Go and Budo

[Ed Lomax]

the two do work well together, the tactics amd strategies are at a theoretical practically identical. The study of advantage gained in joseki could very well be related to short technique examples and henka.

those interested in go may also be interested in checking out my go page :
http://dove.net.au/~ed/go/index.html

Ed

[Don Roley]

Mr Lomax,
The bulk of the page you gave the URL to was devoted to a tournament that happened last October. You might want to update it. And I could not find much else except for links. Did I overlook something? I was expecting some essays on the relationship between budo and go.

I do like your idea though. I got a similar idea when I read the chapter on learning joseki in Kageyama's "Lessons In The Fundamentals of Go." His insistence that you need to understand the reasoning behind the joseki rather than just blindly following the moves struck me as being good advice for the Bujinkan techniques and kata. Have you read his book?

[Ed Lomax]

well the tournament is still going - the October bit was for a trial of running an internet tournament. We now have a 24 player strong international league going with some exceptionally strong players - people like me don't make the cut.
The Link to Kiseido.com has a lot of info - how to play, a link to their own server (which is the best written on the net), go equipment etc.
I have not read the book on joseki you mention but I know the point you are suggesting. In go it is often said that only amatuers memorise joseki, and that pro's just work them out as they play. Thisis not to say that pro's don't know them, but that they have spent far more time trying to work out the weaknesses and the continuations of them so as to gain an advantage than actually trying to memorise them. Sounds weird doesn't it but it's pretty simple - if you learn to read the position well then you don't need to memorise the next moves as you can work them out, this also means that if there is some minor difference in the position you can understand how it affects the joseki and the person that relies on the memorised joseki (and here is how it correlates to technique really well) ends up falling into a trap OF THEIR OWN MAKING!!!
To make a comparison, memorising techniques is like memorising responses in naughts and crosses where if nobody makes a mistake nobody loses, but fighting is more complex than naughts and crosses, and so the feeling of the position and ones understanding of principles and ability to apply them is much more important.

Ed

[burp]

Thanks for the interesting subject, Gentlemen.

I've argued about Joseki with a friend for a couple of years now. I like Kageyama's book (Fundamentals ...) simply due to the fact that it gives one the right attitude when studying Joseki. One needs to study and know Joseki. At least the pros certainly do. "Knowing" implies understanding though. This reminds me a little of kata in the MA. Is it just a dance? I imagine it shouldn't be. Understanding is alot different than just repeating learned sequences.

The biggest argument against simply repeating sequences in Go is as Go Seigen put it in the preface(?) to a recent book ... (paraphrasing here) one needs to look at the whole board.

In this way, I imagine Go is alot like war ... focusing on local patterns ... in this case, a corner or side of the board ... doesn't necessarily win the war. Local positions, fighting, etc. impact the whole board and overall strategy. Thus Joseki should be played with an understanding of the moves involved and their impact on the whole board.

Anyway ... in my limited two cent worth opinion.

Enjoy!

mikehansen