Get Strong at Attacking

By Richard Bozulich

Cover
Details
Blurb
Contents
Review

Details show/hide

Title	Get Strong at Attacking
Author	Richard Bozulich
Publisher	Kiseido
Code	k60
Date	2000
ISBN	4-906574-60-2
Pages	152
Dimensions	8 1/4. x 5 3/4. - 210mm x 147mm
Series Info	Get Strong at Go - Volume X
Publisher's URL	http://kiseido.com/Strong.htm#K60

Blurb show/hide

This book is part 10 of the Get Strong at Go Series

covers an often neglected phase of go: attacking in the middle game. Accurate analysis, spotting tesujis, and killing or rescuing stones is the backbone of middle game strength, but creating or finding vulnerable stones, then attacking them correctly is an equally important technique and one that many amateurs are deficient in. The 136 problems in this book illustrate:

the importance of securing your stones before attacking;
in which direction to attack, taking into account the strength and weakness of your own stones and those of your opponent's;
when it is advantageous to confine your opponent's stones or when it is better to gouge out their eye space;
how to execute leaning attacks, that is, attacking stones in one part of the board in order to build strength to capture or threaten stones somewhere else;
splitting attacks, where stones are separated into two groups and both are put under siege;
that the ultimate purpose of attacking is not to kill your opponent's stones, but to threaten them so as to secure territory or to build influence.

Contents show/hide

Preface		...iv

Introduction		...v

Part One		...1
	Invasions on the Side

Part Two		...49
	Invading Corner Enclosures

Part Three		...105
	Invading Large Territories

Reviews show/hide

Review by Peter Shotwell (AGA) show/hide 15/04/2002

Review Author

Peter Shotwell (AGA)

Reviewer Strength

n/a

At first glance, Kiseido's 'Get Strong' series looks like other problem books that are based around simple principles. For example, Vol. 10, 'Get Strong at Attacking,' shows how one theme, 'Attack from Strength,' is usually used in the middle game, but in a handicap game, it is correct for Black to attack early on. Another principle is that to attack by capping or using knight's moves should mean 'Do Not Try to Kill.'

The series is unique, however, because after doing some of the problems, one begins to feel there is a reason for the order they are presented in, and trying to figure this out seems to lead to a deeper and more-lasting level of personal understanding. Is this perhaps because the Right-Brain -- the original source of Go's appeal -- is more used since there are few words to explain that order until you supply them?

Review by David Carlton show/hide

Review Author	David Carlton	Reviewer Strength	1 kyu
Author's Email	carlton@bactrian.org	website	http://www.bactrian.org/~carlton/

This is, of course, a book on attacking in Kiseido's Get Strong at Go series. Like the rest of the series, it is a problem book. Specifically, it has 136 whole-board problems on attacking.

I'm honestly not sure what to make of this book. I think it's pretty good, and I'm glad I worked through it. It pointed out some holes in my game - for example, for some reason, I seem not to consider caps as often as I should.

But: I find books like this fairly tiring to work through. Not only are the problems whole- board problems, but they don't give you a choice of move to play from. Some of the problems direct you towards a certain area of the board; some of them don't. (They're all about attacking, though, so you at least know the kind of move that you're supposed to make in the situation.) So the upshot is that, on the one hand, they're certainly good practice, and I found them to be largely of a reasonably level for me (I'm currently an AGA 1 kyu), but on the other hand I'll inevitably get many of them wrong. The fact that there were up to 8 problems in a group didn't help, either: if I was taking the problems seriously, then I wasn't always able to get even a single group of problems done on my bus ride to/from work.

Anyways: pretty good book. Not one of my favorite ones in the series, and it will be a while before I go through it again, but I'm glad I went through it once.