Besides strategic planning and tactical reading, positional
judgement belongs to the few fundamental and most important skills.
Positional judgement is the correct and accurate assessment of a
position's territory, influence, available choices etc. and answers the
essential questions: who is ahead and by how much, what are the
players' potentials the current position, and which sequence of moves
gives the best result? This is the basis for every profound tactical
and strategic decision making. Frequently, the precisely
counted
value of territory is the most relevant aspect determined by positional
judgement.
Topics
After two short chapters, which distinguish in particular
'independently live' and 'unsettled important' groups from
'unsettled
non-essential' groups and identify the 'territory', 'valuable'
and
'neutral' types of regions,
the
by far greatest part of the book discusses every aspect of the topic of
territory. There are three kinds of related chapters: core
concepts, difficult but important topics, and necessary details which
must not be overlooked.
For territorial positional judgement,
the two core concepts are called Current Territory and Territory Count.
A player's Current
Territory is his surrounded territory remaining
after the opponent's imagined sente reduction, which settles the
territory
regions' boundaries. In one sequence, White reduces to determine
Black's Current Territory. In another sequence, Black reduces to
determine White's Current Territory. Once both players' Current
Territories are determined, the Territory
Count is simply the
difference of Black's Current Territory and White's Current Territory.
The
difficult chapters explain the important topics of fighting positions
(27 pages), moyos
(40 pages) and middle
game kos (38 pages). In these
chapters, the theory is kept as simple as possible: just one
extra
procedure, definition or major principle suffices for each topic.
Nevertheless, the difficulty of application of the simple theory to
positions increases with the complexity of their fights, moyos or kos.
Therefore, every chapter starts with easy examples and
proceeds to
the complicated examples. Each example is accompanied by as
many
diagrams as necessary to guarantee the reader's understanding; there
are up to 28 diagrams per difficult example.
Instead
of pretending that details would not exist, the other chapters reveal
all of them: prisoners,
nature of reduction sequences, aspects
remaining after them, privileges,
quiescence, fast counting, area counting and mutual reduction. In order
to get a precise Territory Count, one
must understand the nature
of well constructed reduction sequences. Since
a player reduces the defender's territory in sente,
these aspects
can remain and their evaluation is explained: remaining boundary defense moves
(teire),
basic gote endgames
and endgame kos. Positions
with fights or
middle game kos require a preliminary quiescence sequence
to create
positions having stable groups and allowing straightforward judgement
by means of peaceful reductions. While effort is needed to
determine
which are the territory intersections, afterwards their counting is
fast and
easy by updating only the changes and using techniques of
convenient counting such as identifying rectangles
and counting
multiples of 10, 5 or 2. The chapter about area counting
removes any
fears about Chinese-style rules because it is shown how to use
the
Territory Count.
The final strategy
chapter (28 pages) presents and applies four principles. The first
principle
presumes knowledge of the already determined Territory Count and works
out the common sense for decisions when leading, when the game is close
or when being behind. The second principle allows judgement for only
the territory regions and suggests how many points a player must make
in the still valuable regions of the board. The third principle offers
an easy alternative method for evaluation of one big moyo
adjacent
to one valuable region. The fourth principle concludes moyo assessment
by studying the value of reductions from the opponent's perspective.
Presentation
The
introduction gives an overview on the topics and carefully
explains application of the Prisoner Difference,
that is the difference of white and black prisoners, and the few other
used
very basic terms. While a few short chapters with necessary but
easy details are illustrated by diagrams showing a small part of the
board, the reality's rich variety in the other chapters is studied by
also analysing and
evaluating 92 positions from professional games. Hence the
reader
learns
application of positional judgement to both the simple and difficult
positions occurring in his games.
For
every analysed initial position, the complete reduction
sequences
are shown. Further diagrams mark all the territory intersections of the
resulting positions, which are accompanied by the territory
calculations. The difficult moves and
decisions, and strategy are explained in the accompanying texts. The
reader gets what he expects: everything is revealed very clearly.
The
topic of every chapter is elaborated by a general introduction, theory,
easy and increasingly difficult examples of the opening, early or late
middle game. The eight most demanding chapters are concluded by
problems. The reader should take time for their solution to profit the
most from the often detailed answers.
The generally applicable
theory is stated in bold font as principles or, in a few cases, as a
procedure or definition of a term, and is explained in detail.
How difficult are the calculations? They are easy! The reader must add
or subtract numbers, or divide by 2. Except for the terms 'sente' and
'gote', the book presumes only a little knowledge of go theory.
Nevertheless, beginners might prefer to reach EGF 8 kyu level before
they feel prepared to construct meaningful reduction sequences.
The book has an index of keywords.
Conclusion
Everybody
needs to learn and apply territorial positional
judgement. Where
other books end with using imagined reduction sequences at all, this
book starts and explores every relevant concept. The rigorous
treatise of all the essential concepts applied to
both simple and difficult positions provides the necessary
understanding for intermediate and advanced players. This comprehensive
book Positional Judgement 1 / Territory presents simple
methods
for studying positional difficulties, but never forgets to offer
sufficiently detailed explanation of the most demanding examples.
What the Book is Not
Although
the endgame topic is touched, this is not a book specialising
in
the endgame. While volume 1 discusses every aspect of territory
evaluation, the other topics of positional judgement are reserved for
one or two planned volumes about influence, thickness, efficiency,
choices,
aji and so on.
* = These are the endconsumer prices in EUR according to UStG
§19 (small business exempted from VAT).
