Learn to Play Go, Vol. 5: The Palace of Memory

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."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 quote 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.

Extremely well-written book brought my game up more than a notch. Janice's writing manages to explain conceptually and instruct specifically at the same time, which is no easy task. The examples and problems presented led my understanding up to and through each lesson both without being so easy and obvious I felt I was just regurgitating the example, without solutions so obscure that they made me feel I'd missed the point, and with a nice little grading curve so to speak so at the end of each problem set I had a frame of reference for how solid I was on the lessons (so if you got 1-4 Review more, 5-6 Average, 7+ Excellent sort of thing).So the book is helpful, yes, but next you must be asking yourself it it's helpful to you. Specifically, this book helped my game develop tremendously by teaching me how to look for big plays, it got me better at ignoring small plays, it taught me how to take advantage of an opponent's mistakes (even small ones). This is done by walking through how to narrow down your choices for opening moves and how to judge the relative merits of the few good options you really have, a subject that previously mystified me. This book teaches how to transition from that strong opening into a commanding mid-game, an area I didn't consider myself terribly weak before (I'm no pro but I didn't feel totally lost there) but I got a tremendous boost in mid game too, and there's also an excellent section on end-game principles and strategies on how to get the lion's share of the big endgame moves. I don't think you need to be all that established a player to begin reaping the benefits of this book's lessons, and I also suspect it would be helpful to players into the single-digit kyu ranks as well (though certainly not being that far myself as I read this, take that with a grain of salt)Again I want to stress how masterfully the author balances conceptual understanding and specific instruction. She uses the easy to remember sayings, shows you how they work, and how and when to apply them.My brother in law, who had gotten "ahead of me" (we've gone back and forth playing stronger for *years*) before I read this, was dumbfounded when I read this book and started winning by unprecedented margins. I lent him the book when I was done with it but you might want to start off buying 2 copies, one for yourself and one for your favorite rival (after you start your own copy of course ;) )

This volume continues the great work that the authors have done in volumes I-IV.One of the unique things about this series - and one of the things I like about it - is that they are written "broadly" instead of "deeply". That is, each book is written to a phase in your development as a Go player, covering the things that you're going to be seeing on the board during that phase - openings, fighting, end-game and all.This is in contrast to most Go books, which cover a particular aspect in great detail, trying to cover the advanced and not-so-advanced aspects at the same time.When I look for a new Go book, I always wish for some kind of guide as to what level it's appropriate for. Though there's a lot of individual variation in this area, I'll take a shot at it for this book: I would say that it's teaching material for 20k to 10k players. It would also serve as good review material up to, say, 5k, providing a fresh perspective and filling in some details.Players below those levels would definitely want to go back to previous volumes in the series and work their way up to this one. Players above those levels might not find much new here, unless they've gotten there mainly through a lot of play and not much study - in which case they might still benefit from this presentation.

Despite a few minor editing errors such as two stones labelled '1' this is a great book. Janice Kim makes everything so clear it seems obvious. The basic fighting pattern at the beginning of the book are a revelation; she explains clearly why you should hane, cross-cut and extend from a cross cut for example. Knowing why a move is played really helps understanding and so better play. There're also chapters on the opening, basic joseki and the end game including a quick way to calculate the value of end game moves. I'd say it's most helpful for single digit kyu players.

I love this book so much. It will definitely help me become a stronger Baduk player.

Era un regalo, ma mi hanno detto che era ok

As described and delivered in a timely fashion.