 3

Special Matches

Shuko Takagawa Shukaku 1949-82
B 9 B 8
W 19 W 13

lost Honinbo15;1960
won ProBest10(2);1965

Shuko Sakata Eio 1951-89
B 13 B 22
W 9, j W 17, 2j

won Saikoi5; 1960
??? Saikoi6; 1961
lost KihonKiinCh8; 1961
lost Meijin2; 1963
lost Meijin3; 1964
lost Honinbo21; 1966
won ProBest10-5;1968
won Oza16; 1968
lost Judan7; 1968
lost Oza18; 1970

Shuko Kitani Minoru 1953-64
B 2 B 4
W 1 W 2

Shuko Hashimoto Utaro 1953-77
B 8 B 7
W 6 W 6

won Kisei1,1976

Shuko Ohira Shuzo 1957-90
B 6 B 2
W 6 W 3

won Tengen1, 1975

Shuko Fujisawa Hosai 1959-75
B 6 B 2
W 7 W 0

Shuko Yamabe Toshiro 1959-76
B 8 B 2
W 1 W 0

Shuko Hashimoto Shoji 1960-98
B 1 B 6
W 4 W 3

Shuko Rin Kaiho 1964-95
B 15 B 15
W 11 W 15

won Meijin9;1970
lost Meijin10;1971
lost Meijin11;1972
won Kisei4; 1980
won Kisei6;1982

Shuko Kato Masao 1967-95
B 4 B 11
W 7 W 8

won Kisei2; 1978
lost Tengen4; 1978
lost Oza41; 1993

Shuko Takemiya Masaki 1968-94
B 3 B 9
W 3 W 6

Shuko Otake Hideo 1969-92
B 6 B 7
W 8 W 9

won Oza17;1969
lost All-Japan1; 1970,
lost All Japan4; 1974
won Kisei5; 1981

Shuko Ishida Yoshio 1971-89
B 6 B 7
W 5 W 3

won Kisei3, 1976

Shuko Cho Chikun 1974-92
B 3 B 14
W 5 W 7

lost 8Strongest, 1976
lost Kisei7, 1983;

