Lesson 3a – The Opening (2)

Yokoso! Mina-san, konnichiwa!

I have been away for the Chinese New Year holidays and am now back and I hope to be able to continue to post regularly. Also, I will be publishing the new edition of the Module A Study Pack soon, now incorporating a lot more examples and exercise questions so that the point is more clearly illustrated and so that the exercise questions can be used for classroom discussions. Now, let’s move on to this lesson.

In the previous lesson, we discussed about the advantages and disadvantages of the Star/Hoshi/4-4 point and how to employ it in your game. In this lesson, we are going to discuss about the 3-4/Komoku/Xiao-Mu point.

Lesson 3 – The Opening (1)

Yokoso! Konnichiwa! Ogenki desu ka?

In the next few lessons, we will talk about the Opening in Go. In Japanese, it is called Fuseki, in Chinese it’s call “bù jú” and in Korean it’s called Poseok. I don’t know much about Japanese (although I am learning that language now) nor do I know much about Korean. However, I do know a bit of Chinese since I am of Chinese descent. The Chinese word means more than just the Opening. “Bù” has the meaning of plan and “Jú” has the meaning of game. Taken together it has the meaning of “Planning the Game”. Something along that line.

Looked at from this angle, we get a feeling that the Opening is not just the few moves that we play at the beginning but it implies that it has a far reaching impact on the game because it is a stage where the strategy for the game is planned. It is therefore important that one has a good foundation in the Opening so that one can have an easier victory instead of having to fight back hard from a bad Opening and taking a lot of unnecessary risks later.

Lesson 2b. Capturing Race – Solution (Part 2)

Yokoso! Mina-san, ohayo gozaimasu!

In this lesson, we continue with the solution to Questions 4 and 5 asked in Lesson 2. This is going to be the final lesson on capturing races and I hope that with these lessons, your understanding of capturing races has improved. In the next and subsequent lessons, we will discuss about the Opening and basic opening theories will be explored in a logical and systematic manner. The Opening lessons will also cover a bit on a few popular openings such as the Ni Ren Sei and San Ren Sei openings as well as a brief overview on the three types of opening, i.e. the territorial, moyo based and fighting openings.

Just to recap on the Capturing Race Lessons, these are the few things that you should know by now:

Lesson 2a. Capturing Race (2) – Solution (Part 1)

Mina-san, konnichiwa!

Have you all been practicing the capturing race questions? I believe you have because you are serious in improving your Go skills, right?

In this lesson, we shall have the solution to the first three questions in the study questions in Lesson 2. However, there shall be a slight change. Because we have gone through in a lot of detail in the presentation of the solution for the questions in Lesson 1 where the step-by-step technique is shown, in this lesson, we will just jump straight to the solution and we will only explore some answers that the student may commonly get wrong. I will therefore trust that you can by now identify which groups of stones that are participating in the capturing race and how to count liberties. If not, please review lesson 1.