Sat 16 Jun 2007
Just a quick post to share some of the things I’ve been looking at related to Go:
While listening on KGS, someone mentioned that a great professional to study is Takemiya Masaki 9 dan. He is a Japanese pro who apparently plays with an interesting style, creating large moyos and playing with what some people call a “cosmic style”. The commenter then gave this link to a page full of recent games by this pro for study, along with a couple of pictures. I’d like to go back and read some of these and replay them on my new full size set and get a feel for what they are talking about.
For those who would like to see what a Go lesson is like, there is a YouTube video up here of a lesson from Ing Goe, it’s quite long at around 96 minutes but is a good idea of what its like to get a group lesson from a well known instructor. Guo Juan has a couple of free lectures up also at her site that are similar. Oh wow, in checking her site, I just found the following offer to Study Go in China: and a blog from one of last years students. Wow, I’m definitely going to go back and read that later for sure…
Currently, I’m reading The Master Of Go by Yasunari Kawabata, a novel that my mother sent me for my birthday. It won the Nobel prize for literature in 1968, and is loosely based around an important match between the old “invincible” Master of Go, Shusai and the young challenger Kitani Minoru (although the author uses the fictitious name Otake’). It obviously features the game quite prominently, but it’s central theme seems to be one of comparison between the old world, and the new modern age as it came to Japan just before the start of the Second World War. It’s an enjoyable diversion from more practical study, and is good literature to boot. I would recommend it to those who are looking for a historical novel about Japan, or just love to read and think about Go and Go culture. I haven’t finished it yet, but afterwards I’d like to play out the match that is being described so as to gain greater context to the events.
And finally, as a help to my commitment to study life and death problems each day, I found the following program, GoGrinder, a java based study program for practicing Go problems. It also comes with a selection of 347 problems to get you started, although I think I will continue to pull mine from a variety of sources…
Anyway, happy Saturday to all, and until next time, namaste’.