Shuko Kobayashi Koichi 1975-97
B 5 B 5
W 3 W 3

won Oza40, 1992

Shuko Yamashiro Hiroshi 1982-94
B 1 B 7
W 1 W 2

The complete list of his opponents reads like the
Who’s Who of the 20th Century
:
Opp Shuko
Aoki Shinichi 1
Awaji Shuzo 3 4
Cao Dayuan 1 1
Chang Hao 1 0
Chen Zude 1 1
Chino Tadahiko 1 2
Cho Chikun 21 8
Cho Hun-hyeon 2 0
Cho Nam-ch’eol 1 0
Fujisawa Hosai 2 13
Fujisawa Kuranosuke 0 1
Fukui Masaaki 1 0
Go Seigen 5 10
Goto Shungo 1 1
Handa Dogen 1 1
Hane Naoki 0 1
Hane Yasumasa 1 6
Haruyama Isamu 0 1
Hasegawa Akira 1 0
Hashimoto Shoji 9 5
Hashimoto Utaro 13 14
Hashimoto Yoshimi 0 2
Hikosaka Naoto 1 1
Hisai Keishi 1 2
Hisajima Kunio 1 0
Honda Kunihisa 2 2
Hoshino Toshi 0 1
Imamura Fumiaki 1 0
Imamura Toshiya 1 1
Inagaki Koichi 0 1
Ishida Akira 3 4
Ishida Atsushi 1 0
Ishida Yoshio 10 11
Ishii Kunio 2 4
Ishii Mamoru 0 1
Iwamoto Kaoru 3 0 j
Iwata Tatsuaki 2 1
Kada Katsuji 1 3
Kaji Kazutame 0 1
Kajiwara Takeo 3 0
Kaku Kyushin 0 1
Kamimura Kunio 0 2
Kanashima Tadashi 0 1
Kanno Kiyonori 1 0
Kano Yoshinori 1 2
Kataoka Satoshi 4 2
Kato Masao 19 11
Kawamoto Noboru 0 1
Kawamura Kazunori 1 0
Kikosaka Naoto 0 1
Kionari Tetsuya 0 1
Kisajima Kunio 0 1
Kitani Minoru 6 3
Kobayashi Koichi 8 8
Kobayashi Satoru 2 2
Kojima Takaho 1 1
Komatsu Hideki 4 2
Kubo Katsauaki 0 1
Kubouchi Shuchi 1 1
Kudo Norio 0 3
Liu Xiaoguang 3 0
Ma Xioapjng 0 1
Maeda Nobuaki 1 2
Magari Reiki 1 4
Mimura Tomoyasu 0 1
Miyamoto Naoki 1 3
Miyamoto Yoshihisa 1 0
Miyashita Shuyo 1 7
Miyamoto Naoki 0 1
Miyazawa Goro 1 0
Nakamura Hidehito 0 2
Nakamura Yutaro 0 1
Nakao Jungo 0 1
Nie Weiping 5 1
O Meien 3 1
O Rissei 4 0
Ogoshi Ichiro 1 0
Ohira Shuzo 5 12
Otake Hideo 16 14
Oya Koichi 1 0
Redmond, Michael 1 0
Rin Kaiho 30 26
Ryu Shikun 1 0
Sakai Michihaur 0 1
Sakai Takeshi 1 2
Sakakibara Shoji 0 1
Sakata Eio 39 22 3j
Sato Masaharu 0 2
Sato Sunao 0 1
Sekiyama Toshio 0 1
Seo Pong-su 1 0
Shimamura Toshihiro 2 5
Shinohara Masami 0 1
Shiriaishi Yutaka 1 2
Sonoda Yuichi 5 1
Sugiuchi Masao 2 4
Suzuki Etsuo 0 1
Takagawa Shukaku 21 28
Takagi Shoichi 1 3
Takanashi Seiken 0 1
Takemiya Masaki 15 6
Tei Meiko 0 1
Tokimoto Jahime 0 1
Tono Hiroaki 1 0
Tozawa Akinobu 0 1
Tsuchida Masamitsu 1 0
Ushinohama Satsuo 0 1
Yamabe Toshiro 2 9
Yamashiro Hiroshi 9 2
Yamashiro Keigo 0 2
Yasumasa Hane 0 1
Yasunaga Hajime 0 1
Yi ch’ang-ho 1 0
Yo Kaei 0 1
Yoda Norimoto 7 1
Yukawa Mitsuhisa 0 2
Yuki Satoshi 1 1
Zhou Xingzeng 1 0

Statistics extracted from GoGod.

Read his biography at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideyuki_Fujisawa .

That’s how I started, back in the mid 1970s.

But today with the internet it needn’t be so hard.  There are lots of websites to explain the same concepts from different angles.  There are nearly professional quality videos that spoon feed it to us.  There’s a site to answer the questions all new players have after their initial handful of games.  All these taken together make it a lot easier to learn Go these days.

1. We’ll begin with a flashmedia overview of the history and culture of Go.
2. Now take a tour through a set of videos that, altogether, will run about two hours: part 1, part 2, part 3a, and part 3b.
3. Next, some more culture and a gentle intro by Japan’s national Go association, the Nihon Ki-in.
4. An interactive website will help you review and practice what you’ve learned so far.
5. By now you’re ready to start playing so don’t hesitate to jump in at the club or one of the online Go servers. After you’ve played a good handful of games, Tel’s Go Notes will answer some of the burning questions all new players have.

And now you are no longer a beginner.

These are hardly the only new player resources on the net. I picked these because I thought they were particularly well done and easy to absorb.

See you on the Go ban.

For a more detailed synopsis of the event, check out the full gallery by clicking the “Read More” link. Each photo has a short description and a comment page.  Feel free to comment on any of the photos! Thank you and enjoy.

