“I AM A SICK MAN…. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.”
What a wonderful opening from Dostoevsky’s NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND.
“My Go is sick…. My Go is spiteful. My Go is unattractive. I believe my Go sucks. However, I know nothing at all about Go, and do not know for certain why my Go sucks. I don’t consult a professional for it, and never have (except briefly with Alexander Dinnerchstein), though I have respect for Go professionals.”
NOTES FROM A GO PLAYER – i.e. moi
Ok, back to the topic. Over the past few months, I came to realise just so how important knowledge about joseki is which I have also blogged about. A joseki screw up can immediately screw up the game and this happens just too often now. Maybe a year back, I don’t seem to have this problem and seem to have josekis at the tip of my fingertips, literally, but recently, as I progress, I get stuck when my opponent play different (and often much more interesting) joseki variations. Not that they do it due to fancy but they do it because they think it yields better results and very often, I am at a loss at how to answer the moves.
I am not saying that the joseki variations a very fanciful or are trick plays but just different variations of common joseki. My inability to answer that shows that I really need to study joseki and learn more variations. My current stock of joseki knowledge stalls my progress.
As such, I am embarking on a 3 month study of Ishida Yoshio’s Dictionary of Basic Joseki. Yea, yea, yea. That book was written in the 1970s but what the heck, I don’t even know those stuffs in the book, so when it is written is not really relevant until I know what’s in the book. Besides, I have other references such as Jungsuk in our Time, Korean Style Baduk vol. 1 and most recently, New Openings in the 21st Century.
Also, one huge problem that I face is that I often don’t know how to continue after the joseki, and as such my SmartGo program comes in really useful where I can search a database of 45,000 professional games and check out the joseki played and how the game progressed from there to get ideas on how to play and develop after the joseki.
What a pleasure to have all these stuffs and to learn leisurely. I love Go.
Oh yea, I mentioned about the New Openings in the 21st Century book which I have received just a couple of weeks ago. AMAZING book. So many new ideas inside there and answers some of my questions as I see how high dan players play on kgs and didn’t understand their moves. Now I found answers to some of them and I have been trying out some of these new ideas in my games too. Maybe this is also one reason why I lose so much recently.
New Openings in the 21st Century will be a book anyone 3dan above will greatly appreciate. That is not to say that lower level players cannot appreciate this book but I feel just that players 3dan and above can really milk more ideas out of this book.