Basic Techniques of Go

Description: This book can be considered a broad coverage of the following: opening principles, lots of handicap go advice, brief survey of tesujis, and a brief survey of endgame. The material is quite dense and contrary to what many descriptions say about this book, I vehemently disagree with the recommending this book for beginners. It is suited for intermediate to advanced players. Beginners steer clear of this book!

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Otake’s Secrets of Strategy

Description: In the third volume of The Heart of Go Series, Hideo Otake 9P illustrates 10 fundamental strategic principles. Afterwards, there is a set of problems to apply what you learned. This is the followed up by a set of amateur game reviews and professional game reviews.

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Friday Go Forward: Week 39

Overview

Since last week, I’ve been cutting down significantly on turn based games. I found that playing too many at once was really interfering with my ability to play better moves and not to mention takes up more time. And with everything else in my life kicking into gear, my training regimen got completely screwed up so I won’t be reporting on it this week. However, I’ve also come up with a new way to track how I’ve been spending my time on go and will be updating my training menu next week once I’ve gotten a better hang of it.

Another relatively big decision on my part was to finally return to playing live games on KGS. It has been too long and I’ve decided that trying to wait to play a game with the time settings I desired was only hurting me in the long run. So you can definitely look forward to seeing more games being populated in my list of kifu on KGS in the future.

Finally, there’s been a launch for an online go magazine called Formation Magazine. It seems to be a new effort to provide an in-depth online magazine for the world to peruse and read. Though there are some design issues that I have with it, it seems like it could turn into something really valuable for the go community in the long run. So be sure to check it out and see what you think!

Games

• KGS - 1 game
• DGS - 2 ongoing games
• Nova - 5 games

Reading Material

• Finished Otake’s Secrets of Strategy.
• Worked on Jump Level Up 5.
• Worked on Getting Strong at Endgame.
• Started working on Master Play: The Fighting Styles of Kato Masao & Seo Bong Soo.
• Started working on Changing One’s Conceptions: Awaji’s Aphorisms.
• Started and finished Basic Techniques of Go.

Video Lessons

• Becoming a 5 Kyu - Lesson 26
• Becoming a 5 Kyu - Lesson 27
• Becoming a 5 Kyu - Lesson 28
• Becoming a 5 Kyu - Lesson 29
• Becoming a 5 Kyu - Lesson 30
• Level Up to 3 Kyu - Lesson 1