Gallery

We will have a booth this Saturday from 9am (set-up begins at 8:30) until 4pm at the Annual Festival of the Asia Society of Oklahoma.

The festival will be in the Myriad Botanical Gardens just south of downtown OKC and north of Reno Street. The booths will not be in the garden area, but on the ridge surrounding the garden area. The booths, I don’t know exactly where ours will be, will be south of the Gardens and north of Reno Street. They will supply us two tables (don’t know what size) and two chairs. So, if you’re planning to come and stay for awhile, please bring a lawn or folding chair or be prepared to sit on the ground – a cap and/or sunscreen is advisable if you plan to stay awhile.

I plan to be there all day, but, hopefully, some of you will come up and play and spell me for awhile to get food, use facilities, etc.

They will also have food for sale and on-going presentations all day, like dancing, traditional music, etc. I went last year and had a good time.

If you can bring a board and stones, too, that would be great. I have two sets and about five 9×9 boards for beginners. Next year, we can plan farther in advance, but, for this year, at least, we will, hopefully, get some more players out of it – beginners and Asians who already know how to play! At a minimum, we’ll have fun playing Go and experiencing the event.

I plan to make copies of our business cards that we can cut up and hand out. It maybe a little cheesier than regular business cards, but better than nothing and cheaper than business cards, too. Any other Go-related materials that you want to bring for display would be appreciated, but keep in mind that, if it is something valuable, you will probably want to stay with it. I plan to be either: teaching Go, playing Go, or studying Go, so I don’t think it realistic that I will be a very good security guard! LOL.

Hope to see you THIS Saturday!

-Jim Story

Today’s focus: The trail through the valley of life and death: EatWisdom’s osusume. This will be a somewhat comprehensive book/ resource review, and I hope that you enjoy it. When I’m through briefly reviewing these texts, I’ll also give my two cents on how one might want to use/ combine them.

The books/ sources:

• goproblems.com

• The Kiseido published One Thousand and One Life-and-Death Problems from Richard Bozulich’s comprehensive Mastering the Basics series (a series which I will review in pieces at first, so keep your eyes pealed,) available here: http://kiseido.com/go_books.htm as K72.
• Another Kiseido-Richard Bozulich text, Get Strong at Life and Death, part of the Get Strong at Go Series. This text is available here: http://kiseido.com/go_books.htm as K58.
• And Maeda Nobuaki 9 dan’s Life and Death: Intermediate Level Problems, available from Slate and Shell (http://www.slateandshell.com/SSGR005)

The first of these, www.goproblems.com is a site that I’m sure everyone is familiar with, and needs little review or introduction. I would personally suggest this as the place to start one’s life and death studies, as well as tesuji and yose studies. It’s convenient and free, although the quality content is certainly limited, and a good deal of the life and death problems are rather. . . creative, we might say. I mention this site hoping that players who read this will mosey their way over and try to prime the pump for some life and death study with the problems they have there.

Our first text of the day, One Thousand and One Life-and-Death Problems is one of the great successes of the far reaching Mastering the Basics series. This book gets straight down to business and starts you off with your problems (a good thing, since there are 1001 of them.) The book is divided up according to the number of moves it takes to solve the problem, and then further sections things up within those division according to whether you are killing or living. The answers to each problem are found on the other side of the page.

Who do I think this book is for: If you aren’t 1 dan, then you should probably spend some time with this. Because the sections are split up into 1 move problems, 3 move problems and 5 move problems this book can be immediately applicable to every kyu player.

What’s especially good: This text will quickly boost your practical ability/ intuition when it comes to life and death problems, and will also help out your reading. This book is also fascinating because it can be a great test of progress. When I first bought it I had significant trouble with a lot of those 3 move problems. When I opened it up at the start of summer, just two weeks ago to begin my 27 problems-a-day study march, however, I found that I could solve most all of said problems on sight. Now the five move problems were breaking my back. But  after only a hundred or so of those, I’m starting to solve the five move problems on intuition, too. To say the least, the book really impresses me, and I’m grateful for it. It’s an essential beginner/ intermediate text.

