Newsgroups: rec.games.go From: yychen@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (Youyi Chen) Subject: Mysteries of Weiqi ------- The King's Golden Rules Message-ID: Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 22:22:06 GMT Lines: 1739 For those who requested through email, here goes the whole thing. I guess it will be on ftp.u.washington.edu (or electronic-go-magazine?) eventually. Thank you very much for your support. Youyi Chen ==================================================================== Mysteries of Weiqi ------- The King's Golden Rules ==================================================================== Introduction: This is a collection of articles that I posted on newsgroup rec.games.go. Part 1 to Part 10 are about Chinese legend Ji Xin Wang's ten golden rules of Go. Ji Xin Wang's last name *Wang* means King in English. So, we may call it King's Golden Rules. Part 0 is an article in response to Bill Taylor's Sake bottle problem. Which should perhaps be the prologue to my series. Part 11, in the middle, is about ancient and modern ranking system. Articles are organized in mailbox format. But why? Aha, you figure it out :-) If you find any typos or mistakes (technical or writting), please inform me at yychen@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca or ychen at IGS, thank you very much in advance. Youyi Chen Table of Contents: 1) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 0) [was Re: Sake bottle shape.] 2) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 1) [was Re: New proverbs] 3) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 2) [was: The Mysteries of go] 4) Re: The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 2) 5) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 3) 6) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 4) 7) Re: Change my strength? 8) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 11) ---- On ranking system 9) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 5) 10) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 6) 11) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 7) 12) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 8) 13) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 9) 14) The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 10) ================================================================== !!! Dedication !!! I would like to dedicate this series to the old IGS at New Mexico and new IGS at Berkeley. It was IGS brought back what I had lost for years ----- Go and friends. This series is also for my Go and Bridge buddies: khuang, Lin Po, xgc, gan, lilu, dong, lzy (lyu), .... who I knew back in the University of Science of Technology of China (Hefei, 1978-1983) and in Academy of Science of China (Beijin, 83-86). ================================================================== From ychen Tue Oct 20 13:11:06 EDT 1992 Newsgroups: rec.games.go From: yychen@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (Youyi Chen) Subject: The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 0) [was Re: Sake bottle shape.] In article , wft@math.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Taylor) writes: |> I made this enquiry some time ago, but no one managed a response. |> Perhaps someone present now will know. |> |> The question concerns the so-called "SAKE BOTTLE" shape. |> This shape is mentioned in a proverb (available from washington) which says |> "The sake bottle shape is negative." |> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |> My earlier enquiry led to the information that this shape is what is |> (I think) sometimes also called the "dog's head":- . O . . . |> . . . O . |> (there is a similar shape "horse's head"; one wider) . O . . . |> |> What puzzles me is why is this shape called "negative", in the proverb ? |> Surely it appears over and over again in both pro and amateur games. |> One can hardly avoid it, indeed! It seems a bit harsh to call it 'negative' |> when it seems to be so indispensable. |> |> Hope someone can explain this to me. |> Following is my $0.02. First, common sense, although many "negative" shapes appear again and again in both amateur and pro games, it does not suggest that some "negative" should be classified as "positive", neither does it suggests that those moves to form "negative" shape are all bad moves. In the contrast, given a particular situation in the surrounding area, a move forming a bad shape may turn out to be a good move. As my fellow lzy once kibitzed on igs: the most beautiful moves are those that work. (no wonder I saw so many bad shapes in his games :) ). Now, let's look at this shape closely. 3 stones are marked as A, B, C accordingly. A . O . . . . . . O . C . O . . . B It is believed that A-B without C, A-C without B, and B-C without A are efficient formation of stones. However, given A-B pair, *generally*, C should be placed at one more step to the right. It still keep the connection to A-B, and appears to be moving faster to the right (usually gain the influence of the middle at the board). Therefore C in the following is more efficient. A . O . . . . . . . O C . O . . . B Also, given B and C, A can be placed one more step up as follow. Again, it keeps the perfect connection and gain the middle influence (suppose up is the direction to the middle) in a faster way (or you can say it runs away in a faster manner). A . . O . . . . . . . . . . O . C . O . . . B A "negative" shape should be realized as an