Get into Shape
Zack here, after a long time without writing. Today I’d like to toss up another book review, this time on Volume 3 of Rob van Zeijst and Richard Bozulich’s Mastering the Basics series, Making Good Shape, in the hope of getting some of you more interested in shape. You can find the book (http://www.kiseido.com/master.htm#K73) on the Kiseido website (www.kiseido.com,) with the others in the series.
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)
Oh, a new post!
I picked this book up awhile after you recommended it, Zack. As you mentioned, it goes deep.
I believe that shape is or is nearly the most important concept in go. This is because shape is actually what determines the potential directions of play. For example, stones placed in the opening (think of them as long-term shape) move into formations in the early-middle game which soon affect the strategy that one must adopt. Professional games are a battle of shape vs. shape, and a deep look at how they interact together to give the end-result (who wins and who loses). Thus, a better analysis of shape leads to an understanding of which strategy works best with one’s formations. Knowing shape allows for a consistency in your stones and thus enables each stone to work better together creating what ‘experts’ call “efficiency.” This book covers an introduction to local shape play. Whole board shape is talked a bit too, but not as much as I would have liked.
As you said, Zack, the book is a hefty topic and I too believe that 245 problems are not enough to do justice to the depth of material introduced here. If anything, this book may be seen as an introduction to the basics of shape with a few intermediate ideas included.
One of the things which bothered me quite a bit were the typos in the book. Several times the author would say black when it was white and white when it was black. This occurred in explanations of positions, not simply “White/Black to move,” causing me quite a bit of confusion at times.
I haven’t finished the entire book, but have had the chance to read some of another book on shape, Charles Matthews “Shape Up!” “Shape Up!” is excellent in that it puts emphasis on talking about the efficiency of stones and how shape affect the direction of play. The downside is that the book almost reads like a dictionary, yet doesn’t give problems or applications of every option that it discussed. Because of this format, it is a very time-consuming self-study book, and is hard to imagine how much of the content one will leave with intact. The book is also written to be read through twice–as noted by the author. But I would recommend at least four reads to get it all truly ingrained, lol.
Lastly, both books have some pretty awful grammar at times. It’s doable, but be prepared to re-read some passages.
Thank-you for the review, Zack.
Just took a quick look-through to refresh my recollection of this excellent book, and got a new impression. This time, it seemed that the introduction and the first chapter were all about vocabulary, with the word “vocabulary” to be translated into English as “Concepts”.
Invariably, when they talk about efficiency, they also talk about tewari. So these concepts are necessary prequels to efficiency. And that, in turn, means that you should think about shape as you read other fundamentals books. In The Beginning, for example, and 38 Basic Josekis.
So to me, the best part of the book is the problem section. Don’t just think about the answer; think also how the situation might have arisen. The moral of the story is that shape (katachi) is something you make, and/or something you try to prevent your opponent from making.