I play on KGS. I've yet to find a go player where I live, in Yukon Territory, Canada. Any ideas on how to get people interested would be appreciated! When I hit single digit kyus, I might make a concerted effort to start up a club. Might be a while yet: you can check my progress in the chart at the bottom.
I'd started a blog for a while, but I seldom did what I said I would in it, study-wise, so I felt it best to just forget about it. Thought it more useful to make a list of:
Go and Go Moku by Lasker: Nooo! Too many book stores carry this. Its only interest should be that it was one of the first western books about the game, and that it has the name Lasker on it, which helped go begin its spread in the west. It's a landmark, but it's misleading, inaccurate, and hard to understand...probably understandable given that it was one of the first western books about the game.:)
The Game Of Go by Arthur Smith: Nooo! Too many book stores carry this, too. Historically significant, probably THE first western book about the game. Inaccurate, esoteric, written in 1908 in a rather academic style. Maybe belongs in the collection of a collector, but seems mostly of historical significance.
Learn To Play Go Series Vol 1-4 by Janice Kim: Volumes 1 and 2 are great real entry-to-the-game type books. 3 Is not bad either: a first half on winning and losing habits/mindfulness, and a second half with games nicely commented for the beginner. Volume 4...not horrid or anything, but I think maybe I'd have done better to skip it and just play for a while before going on to Elementary Go Series books...good if you ENJOY it, and want to take small steps in what you study. I DID enjoy it at the time I was studying it. Then again, I had the two books above and the one below to compare it with. Other people seem to generally find them useful, fun, and attractive as well.
Basic Techniques of Go by ...I forget! Two pros:Informationally DENSE. Pretty much half with some basic joseki and sequences useful in handicap play, and half various catalogued tesujis. Helpful, but difficult, dense, and not fun. Did I mention it's really, really dense? Not a fav, but if, as in my case, it's what the local bookstore has hanging around, might be worth it, if only for the way it looks at tesuji. Though I prefer Davies Tesuji, listed below.
Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, Kageyama: A MUST have, and MUST read it yet again.:) Understand it all and absorbed it? No, not by a long shot; there's a lot of meat to go with his personable talk. I think I've gotten his "The student who cannot answer this at all has a questionable future" tsumego question wrong three times so far, but his reprimand makes me want to get better anyways!*grin*
In The Elementary Go Series:
Tesuji by Davies: Great stuff! Get it. Get it now.:) Difficult, at least for me, but rewarding.
Life and Death by Davies: So far, seems to be of some use, but maybe a bit esoteric in the second half for my strength. Nice approach to catologuing different questionable shapes...for learning the hard ones, probably need to do a lot more tsumego problems. For instance, Carpenter's Square is treated briefly, along with all else, albeit with the warning that a 3 dan maybe would know all about it.
Attack and Defense by Davies and Akira Ishida: Fabulous. Great. Wonderful. Integrating tesuji with this book feels likely to take me from 15 kyu to breaking 10 kyu on KGS without even pondering studying anything new. I REALLY like this one. Even without knowing a lot of tesuji, it's full of good strategic tips. Combined with Tesuji by Davies, you just start to feel the strength start creeping into your games. I'm 14 kyu as of this writing, but thanks to this book and Tesuji, maybe with Kageyama's book tempering it all, I'm beginning to feel under-rated by nearly two stones due to the ranking system lagging behind my progress. (As an update, I think I was doing that well, though I've slid back to about 14k in strength due largely to mood. I temporarily do such a thing a lot. Look at that graph! I'm generally inconsistent*grin* I still swear by this book; not its fault I'm moody)
Leave TJ a message here!:)
TJ!! Where have you been, miss you on KGS :-(
TJ: Hi! I was just thinking about Go and dropped by to look around.:) I'll be back sometime (though not as deadly seriously as I once was, I don't think), just too much on my mind for Go lately. For starters, I'm 6 months without smoking!;) I look forward to seeing you and having a chat over the goban.:)
drimgere YAY congrats on the quitting, I hope that's not why you play less go, but I suspect it may be :-( I'd love to chat sometime when you're on.
naruto3: Heya TJ not sure if you no me but I play on KGS as naruto3. I have not been on KGS lately because i have to reinstall my Java plug-in cause it became corrupted but I will be on soon. There is some interresting stuff on my homepage about hikaru no go it's actually pretty funny I didscovered it while reading some of the old chapters so maybe you could check it out. cu
Last time on TJ's page...
Going further on this subject takes us far afield from Go, into realms under investigation since the beginnings of humankind and before. I'd love to continue this discussion, but we're leaving behind any resemblence to a discussion which belongs on a Go wiki. Is there another forum outside of SL where we could do so? Of course, I'll also see you on KGS, and we could chat there, but it might be nice to link out to a further discussion for anyone who might be interested and following this thread, though I really don't know how likely that is.
(Sebastian:) Good question. I like the leisurely pace a wiki page allows us - it is more appropriate to this sort of conversation than a chat. We could just write e-mail, but I like the fact that this is an open conversation - who knows, maybe someone else will jump in to say "you guys are weird" or such. ;-) I'm not sure how hard it is to support a simple sort of wiki - if it is easy then I could put one on my homepage. I'm aware you probably don't want this to clutter your homepage. Maybe we could create a new page, such as TJ and Sebastian's Musings on Go, Philosophy and the Universe?, with a nice apology that there isn't much on Go. We certainly will get back to Go eventually.
Another idea: We could move this discussion to Hikaru79's forum. He just asked for some people to chat there and has a "real life" room.
TJ: Well, PhilosophicalMusingsAndGo started on a wiki, let's let it live or die there. Others can feel more free to contribute or criticise, and we can stop or even delete the sucker from the library eventually, so let's be brave. WabiSabi.