Criticisms: This book only provides the correct answer and a brief explanation for the problems. It’s going to take initiative to figure out why a certain way is the best way to solve the problem, etc.. In general I approve of this, but it will be difficult for dd (double digit) kyus and some sd kyus. I’ve also found the odd problem here and there that actually has a mistake in the correct answer. Those are extremely rare, though, so I wouldn’t sweat it. The peculiar placement of your own killing stones in some of these problems may seem concerning, and impossible to concieve of an order that they would have been played in, but the main point is that this book works to train your eye for certain shapes and kinds of weaknesses, so I would advise the reader to just do the problems without fretting.

Rating: This gets a 90 out of 100 (a fairly rare grade from me.) I’d place this book in its entirety under a more advanced study category (although you could, and probably should start in the high 20 kyus.) If you want to make shodan, I think this book will give you the life and death practice and intuition you need to get that part of your game close to par and shaped up. Also note than anything rated over 80 or about there I would recommend for ownership.

Our second book, Get Strong at Life and Death, in contrast to One Thousand and One Life-and-Death Problems, which I consider a book that will get you practiced in life and death, is a book that will give you more precise knowledge about life and death positions. The book has three parts: Part one has 10 sections: The basics of life and death, 1. Eye space; 2. Bent-four-in-the-corner; 3. Reducing the opponent’s eye space; 4. Expanding your own eye space; 5. Creating False Eyes; 6. Exploiting a shortage of liberties; 7. Ten-thousand-year-ko; 8. The comb formation; 9. The carpenter’s square.

Part two is: Life-and-death positions arising from Joseki.

Part three is: Miscellaneous problems- 101 problems.

Who do I think this is good for: A little hard to say. Some of these concepts are pretty basic, while the problem positions can get very, very specified and rather complicated. If you’re aiming to do more than the basic rule sets, you probably need to be at least 15 k for this book to make any sense to you. Once over 15k you’ll start to understand various parts of the book, but it will probably still be kind of frustrating, and you will have to build up your strength through in-game experience to earn the next level of problems.

What is good about the book: This book is for people that want to have a more meticulous knowledge about certain basic structures (playing to make a ko vs. playing to make life in the same structure, etc..) This book won’t lead to advanced knowledge of life and death per se, but it will lead to certainty.  I would best recommend this text as something to be read in parts over a long period of time, perhaps to firm up your practical understanding; this book is also a fairly hard core refresher for people who have gotten through more than the basics of life and death, and want to make sure that they’re up to date. I should also note that the section on life and death arising from joseki is an excellent reference, and merits close study.

Criticism:This text is a little hard to handle, and for how specific it gets with certain positions, the text isn’t very far reaching. Even though I’m up on practically everything in this text it’s still hard for me to sit down and work through.

Rating: I think I would give this one a 65 out of 100. Maybe a 68. (Note that on my scale, anything 60 and above is something that I think is worth a read through.) This book may be really good for a learning style different from my own, but it doesn’t get on my warm and cuddly side. It does what it sets out to do carefully, but part of me feels that by the time that it’s right to study variations of a position in this way, you may have already figured out what this book is going to relate to you. I really think of this is a finisher text– its value lies in its ability to solidify your understanding and bring more absolute certainty to your play. I should also note that rating-wise finisher texts will always get lower ratings than texts that I feel really work to change your perspective of play, or teach you something that would be difficult to understand without some explanation. They are important for getting to a high level of play, but they contribute the inches that make play solid, rather than the leaps that send you in the right direction. Please consider that when I rate this a high 60 and say it’s a finisher text.

