Go Reviews

Galactic Go Volume 2 
by Sangit Chatterjee and Yang Huiren
Published by Yutopian Enterprises
Reviewed by Michael Heinich

Galactic Go is about 3- stone handicap games. Why? It's never explained. Even though this seems like a narrow subject for such a grand title, the subject is narrowed even further with white's first move limited to the 3-4 point in Volumes 1 and 2. In Volume 2, Black's move of the one space high approach (5-4) is examined in most of the chapters. The book mentions a possible target audience ranging from 4k to 4d but this seems a bit of a reach. 
"Galactic Go Volume 2" offers no discussion of strategic concepts for 3-stone handicap games, just in-depth analysis of 20 games between amateur and professional players. The analysis is very detailed in the openings with at times complicated joseki analysis. But the level of detail goes down sharply as you progress through the middle game, with next to no attention for the endgame. 

The book uses a problem/answer style to move through the games which made the book difficult to follow. There are a large number of diagrams, usually several to a page with a couple sentences of explanation for each. The game and problem/answer diagrams are all mixed together and the actual game sequences are rarely marked as such. 
Once I started approaching each chapter/game as a series of problems and not as a game, it became easier to follow but I still felt lost sometimes. 

Production problems such as bad page numbering and spelling errors plague "Volume 2" and on some pages diagrams repeat with no added value. At least once, I could not find the number move that the explanation mentioned.

Final word: I came away from "Galactic Go Volume 2" with some interesting ideas but the narrow subject and the difficultly of extracting those ideas became big negatives. Unless you have an interest in detailed analysis of high level 3 stone games, I cannot recommend Volume 2.