by William Cobb
A big part of life is experiencing things you have never experienced before: flying in a plane, hiking to a mountain top, being in a snow storm, visiting a country where you don’t speak the language. We think of such things as enriching our lives, making life more interesting, and fun besides. There’s an obvious parallel to this in go: the game has a virtually infinite range of possibilities, but some players seem resistant to getting outside their already familiar circumstances. There are a lot of things that many of us have seldom if ever experienced: playing tenuki in response to an approach move in the opening, knowing what to do when the opponent attaches to a 3-4 point stone, being confident about the best way to continue after the first dozen or so moves, consistently judging the status of small groups accurately, knowing where to invade common positions, etc. In this regard, we’re like people who are perfectly happy to have never seen the ocean or a snow-capped mountain. The world is full of amazing and wonderful things; we’re happy to spend time, money, and energy exploring and becoming familiar with as many of them as we can. We should have the same attitude toward playing go. Just playing won’t get you to a lot of the amazing amount of beauty and fascination the game offers. You’ve got to get outside the familiar patterns you already know. This is why it makes no sense to refuse to read books, take lessons, or study the games of stronger players. There’s a truly amazing world out there. We need to spend some time and effort exploring it and not just stay inside the familiar area we already know. Don’t just buy books—read them. Don’t just look at the results of pro games—play through them. Don’t just play the same opening moves—try some you’ve not used before. You’ll discover that go is even more fun than you thought.
photo by Phil Straus; photo art by Chris Garlock
