The Workshop Lectures, Volume 1, Yilun Yang 7P

Volume 1 contains three lectures selected from those given by Yilun Yang at workshops in Maryland and Pennsylvania in 2005 and 2006. "When to Tenuki in the Opening" shows how to gain a tempo in the opening in a common situation in which most players don’t realize they can avoid a local response. "Choosing the Direction of Attack" gives clear guidelines for determining how to attack an invading stone most effectively. "Playing Complicated Joseki" reveals the way to play difficult joseki without having to memorize lots of complex sequences. This essay contains a wealth of instruction about how to fight in difficult situations.

All three lectures reflect Yang’s emphasis on understanding general concepts rather than memorizing patterns.

Comments & Reviews

Short review: Wow!

The longer version:

This book 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.

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.

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.

I can only give this book a big thumbs-up, it is excellently written and full of valuable information.

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