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Learn to Play Go #5
Learn to Play Go, Vol. 5: The Palace of Memory by Janice Kim
The Palace of Memory is the fifth volume of the award-winning Learn to Play Go series. Covers some principles of the opening and the endgame and of something called “shape”. Good shape is an intersection between tactics and strategy. Shows some of the templates of basic shape and thier use in fighting. Contains guides to the opening. Shows how to calculate the size of endgame moves.Includes self-test section.
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First published November 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 2, 2012
The first four volumes of Learn to Play Go were mostly written by Janice Kim's mentor, Jeong Soo-hyun, and translated into English by Kim. This fifth and final volume was written mostly by Kim, and is a sort of capstone to the series.
When I started (re)reading the Learn to Play Go series a few months ago, the above would have made no sense to me. After finishing volume five (the last in the series), it is perfectly clear, though my ability to spot sente and gote moves is still very primitive. However, all of the situations illustrated in The Palace of Memory were clear enough for me to follow, though I did have to actually set out stones on a board and work through some of the moves to convince myself that I understood it.
So, everything I complained about regarding the previous volumes, particularly the otherwise very good volume four, was addressed in volume five. This is a book for a beginner at the end of basic training and ready to start learning the intermediate aspects of the game, aspects I can now dimly and imperfectly sense.
The chapter Opening Guides, what I most needed help with, was probably the most valuable part of this book for me. Kim advises players not to study joseki (standard opening patterns) intensively until you reach the dan level, and instead to learn the basic principles that apply to the more usual openings. She goes through the most common corner plays and how to secure a corner, how to approach an unbalanced corner, and sketches out the usual responses to approaches. These are things it will take me a lot of play to get fixed in my head, but now at least I have an idea of what to do, instead of playing vaguely/semi-randomly in the area of the star points.
There is also an Endgame guide, almost equally valuable, explaining how to spot the biggest moves to make in the endgame, and mistakes to watch out for. Kim also introduces the basics of point-counting, which is to say, figuring out on the fly which of several possible moves is actually worth more total points. This is something pros can do in their heads with ease, so that they keep a pretty accurate running total of the score at any given time, whereas for a less experienced player, you're doing well just to be able to figure out where to play to get more points, especially when there's a tempting group of stones you can capture but it turns out that edging into an unsecured corner will be worth more overall.
So, overall, The Palace of Memory was excellent, never going over my head, but containing enough instruction that actually assimilating it and putting it all into my "palace of memory" is going to take awhile.
I can also say that I'm now whupping Many Faces of Go (almost) every time, usually by a huge margin. Whereas when I started on volume one of Learn to Play Go, I was winning 50% of the time or less. So, there's clear evidence of the effectiveness of these books. The entire series is meant for beginners, and now I feel like (after playing a lot more go) I'll benefit from some more advanced books.
All that being said, why I am only giving volume five 4 stars? Because, unfortunately, the proofreading for this book was terrible compared to the previous volumes. Typos in the text I could forgive, but there were not just one or two but in almost every chapter a board diagram that was mislabeled, missing moves, or in at least one case, the same diagram was accidentally printed twice in a row, when the second one was supposed to be the alternative move. Needless to say, this made some of the explanations very confusing; in most cases, I was able to figure out what the sequence was supposed to be, but a couple of the diagrams were just useless. Since this was the third printing of this book, I'm not happy about finding so many errors in a book for beginners.
This volume is not for total beginners, but if you've worked your way through the previous books in this series, it's definitely worth reading. It's the biggest volume in the series and it's packed with useful stuff for the high-kyu ranked player who can now understand more than the basic basics. But, be aware of all the (annoying) printing errors.
Pros are so conditioned to make the sente play, that we usually ignore the possibility of making the one point larger gote play. I've had the curious misfortune to actually have the one-in-a-thousand game where I lost by half a point on Korean national television because of this, which makes it worthy of inclusion in my Palace of Memory. But the real take-away conclusion is that you should be playing the sente endgame move 999 times out of 1000.
When I started (re)reading the Learn to Play Go series a few months ago, the above would have made no sense to me. After finishing volume five (the last in the series), it is perfectly clear, though my ability to spot sente and gote moves is still very primitive. However, all of the situations illustrated in The Palace of Memory were clear enough for me to follow, though I did have to actually set out stones on a board and work through some of the moves to convince myself that I understood it.
So, everything I complained about regarding the previous volumes, particularly the otherwise very good volume four, was addressed in volume five. This is a book for a beginner at the end of basic training and ready to start learning the intermediate aspects of the game, aspects I can now dimly and imperfectly sense.
The chapter Opening Guides, what I most needed help with, was probably the most valuable part of this book for me. Kim advises players not to study joseki (standard opening patterns) intensively until you reach the dan level, and instead to learn the basic principles that apply to the more usual openings. She goes through the most common corner plays and how to secure a corner, how to approach an unbalanced corner, and sketches out the usual responses to approaches. These are things it will take me a lot of play to get fixed in my head, but now at least I have an idea of what to do, instead of playing vaguely/semi-randomly in the area of the star points.
There is also an Endgame guide, almost equally valuable, explaining how to spot the biggest moves to make in the endgame, and mistakes to watch out for. Kim also introduces the basics of point-counting, which is to say, figuring out on the fly which of several possible moves is actually worth more total points. This is something pros can do in their heads with ease, so that they keep a pretty accurate running total of the score at any given time, whereas for a less experienced player, you're doing well just to be able to figure out where to play to get more points, especially when there's a tempting group of stones you can capture but it turns out that edging into an unsecured corner will be worth more overall.
So, overall, The Palace of Memory was excellent, never going over my head, but containing enough instruction that actually assimilating it and putting it all into my "palace of memory" is going to take awhile.
I can also say that I'm now whupping Many Faces of Go (almost) every time, usually by a huge margin. Whereas when I started on volume one of Learn to Play Go, I was winning 50% of the time or less. So, there's clear evidence of the effectiveness of these books. The entire series is meant for beginners, and now I feel like (after playing a lot more go) I'll benefit from some more advanced books.
All that being said, why I am only giving volume five 4 stars? Because, unfortunately, the proofreading for this book was terrible compared to the previous volumes. Typos in the text I could forgive, but there were not just one or two but in almost every chapter a board diagram that was mislabeled, missing moves, or in at least one case, the same diagram was accidentally printed twice in a row, when the second one was supposed to be the alternative move. Needless to say, this made some of the explanations very confusing; in most cases, I was able to figure out what the sequence was supposed to be, but a couple of the diagrams were just useless. Since this was the third printing of this book, I'm not happy about finding so many errors in a book for beginners.
This volume is not for total beginners, but if you've worked your way through the previous books in this series, it's definitely worth reading. It's the biggest volume in the series and it's packed with useful stuff for the high-kyu ranked player who can now understand more than the basic basics. But, be aware of all the (annoying) printing errors.
April 27, 2018
By far the most helpful book in the series. Covers shape, opening strategy, endgame in a generalizable, principled way.
May 30, 2019
A stupendous volume. This is the book you want to read right away but honestly can't get much out of. Coming out of the first 4 volumes of Kim's series into this one sets the reader up perfectly for all the lessons it contains. You get all the good stuff here: opening principles, good shape, joseki, and endgame. Best of all this volume is a true culmination of previous texts so you feel a sense of preparedness for these concepts that I imagine dominate the remainder of study (at least in their foundational elements).
Highly recommended but only read as a continuation of the series.
Highly recommended but only read as a continuation of the series.
August 10, 2023
A major reason why I got this book was to learn about shape. I was disappointed to find out that the author has a very different concept of shape in go than I did. I thought it was about making mid-sized formations of maybe 3 to 5 stones that are defensively strong and with good eye potential, or something like that. But the author presents instead close-range combat maneuvers. I'm not sure what the deal is, but certainly dwyrin, who I watch regularly on YouTube, has quite a different concept in mind when he talks about shape.
This book has many errors in the diagrams, which is a big problem for a book like this. In every case, I was able to figure out what was going on, but in a couple of cases, I had to spend a lot of time to figure out what the author meant. Some of the errors are blatant. For example, in one diagram, two stones are marked 1, two are marked 3, and none are marked 5 or 7. The author would probably have been able to spot all these errors with a single read-through. Given that this book is 20 years old, and has gone through 3 printings, it doesn't seem right that there was never an updated edition with corrections for the diagrammatic errors.
This book has many errors in the diagrams, which is a big problem for a book like this. In every case, I was able to figure out what was going on, but in a couple of cases, I had to spend a lot of time to figure out what the author meant. Some of the errors are blatant. For example, in one diagram, two stones are marked 1, two are marked 3, and none are marked 5 or 7. The author would probably have been able to spot all these errors with a single read-through. Given that this book is 20 years old, and has gone through 3 printings, it doesn't seem right that there was never an updated edition with corrections for the diagrammatic errors.
May 29, 2018
I really liked this book and wish a couple of the earlier installments in the series could have been more like it, but after finishing all of them I realize that some of the material in the earlier volumes had to be presented first for this last one to make sense. And even saying that, I know there is a good deal of this book and series as a whole that I will have to go back and re-read over time in an effort to absorb it more fully. The journey continues...
June 14, 2021
A great conclusion to a wonderful introductory series. I highly recommend the entire Learn to Play Go series, but books 4 and 5 really knock it out of the park as far as bridging the basics found in the first three volumes to the more complicated world of go theory and strategy. I will be for sure returning to the Endgame section of this volume as there is little writing about the endgame in English and Kim does a great job explaining how to properly evalutate and calculate endgame.
March 18, 2023
Me parece un buen libro, ofrece consideraciones muy útiles para tener en cuenta durante las partidas, y sin complicarse en exceso. Hay decisiones en las que hay que tener en cuenta múltiples factores, pero este texto ofrece una serie de reglas que simplifican bastante las cosas. Me parece especialmente útil la parte del Yose (Endgame), ya que no la trata ninguno de los otros libros que he leído sobre este juego.
January 13, 2018
Skvělá série knih pro začínající hráče královské hry GO
June 23, 2023
This series was a fantastic bringing-up-to-speed for the game of Go.
October 19, 2013
An outstanding conclusion to this series.
After a great first book, I have been less than thrilled by the following three books. They were good to very good, but I felt that they were a little shallow and did not provide enough meat for serious study, even for beginners. This could not be farther from the truth about this last book though.
The authors dive into a crucial topic for those that want to improve and leave the beginner ranks. The first part, dealing with the templates of fighting is what really makes this book outstanding. If you understand the proper shapes for tactical battles, you have a tool that helps immensely even when not knowing josekis. I have read and reread this first part of the book and I am pretty sure I will keep doing that until it becomes second nature. I particularly like how the authors picked a pro game and after each template is presented they show an example from that game where the solution of the question of "what to play next?" uses the idea.
There is also a very good treatment of opening concepts, which goes significantly deeper that what we got in previous books. This is followed by a treatment of jungsuk (joseki) were some of the most common patterns are presented in a clear manner. Finally, the authors talk about endgame and especially how to determine sente and gote in this phase of the game as well as estimating the value of different moves so you can decide what to play first.
This is one outstanding go book! I would recommend it to those that have read previous books in the series and especially to those looking to improve their fighting.
After a great first book, I have been less than thrilled by the following three books. They were good to very good, but I felt that they were a little shallow and did not provide enough meat for serious study, even for beginners. This could not be farther from the truth about this last book though.
The authors dive into a crucial topic for those that want to improve and leave the beginner ranks. The first part, dealing with the templates of fighting is what really makes this book outstanding. If you understand the proper shapes for tactical battles, you have a tool that helps immensely even when not knowing josekis. I have read and reread this first part of the book and I am pretty sure I will keep doing that until it becomes second nature. I particularly like how the authors picked a pro game and after each template is presented they show an example from that game where the solution of the question of "what to play next?" uses the idea.
There is also a very good treatment of opening concepts, which goes significantly deeper that what we got in previous books. This is followed by a treatment of jungsuk (joseki) were some of the most common patterns are presented in a clear manner. Finally, the authors talk about endgame and especially how to determine sente and gote in this phase of the game as well as estimating the value of different moves so you can decide what to play first.
This is one outstanding go book! I would recommend it to those that have read previous books in the series and especially to those looking to improve their fighting.
January 15, 2011
This is yet another strong entry, with a lot of move-by-move information about shape, openings, jouseki (standard sequences), endgame and counting. It is a bit more detailed and prescriptive than prior entries, which made it a tougher casual read. In particular I skimmed the section on jouseki - I'll re-read it if the situations come out repeatedly.
July 9, 2012
I debated whether to read this when it first came out because the series had begun to grow too complex for me in volumes 3 and 4. I had been getting a lot of the problems wrong and not always understanding the explanations. This volume seemed to be pitched a little easier and I understood more. I am glad I stuck with the series.
October 28, 2013
The final volume of Janice Kim's excellent series, is both the largest, and most interesting for an advancing beginner. She covers important insights into the opening, middlegame and endgame. The examples are concise and informative. A book well worth reading again at a later date, to solidify your understanding.
June 25, 2012
This book is neat because it gives templates (if... then) for situations in opening, middle game and end game. For example: If there are no more unbalanced corners to approach, take a side star point. Also goes over a technique for counting the value of endgame moves which is very valuable.
May 24, 2023
This book stands out in the series. It starts from the fundamentals of shape in a fight, and uses that perspective to explain some solid basic joseki and opening principles. Then, the endgame part is also very useful for a beginner, explaining the value and priority of moves.
January 20, 2009
Learn to Play Go: The Palace of Memory (Volume V) by Janice Kim (2003)
July 29, 2013
I'm still probably re-reading it for a while but have to say that this has been a great series.
September 8, 2010
The one point jump can help you escape! ;)
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews