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Kokiri
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Ian Rapley 2K (jun 03) Central London Go Club; I have spent four years studying go; two as a student in Japan, two back in England. Go now absorbs enough of my time that I wonder exactly what I did before I took it up. I was fortunate enough to have a number of strong players teach me in Japan; one day I hope to be both strong and dedicated enough to pass at least some of this on.
I have recently started playing on IGS under the name haniwa at a grade of 4k. Haniwa is a term for small clay figures found covering the burial mounds of ancient japan.
Anthony Gormley has recently created several art works consisting of upward of 40,000 similar clay figures about 6 inches high. It is an amazing feeling to see thousands of small faces all arranged to stare at you. I chose the name when i discovered that thousands of years ago, people were creating similar fields of small staring figures. I'm interested in what I guess a large proportion of the Go community are, getting stronger. Whereas once I may have focussed on improving my rank, now I am more concerned with playing a better standard of Go and maybe understanding what's going on a bit better. Obviously the latter will affect the former but still I feel I have a change of emphasis, and with it a realisation that study is enjoyable in its own right. Where study is concerned, I think it's often hard to know whether what you are studying is teaching you anything or not and in a way this is something that one looks to stronger players to for advice. i also think this is why the idea of plateaus and barriers at certain ranks is a popular one; say I am about 5kyu, typically what concepts does a 5kyu lack that a 2/3kyu understands and so what are the barriers I need to cross to improve my standard of play? The question is, then, whether everybody (most people) develop in a similar way, and so if there is such a roadmap of concepts and development. I consider two broad aspects of the game reflected in my studies:
1)covers things like tesuji, the Endgame, Life and Death and, coming from a mathematical background, is something that I find comes more naturally to me and is easier to study. There is a concrete goal to a Life and Death problem, and it is possible to (eventually) read one's way to a solution. 2) is maybe the same as 'whole board vision'. I think it is harder to study but ultimately more important. I think that the fuseki and shape fall into this category, and that it is harder because there are less absolute measures of success or failure. In a fuseki problem, I think that you are not looking just for the right answer, but also training yourself to see why it is the right answer. It is more important I think because maybe as much as 80-90% of my moves are not read out, rather they are played bacause they 'look' right or seem to make decent shape. Futhermore, a good understanding of 2) helps 1) since when reading out problems you start by trying what looks like the right answer, so if you could train yourself such that the right answer 'looks right' then it would save yourself a lot of reading time. This is also why you often see strong players advising you to do many easy problems quickly, I suppose. I guess what I am saying is nothing new: it is all very well reading the local position out accurately, but first you have to identify the biggest area to play in. This is a copy of the living page "Kokiri" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |