More Books?!

I was playing through a Shusaku game this morning (specifically the game that occurs between Shusaku 4-dan and Kadono Tadazaemon 6-dan, starting on pg. 66 of John Power's Invincible: The Games of Shusaku,) when I fell to wondering about a variation of one of the taisha's main lines- namely the one with the narabi as the fourth move. I ended up looking at all of the references I could find on the internet, and was finally side-tracked until I found myself at the Kiseido check-out page, ordering all three books in Ishida's joseki dictionary set, as well as Go Seigen and Segoe Kensaku's tesuji dictionary. I was a little shy with the tesuji dictionary set, however, and only purchased the first in the set. I attribute this to both the price of each volume, as well as the fear that It will be way over my head. Tesuji feel like a bit of a weakness of mine, despite what reading abilities I have struggled to acquire up to this point.

As I get deeper and deeper into studying specifics, it gets harder and harder to care about rank, or even about wins and losses in go. My focus is shifting powerfully towards simply playing a wonderful game. For me, coming to understand Joseki provides a feeling of experience that allows a clarity of play. I'm really looking forward to the books coming in, especially since I've torn through Richard Bozulich's Get Strong at Joseki series. A lot of the late problems are still quite difficult, but I've exhausted the majority of the reference value that lies within their pages.

Ishida's set of Joseki dictionaries is something I've been wanting since I finished my first joseki book. When I first took steps into the deep waters of joseki play, I remember how drastically my understanding of play was disrupted. It feels to me that many aspects of joseki play that once were incomprehensible are now the basis upon which I build my understanding of the game, and feel second nature. I'm genuinely curious about what I'll be able to learn from these books.

Getting used to writing in a blog seems to be more of a challenge than I thought, so I'll have to keep working at tone. I think pretty soon I want to do some slightly more extensive book reviews, and I'd also like to try and make this blog a bit of a reference/ forum for the people who are forming up the Oklahoma go network.

As always, keep eating wisdom.

-Zack Kaplan

P.S. Are there any books that anyone's looking forward to buying right now?