Join the Shusaku Study Project
Hi all,
I’m looking for folks who are interested in dedicating some time out of their week, for the next few years, to analyzing Shusaku games. The more folks who commit to the work, the lesser the work on any one individual, the softer the overall commitment.
Project start date: end of April 2022
Project meeting place: Trevoke’s discord
Minimum rank: SDK, preferably 5k and up, but if you’re 6-10k and strategically-minded, join us, you’ll grow with the project 
Let me tell you MUCH more about this!
I’m a niche streamer. I’ve recently finished streaming reviews of the 151 Dosaku games we have on record. I decided to follow that up with every Shusaku game on record, chronologically, starting when he’s about 11 years old. That’s 471 games. I review two games, on average, every week, on my Sunday stream. Some games are shorter, of course, but with quick math you get to over four years of streams. I’ve done four games so far, and it has occurred to me that reviewing Shusaku games is difficult. Which, I realize, probably doesn’t surprise anyone.
This takes me to the point of this post. I am looking for folks who are interested in studying the games together, as a group, and put together the synthesis of our work into a review. We can make this review public, and I can present some version of this review to the (admittedly small) audience on my Twitch stream.
You might be thinking “wow wow, you take all the credit for MY hard work?”
Well I’m here to tell you, “nah, man.”
… Okay, I’ll elaborate.
I am happy to credit all the folks who contributed to the analysis for each game they did contribute to. I will be presenting the results of the work (and putting in a good chunk of my own), but I will also be trying to present the games in a way that works for my stream. This means:
- how long the review takes
- the theme of the review, if any
- elements of the analysis I bring in for any given review
So, of course, not everything we cover in the review will necessarily be presented into the stream.
Second, the analysis of the games, itself, will be its own reward. The things you’ll learn and discover through this work will stay with you much more deeply than for anyone who’ll just be watching the stream.
Third, you’ll get to meet and work with like-minded folks, all interested in the depth of game of Go, regardless of where in the world they are.
Fourth, you’ll get to learn and put in practice, with help from my teacher, a systematic and thorough method for studying pro games, which I’ll summarize next.
And fifth, making this review public means that we’re doing a public service for the world of Go forever: we can still refer to Invincible, but we’re no longer bound to it, and everyone will be able to refer to this work forever.
So, here’s what the work is going to look like. We’re going to make three passes for each game, one pass per week, using the core skills of the game of go. If you’re not sure what those core skills are, my teacher will happily provide you with an introduction to these skills and what it means to analyze a game using each as a separate lens.
Step 1: put game through katago with enough visits (10-20k visits per board position, probably), add relevant variations to SGF. For this step, my teacher has already volunteered.
Step 2: go through the game, focusing only on positional judgment.
Step 3: go through the game, focusing only on direction of play.
Step 4: go through the game, focusing only on reading.
Step 5: put it all together!
My plan involves a rotation. Every week, two games move to the next step. Which is to say, every week, two new games go through step 1, and when we’re going full steam, every week, the reviews for two games are finished.
| Time | Katago | Positional Judgment | Synthesize | Direction of Play | Synthesize | Reading | Synthesize | Stream / Publish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Games 1+2 | |||||||
| Week 2 | Games 3+4 | Games 1+2 | ||||||
| Saturday | Games 1+2 | |||||||
| Week 3 | Games 5+6 | Games 3+4 | Games 1+2 | |||||
| Saturday | Games 3+4 | Games 1+2 | ||||||
| Week 4 | Games 7+8 | Games 3+4 | Games 1+2 | |||||
| Saturday | Games 3+4 | Games 1+2 | ||||||
| Sunday! | Games 1+2 |
A somewhat significant amount of Shusaku’s 471 games are unfinished, which means sometimes we’ll either skip a game outright, or we might have more than two games on a given step, because less work is involved.
Since anyone in the world could join this effort, we must prepare for the work to be done asynchronously, though it is easier if groups can self-organize around a given day/time to meet and work together (https://www.when2meet.com/ is a great tool for this, it provides a 24-hour week or monthview, so we can check for group availability at any point, and see multiple groups’ availabilities).
We will upload each game, with katago variations, to a specific spot on OGS, and everyone will be able to fork the game and provide their own reviews. My discord server will also have a dedicated spot for Shusaku study, with a voice channel for each analysis section, so that groups can gather at any time, including organically and opportunistically, as well.
The synthesis step will happen on Saturdays, led by my teacher.
Referring to Invincible for this effort will not be permitted, as it might put us in some legal trouble over commentary copyright.
So, if you want to join the group, join my discord and express your intent. We will start this at the end of April, and I’ll continue recruiting for this effort regularly.
TEACHER NAME/RANK: Chris Sagner, AGA 6d
TEACHER REDDIT USERNAME: /u/frozensoul117
TEACHER STREAM LINK: https://www.twitch.tv/rav3n117
DISCORD LINK: https://discord.gg/BkFSWtEycY
STREAM LINK: https://www.twitch.tv/trevoke
POST-SCRIPTUM: We can put those reviews on OGS, but I am actually toying with the idea of putting together a website dedicated to user-created, public commentary of pro games, so it’s possible that you’ll see a brand-new website joining the family
Originally posted at: https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/tny7su/join_the_shusaku_study_project/