Finally, Life and Death: Intermediate Level Problems by Maeda Nobuaki 9 dan, hailed as “the g-d of life and death go problems,” is actually the text that most recently got me interested in life and death purely for the wonder of life and death. Before this text I had studied life and death, but I had felt agitated for almost every minute of that study. Perhaps I just wasn’t strong enough, or didn’t feel the need, but whatever the case may be, when I picked up this pocket-sized text, I really got a dig for life and death. The problems span decently easy, to rather difficult. There is no chapter sorting, and like most books, the problem answers are provided on the reverse side of the page. Most only give the correct answer and a little blurb, but some give both a sucess and failure diagram.

Who do I think this book is for: I feel loathe to discourage anyone from buying this lovely little yellow text, but to be realistic, you will probably have too much trouble with it if you aren’t around 12k or stronger.

What do I think is good about this book: There’s a good degree of variation, and you get a lot of different types of problems. The text is also challenging, with some problems requiring over 12 moves, sacrifice formations and throw-ins. But what I like best about this book is that I could easily carry it in my pocket, and that’s what convinced me to study. I kept this book with me for about two weeks, and solved the problems with no board and out of order. Any time I had a spare minute, I just pulled out the book, flipped to a page, and saw whether or not I could solve the problem. Not having a board seemed like a daunting concept, but realistically, if you encounter life and death in a game, you can’t play it out to see what happens and then go back for the kill. I believe it did my reading ability good.

Criticism: Well, I have to say something, so I’ll site the lack of failed diagrams in the majority of the problems, which, as before can require a decent amount of initiative. Aside from that, I feel very happy about this little text.

Rating: I feel that this book gets a 76 out of 100. It’s a hand book, so by no means is it monumental, but it’s a solid collection of problems, geared toward the “intermediate” category, although perhaps that is only an acceptable rating if the intermediate category has an extraordinary depth. I would recommend this for convenient life and death practice without hesitation.

A little on usage, then. . .

I’m not going to be too detailed about this, as everyone has their own learning style and is at a different place, but this is going to be my opinion of these books in retrospect, and what would have been convenient for learning.

I’d say that you gotta start with One Thousand and One Life-and-Death Problems. Go through the prefix and work through all of the one move problems. Note that the thought process and tesuji for living and killing can be markedly different. Don’t finish life and think you’re caught up enough that you should skip death. For a long time, I would say that those one move problems are going to be all you need for your game as a beginner. As this text seems to shy away from ko solutions, it won’t cover bent four in the corner too much, but if you feel concerned you can always look it up. I don’t think you’ll need to look into another life and death text.

When you’re done with the one move problems, push forward into the three move problems. By the time you get here, you should probably be closer to a mid range kyu. If you want to get in a little deeper, now is the time that I would suggest buying Get Strong at Life and Death. Reading the sections about specific shapes would be good, but I wouldn’t stress a need to do more than that.

When you’re through with three move problems and the basic shapes, that’s when I would recommend starting to think about working on the little intermediate level problems handbook– however, it seems pretty common to hit a wall at around this level. If you want to improve I would suggest studying some joseki and a little tesuji, and then maybe coming back and looking thorugh the joseki-related life and death problems from Get Strong at Life and Death. From there on out, it should all be a matter of due time.

What next???

I’m pretty much through all of these texts, with only 150 problems left in One Thousand and One Life-and-Death Problems, but naturally that doesn’t mean my studies will end. I don’t have a list of all the life and death out there, but from here I had been planning to try my hand at Hye Yeon’s Creative Life and Death Problems, which is done by Oromedia, and seems to be available here: http://badukbooks.blogspot.com/2009/04/hye-yeons-creative-life-death-i.html

Hye Yeon is a top female baduk player in Korea, and is also a university student. She maintains an englih language blog (http://loveku.livejournal.com/) with some excellent position surveys and game examples, as well as life and death problems that she created. Please mosey on over there and absorb some of her go genius!

Well, this finishes up my review and suggestions. Hopefully it was helpful.

See you next time, space cowboy. . .

and keep eating wisdom.

-EatWisdom (Zack Kaplan- OU Go Club)