![]() StartingPoints Homepages
|
Kawabatas Master Of Go
I've just read the book. I was a little surprised to actually find the diagrams of the game there. As a piece of high literature it could just mention the author's interpretation of the value of moves. But Kawabata takes more technical approach still keeping his excellent style and writing more about people than the game. In the situations where his amateur judgement is not sufficient he cites Go Seigen. The moral issue of the book, the conflict is between the old artistic values and the new pragmatic young approach. Kawabata takes the conservative side and is definitely Meijin's fan. For balance though he shows his sympathy to the challenger (Kitani Minoru - the changed name won't fool anybody). His school is mentioned as well. The highest point of the book is, of course, Black 121. That was a sealed move. The next session was in two days. The ref opened the envelope and couldnot find the move. Then he muttered: "Ah..." I looked at the diagram to find it. When I finally found the move I was disgusted. Disgusted was Kawabata. Kawabata did not see Meijin's reaction but that day Meijin committed multiple errors and lost the game. During the dinner he said that the challenger spoiled the game and he wanted to resign immediately. Interestingly, pros were on the challenger's side seeing nothing wrong with sealing a forcing move (or making a forcing move just to gain some time for the real problem on hands). Go Seigen, for example, was more critical of Meijin's automatic reply. A different defensive move was better in his opinion. It seems that Meijin's fast reaction was just a sign of his anger.
Here is the crucial position from the book. White played an empty triangle 1. Perhaps black was too afraid to spoil his chance, but 2 was the sealed move. At the beginning of the next session disgusted white replied 3 without thinking. Go Seigen thinks that white had to play 'a'. My opinion is that all 3 of these moves were poor. Looking through the diagrams I had a strong impression that white had a considerable lead up to white 130 after which the game became close. The problem is in komi, of course, to be more precise in its absence. Even after all Meijin's mistakes black won by 5 points only. Komi 5.5 would make white the winner. However, this consideration is not applicable. With komi 5.5 black would play far more daring and risky game from the very beginning. Black played to win by existing rules. PS. I read a French translation of the book. I don't know if any English translation exists. BlueWyvern: There is an English Translation, I just bought it. BillSpight: The attitudes of the players softened over time. Shusai later said that the play made sense as a kind of YosuMiru probe, to see how he would reply. I don't think that Kitani ever admitted publicly that he made the play so he could think about the game during the recess. However, in an article about the game for a go magazine not long before his death, Kitani was asked about the move, and the controversy it caused. Kitani said, "Well, he answered it," and chuckled. Another curious aspect of the game was the fact that Meijin played an empty triangle in the center. Kawabata, who was about 5k level I guess, understood that the shape was bad, so he explained the fact by the unwillingness of the Master to give in any point in a match that was so close. The result turned out to be disastrous. Kitani used opponent's bad shape effectively. This is a copy of the living page "Kawabatas Master Of Go" at Sensei's Library. (C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0. |