The Direction of Play

There’s nothing more satisfying than returning to a book that one put down once-upon-a-time because it was too impossibly difficult and finding that it has magically become readable. This was my experience with Takeo Kajiwara’s The Direction of Play.

I remember looking at the book when I was somewhere between 19-15 kyu. I enjoyed Chapter 1, but gave up soon after that because I didn’t feel I understood what was going on.

This time, I felt I was able to at least follow the commentary and appreciate what was going on. I think I am a long way away from being able to apply the ideas in the book to my own games (I only got two of the seven problems correct in Chapter 7), but I still feel it was worth reading at this stage. If nothing else, it gave me a little insight into whole-board thinking, and presented a framework with which one can think about one’s games (i.e. the idea of considering the direction in which stones exert their power). I’m just beginning to think about reviewing professional games, so I really appreciated reading the in-depth analysis of the games that were included.

It’s difficult for me to formulate a take-home message for this book – I read it hoping to get a general feel for direction of play rather than for specific techniques or strategies. I liked the imagery in the book, and I think it may prove useful to think about stones as radiating power, and reaching out toward different parts of the board. Hmm. When I come to put these sorts of things in words, it all sounds a bit nebulous. I suppose that’s because of the nature of the book. It’s definitely one of those reads where the sense of a general concept begins to glimmer through a lot of specific examples which need to be taken as a whole.

Perhaps a reread when I’m stronger is in order. There was a lot of talk about when to depart from joseki and when various joseki are good or bad. I didn’t get the sense that I had to know lots of joseki to follow the text, but I suspect I’ll get more out of some of the examples once I can consider the positions with a repertoire of joseki at my fingertips.

4-4 Point Joseki: A Brief Introduction

Well, I have avoided the study of joseki for quite some time. In general, I intend to continue this trend, at least until I am a bit stronger. I keep hearing from stronger players that it is better to understand the reasons behind moves than to blindly follow some prescribed formula.

That being said, there were two things that drew me to William S. Cobb’s 4-4 Point Joseki: A Brief Introduction: (1) I was playing a lot of handicap games, and the same situations kept cropping up, and (2) it was a convenient size for carrying about whilst traveling.

This book is useful outline of several common approaches to the 4-4 point, and some of the common responses found in the beginning of the game. There are only 16 A6-sized pages of discussion and 26 pages of problems with commented solutions, so it is more of a catalog of common situations than a move-by-move detailed analysis.

Most patterns felt quite familiar from endless hours of playing GnuGo blitz games when I can’t sleep, but it was interesting to have a glimpse of insight into what responses are deemed to be a good result for both sides in various situations.

Coming from the point of view of someone who has not studied joseki at all, it did whet my curiosity about why certain moves were made.  There were several statements like “If White wants a moyo style game…” or “Black may want to control the right side.  In that case…” which made me wish there were more diagrams.  (The author recommends several books for further reading.)

The problems were useful in continuing the discussions started in the earlier chapters.  I found some of them quite difficult.  (I’ve got a lot to learn about whole board thinking!)

As far as a take-home message for this reading, perhaps I’ll just focus on a statement in the preface which informs the rest of the book (skipping out some of the discussion in between):

Two basic principles figure in almost all situations:

• Get out into the centre.
• Make a base.