inefficient formation of stones. Therefore, one should avoid it whenever it's *possible*. BUT, an inefficient formation may turns out to be the most efficient one if, given a particular situation, it's the only one that works. >> From: wangs@sol.engr.umbc.edu (Shawe-Shiuan Wang) writes: >> I am a 4 dan player. I don't know the answer either. >> However, I asked a 6dan player the same question about one year ago. >> He 'guessed' this shape is too solid for safely extension and/or too tight >> for making an 'eye'. I would like to know any other reason. >> Jeffrey Wang When it comes to make eyes, often time, one needs not to worry about the shape. Those moves that makes 2 solid eyes are usually good moves. In terms of efficiency, it is *usually* considered to be VERY INEFFICIENT if one is FORCED to make eyes in a Fuseki. Youyi Chen From ychen Fri Oct 23 17:21:45 EDT 1992 Newsgroups: rec.games.go From: yychen@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (Youyi Chen) Subject: The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 1) [was Re: New proverbs] > From: wft@math.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Taylor) writes: > Touching on the matter of new proverbs; one of the books from which the > archive proverbs are taken, mentions a new Russian proverb, that says... > > "With less than 15 stones in danger, tenuki." > >Meaning,seemingly, that one can probably gain more with a sente move elsewhere, > than a gote move to save 14 stones. Well, like all proverbs, one must take it > with a pinch of salt; there will be *many* exceptions. Still, it is doubtless > a good precept to keep in mind as a possibility. I am sorry to say that this proverb is WRONG. It is simply plain WRONG. It is not a problem of whether there are too many exceptions. My understanding is that it is ALWAYS WRONG to justify a tenuki according to the number of stones one leaves behind. Speaking of the tenuki (or discarding stones), in Chinese, I believe one should *at first* make his/her judgement according to whether these stones are "Qi Jin" or "Fei Zi". o Qi Jin = important stones. (very rough translation) too often time Qi Jings are very few stones. The number can go down to 1 or 2. I believe that it takes almost a professional level to fully understand the meaning of "Qi Jing". One usually cannot afford to let Qi Jing being taken by his/her opponent. o Fei Zi = useless stones. obviously, these are the stones that you can afford to give away. The number of stones in this case can go beyond 15. Secondly, talking about the proverbs, I am not sure if everybody here knows that the most famous proverbs are the so called "Wei Qi Shi Jue" (meaning 10 proverbs of go. WeiQi=Go, Shi=Ten, and more exact translation of Jue3 may be "secret of success" or "key to success") It was written during Tang Dynasty (1,300 years ago) by Ji Xin Wang who is one of those believed to be 13 dan professional in fighting skill by modern measure of the strength (well, no flame on this point please if you disagree. The Chinese go history states that the legend Wang's master is an angel, to be more exact, two angels. Aha, now you agree he had to be 13P). Back to our topic, in Wang's number 4 (jue) secret to success, the legend wrote: "Qi Zi Zheng Xian" Qi = discard, Zi= stone, Zheng = fight for, Xian = lead (=sente in Japanese to English spelling). Like all the rest of nine secrets, the legend left us this key to success without further explanation (most of Wang's books had vanished in the history). Perhaps this is one of the reason why someone comes up with a number 15 as a criterion :) . There are two modern versions of interesting explanations. One comes from Chinese Guo family, one of Guo's family member used to say "let it being taken, once you discard them all, you win". It gives us an impression that you can surrender as many stones on the board as you want. (I want it??? who really want to be taken anyway :-) ). Guo's saying is believed to be popular among some Chinese professional players. It reminds us that we should always think about discarding stones when we are forced into a sad (?) situation. Another version is from Otake Hideo, in which he wrote (!!Warning!! I read the Chinese translation so the following is Japanese to Chinese to English) "with global board in mind, discard residual stones, get the important point on the board". I am actually having difficulty in understanding the word "residual" here. The legend told us that we can discard "Zi" (stone), he didn't say that we should ONLY give away the residual stones. There are situations that an early mistake will force us to give away some important stones in order to gain the Xian (the control, or the lead on the board) or to minimize the lose. Keep in mind that, however, if there are words translated from Chinese to Japanese then back to Chinese again, something strange is almost bounded to happen. To sum them up, my understanding of when to tenuki is that it *should not* be determined solely by the number of the stones involved. It should be measured by if the tradeoff you get from it is compatible to the lose (common sense), or if it is worth to let some of your buddies go (regardless of how many of them) in order to get the control of the board, influence gained, lead, Xian, sente, or whatever it is. How much a Xian or a sente worth in terms of exact number of stones is a rather difficult issue. As a VERY ROUGH guideline, Sakata Eio, Fujisawa Hideyuki et. al. once quoted