Yilun Yang's Workshop Lectures

Just read the new Yilun Yang book, his Workshop Lectures, Volume 1. I had read his Fundamental Principles of Go before, and was very impressed with that one. So I was looking forward to seeing his workshop lectures.

Last night, I took this book up with me as bedtime reading. It didn't take me long to get totally caught in the book, but sadly I fell asleep. First thing this morning, before even taking a shower or eating breakfast, I picked up the book again and read the rest of it. Best word to describe it: 'Wow!'

It is divided in three chapters. The first one talks about 'When to tenuki in the opening'. It gives excellent general guidelines for when you can tenuki and when you cannot. It did clear up a bunch of things for me, some of which I kind of knew but never saw verbalized so well, some which gave new and exciting insights. I will have to read it a few more times to really internalize all the information he is giving in a very concise manner.

The second one is about 'Choosing the direction of attack'. Again, very eye-opening, very enlightening, very clear. I think this is the chapter I am most excited about. I do like attacking, but I don't always think clearly about best direction or best way. This will help me better to figure out direction of play during attacking. He gives a lot of examples, will have to sit down with my goban and play them out to get a better feel for this all.

The third and final chapter talks about 'Playing complicated joseki'. He states that memorizing sequences is not important, what is important is to know the rules for contact fighting and how to apply them in messy situations. In that case, if your opponent plays a non-joseki move, you won't be lost, but you will have tools to deal with it. He uses the taisha as an example. He shows a typical sequence and what to do when opponent diverges from it. How to think to find the best play. This is another chapter I will have to study more closely.

I can only give this book a big thumbs-up, it is excellently written and full of valuable information. I also bought his Workshop Lectures, Volume 2, and very much looking forward to reading that one. But I'd better first have breakfast and a shower ^^