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Intuition in the Opening

By Takagawa Kaku

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Title Intuition in the Opening
Author Takagawa Kaku
Publisher Slate & Shell
Code ssgr001
Date 2001
ISBN 0-9706193-2-4
Pages 35
Dimensions 8 1/2. x 5 3/8. - 217mm x 138mm
Series Info Improve Your Intuition Volume I
Sample pages ssgr001.pdf
Publisher's URL http://www.slateandshell.com/ssgr001.html

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Improve Your Intuition is based on a series of articles. Takagawa wrote for Go Review , an English language journal published by the Nihon Kiin (Japan Go Association) from1961 through 1977 that was the primary source of information about Go in English during that period. These articles aim at providing an understanding of the basic principles of good play and will be useful even to beginners.

ByintuitionTakagawa means the ability to perceive basic features of the situation on the board without having to engage in reflective analysis to find them. This sort of ability is acquired through experience, but in order to have good intuition, we must have good experience. That is, our initial practice needs to be guided by correct principles. It is these principles that Takagawa was so skilled at laying out and clearly illustrating. His discussion of how to play correctly is lucid and precise. The principles are basic and widely applicable to common situations. This makes his lessons unusually valuable.

The first volume of Takagawa's lessons focuses on situation in the opening stage of the game. The second volume deals with patterns of attack and defense, and the third examines how to reduce a large moyo . The original articles have been slightly edited for these volumes, primarily by substituting English translations for some of the Japanese Go terms that were common in English writing about Go in those days.

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Preface ...ii
I. How to Play a Splitting Invasion ...1
II. The Limits of Extensions ...4
III. The Meaning of Miai ...13
IV. Balance Between High and Low Stones ...15
V. Useful Knowledge for Openings ...15
  A Case of Enclosure ...18
  Some Warnings ...19
  How to Capture the Big Point ...22
  Resourcefulness in the Opening ...23
VI. Consideration of the Edges ...24
  The Right Time to Attack ...25
  The Size of the 3-3 Point ...26
VII. The Width of a Pincer ...29
VIII. Judgement in Defending ...31

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Review by David Carlton show/hide 01/08/01

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

This is a series of pamphlets (around 40 pages each) based on material from Go Review (with a small amount of material from The Vital Points of Go in the last volume). The first volume is subtitled Intuition in the Opening; the second volume is Intuition in the Middle Game: Attack and Defense; the third volume is Intuition in the Middle Game: How to Reduce a Moyo. The titles (and subtitles) reflect the contents accurately: the first volume has sections on "How to Play a Splitting Invasion", "The Limits of Extensions", "The Meaning of Miai", "Balance Between High and Low Stones", "Useful Knowledge for Openings", "Consideration of the Edges", "The Width of a Pincer", and "Judgment in Defending"; the second volume has too many sections for me to want to type in their names; and the third volume has sections on seven different kinds of moyos plus some whole board practice tests (taken from The Vital Points of Go).

These books are basically a whole bunch of examples, with a reasonable amount of explanation for each example, but with comparatively little overarching theoretical explanations. The examples are typically grouped in bunches, which you can see in the above section titles: so, for example, in volume three, you see lots of slightly different moyo positions, and how the differences in the moyo positions affect the appropriate attacks.

I liked volume one, I didn't like volume two, and I liked volume three (but less than volume one). There are various explanations for this; here's one stab at it. I've been working on my opening a lot over the last few years, so lots of the examples in volume 1 were ones that I felt like I understood (and might even play correctly in my own games). I don't know if others would like it as much as I did, but it should be okay for most people. Volume two is the most disjointed of the three; it was hard for me to really get into it, and I suspect that the lack of organizing principles that lasted more than four (or fewer, sometimes one) pages in a row was the main culprit. Volume three is quite organized, which certainly helped: it's (almost) all variations on a single theme. Unlike volume one, I didn't really feel that I would play the right move in many of the situations in volume 2, but the examples held together well and were explained well. I can imagine using volume three as a reference book in the future: I'd look at it after my games to see what I should have done in a situation where my opponent had a moyo.



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