in their book by saying that the first stone worth about 5 pts, and the second stone worth 10 pts in PROFESSIONAL's handicap games (later in the same book they went on saying that handicap stones worth about 12pts each in average). However, I am afraid that no one dare to give an estimate of an applicable upper bound for how much pts a sente worth in the middle of the games. Youyi Chen yychen@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca From ychen Mon Oct 26 15:43:11 EST 1992 Newsgroups: rec.games.go From: yychen@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (Youyi Chen) Subject: The Mysteries of Weiqi (part 2) [was: The Mysteries of go] ==================================================================== !!! WARNING !!! To *some* amateur dan players, this article may be long, boring and offensive. To some beginners, professional players, and go programmers, the following may be interesting. Don't say I didn't warn you in the first place. ==================================================================== In my early posting I mentioned Chinese legend Ji Xin Wang's number 4 secret of success in playing go. I feel that his number 5 is as interesting as his number 4. So, here it goes "She Xiao Jiu Da", the legend wrote. She3 = give up or abandon; Xiao3 = small; Jiu4 = save or rescue; Da4 = big. ===================================================================== !!!!! Dangerous !!!!! You still have a chance to hit 'N' NOW. It is not uncommon that misunderstanding or improper practice of the following theory (or Kung Fu, in Chinese term) weaken one's strength by several stones on the board. ===================================================================== I strongly believe that go is nothing more than reflection of simple things in real life and stones placed on the board mirrors a player's understanding of the world. "Giving up small to save big ones" doesn't appear to be a surprising secret at all. It really doesn't take a legend to point out this simple fact to us. However, apply this very fact to a go game, an even simpler (?) thing comes up ------ how to distinguish small and big. Ability to distinguish between small and big differs vastly among amateur players. What a shame! But, don't worry, Read what follows. "What's the most important thing to distance a top world class player from the rest of the professional players ?" when asked in a national televised live interview, Nie, the biggest name in China, replied without any hesitation: "the understanding of go". I guess such kind of "understanding" includes the understanding (note: NOT CALCULATING) of "small" and "big". With his own experience quite different from those great Japanese players, Nie, after the culture revolution (a long period in China *almost* without go, not to mention without IGS, what a painful period) knows in his heart that what is really hard to catch up is actually something appeared to be rather simple in the first place. Isn't it true that we should always save a group with 10 stones and give up a group with 2 stones? No! we answer. But why? that group with only 2 stones has huge potential! We justify. How much is that kind of potential worth in terms of reall stuff -- stones or points? 23pts, 31.5 pts, 32.75 pts, with different style, different understanding of go, you get different answers (ouch! but wait and see). What if we ask some professional 9 dans about how many points a thickness pattern is worth. Can we get a formula that we can apply to those games on IGS? NO, I believe so. The true is that they don't have any formula at all. A professional player measures the worth of thickness according to his own style, his opponent's style(!), the formation and balance of all the stones on a whole board, the list goes on and on .... However, there are rules perhaps most of them agree on (Amazing, how can they agree on something that they don't even sure what it represents early on). For example, the value of thickness reduced dramatically as a game approach the end which suggests that one should care more for "influence" or "thickness" in very early stage of the games, less as the game develops. May be I have gone too far in trying to explain something that isn't that complicate. If you really think so, you are more than welcome to hit 'N' NOW. For those who have not been bored to death yet, the adventure goes on...... At this point, I begin to feel that some of you may be wondering if I am really talking about the game "go". Doesn't it sound just like the Chinese medicine, martial arts, .... those ridiculous Kung Fu that many think hard to explain and measure in scientific (?) terms. Ever play a bridge game lately? a typical western game, forget about all those psychological tricks, every single card we play has scientific meaning following to the table. And, best of all, it is explainable (it takes time, maybe) in terms of probability. We can argue if it is logically or mathematically correct. How about biddings in a bridge game? Well, we have all kinds of bidding systems to follow, thanks to Charles H. Goren who invented the point counting system (did he invent it? wasn't Ely Gulbertson's early version in his "Gold Book" simpler? Well, at least, Goren is believed to be the one who standardized and popularized the modern point counting system) which makes bidding so easy to learn (and to argue sometime). Wouldn't it be wonderful if we can have things equivalent to Ace=4pts, King=3pts, Qeen=2pts, Jack=1p