The 1971 Honinbo Tournament (2/19/01)
By Kaoru Iwamoto, 9-dan
(The Ishi Press 1972)
Reviewed by Lon Atkins, 15K

"Presence" is a word we often attribute to a powerful personality. Presence may also imply our attendance at an event. Great events are usually sparked by strife between powerful people. A tournament battle for a prestigious title can capture both meanings of the word.

The 1971 Honinbo Tournament was rich with presence in every sense of the word. Rin Kai Ho, Honinbo, seemed invincible. Whatever challenger might rise from the Honinbo League must be truly a remarkable player to have a chance. "The 1971 Honinbo Tournament" tracks the ascent of Yoshio Ishida to his destiny. The author, Kaoru Iwamoto, feels this exceptional presence in his bones. His words transport us straight into the tournament. They give us pictures of the contestants, the conditions, the stakes and the high-voltage tensions of the games.

In my first reading of the book I drank the atmosphere, and I meticulously worked my way through a game or two. In my second reading (having improved a bit) I was able to appreciate more of the wonderful annotations Iwamoto provides. Enjoying the games makes the narrative all the more vivid.

This is a book of two great virtues: "Presence" is one, the historical chronicle. Incredibly fine go with superb annotations is the other. In my third reading, which will surely happen, because this book is one of the cornerstones of any enduring go library, I expect to feel more acutely the presence of mythic 1971 and the battle of these great warriors.
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2002 Go Yearbook
Published by Korean Baduk Association
Waller's Go Books, $40
Reviewed by Les Waller

The Korean Baduk Association (KBA), in addition to their Baduk Monthly magazine, also publish the Baduk Yearbook, which mainly consists of Korean and international tournament games over the past 12 months. It includes 24 color photographs of various Korean professional go players and the text is entirely in Korean.
The 343-page book is divided into four sections, the first covers 15 Korean professional tournaments and includes 250 games. The second section has 11 international and foreign professional tournaments and
includes 101 games. The third covers four amateur tournaments and includes 16 games. The fourth is an appendix which consists of a collection of various types of interesting plays within the tournament games; a KBA
handbook; a list of internet sites; an address list of Go Associations
around the world; brief descriptions of title holders from Korea, Japan, and
China.
The prior year's yearbooks would take a game and spread it over a couple of diagrams. This year all the games within the book are placed in one diagram each. If anyone has taken a game and tried to put it into sgf format or play it on a board, then they know how difficult it can be looking for a numbered stone in a game with over 200 moves. There are only about 12 pages of advertising in the entire book and they are mostly confined to the front pages along with the color photos of the players, which are nicely done.
This book is probably better for senior ranking players than it is for lower kyu players. I'll spend more time going over the commented games I receive from this newsletter than I will all these yearbooks I have sitting on my shelf already.

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The ABCs of Attack and Defense
By Michael Redmond 9P
Published by Slate and Shell
Translated by Steven Bretherick, Edited by William Cobb and Gordon Fraser
Reviewed by Michael Turk (Australian 10k)
April 21, 2003

This book features an all-too-rare combination, an author who not only a strong player but a good teacher, too. Based on four principles - two of attack and two of defense, "ABCs" is designed for weaker middle-level kyu players. Chapter 1 illustrates four basic principles of attack and defense in relation to the sanrensei (three star points in a row) formation. Chapter 2 applies these principles to handling the two-sided two-space-high and the two-space-high and knight's move double approaches. The basic principles are clearly reinforced and some supplementary principles are also expounded. Chapter 3 demonstrates the movement of the stones in accordance with the four basic principles when black uses a pincer within 4-stone handicap games, again reinforcing the basic principles. It also briefly looks at building a moyo. The final chapter looks at 3-stone handicap games and illustrates the use of miai. And, again, the basic principles are reinforced with examples of fighting. One of the skills that I lack at my level is the ability to fight effectively or consistently, particularly against stronger players in a handicap game. This book is a sort of fighting primer. It contains examples from illustrative games and various joseki and tesuji for attack and defense. The emphasis is on understanding rather than memorization. I am looking forward to surprising my regular opponents in the Sydney Go Club and on kgs with an improved ability to fight in the next few months as the result of applying the principles contained within this book.

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AIGO 1.3.0
by A. lizuka
Shareware. Available for download at www08.u-page.so-net.ne.jp/rf6/iizuka. License US $8
Reviewed by Stephen Charest, 23k

As a beginner whose real life gives me far less time to play Go online or in person than I'd like, I searched for software that would run on my trusty Handspring Visor so that I could use the time on airplanes, in hotels, waiting for judges, and so forth. I didn't just want a game recording program, either, but something that could play at least as well as I play now (not a difficult feat for a 23k!).
AIGO seemed to fit the bill, the only actual Palm OS software I found that will play the game, even if it's at a fairly basic level.
The technical aspects of AIGO are pretty good. The software isn't huge (151k), so it doesn't take up a lot of space. The program will play 9x9, 13x13, or 19x19 games, with the player selecting whether the computer plays white or black. You can also set your own handicap level, up to 9 stones. There's also a game recording mode, where you (or you and another human) use the software to play each other. Finally, you can set the software to play itself.
The biggest advantage AIGO has is its convenience as a PalmOS system. It really is handy to be able to whip out your Palm Pilot and zip through a 13x13 game while killing time. It's much easier than doing so on a laptop. The display, especially at the 9x9 and 13x13 level is pretty good and is quite readable at night, using your PalmPilot's illumination. Display at the 19x19 level is a little small, and you must be very careful where you put your stylus to make your move (unless you're in the 2-step move mode). This is one place where the take-back (an improvement in the 1.3.0 version) comes in handy. The program will count your score on request or at the end of two passes (Japanese counting), and gives you an opportunity to cross-check its counting.
The SGF save function is handy, if a bit cumbersome. To save a game, you tap the "Save" function in the menu, which then saves the game in the "Memo Pad" function of the Palm Pilot. You must then hotsync your PalmPilot to your desktop or laptop, then rename the saved game (the name AIGO gives it is the full text of the game!) and use an SGF editor to open the game.
The real question is "How well does it play?" The answer is, well enough to break you of basic bad habits like closing up your own eyes. If you make such a silly mistake, the program (like most other players) will jump on it. On the other hand, if you're looking for a palm-sized Ing-Cup contender, this ain't it. Quite honestly, I'm not sure there ever will be one -- PalmOS does have its limitations. It isn't difficult to fool the software into letting me get away with building eyes under circumstances that a human player of 15K or higher would thrash me over. Oddly enough, the game seems to be best (or perhaps I am worst) at 9x9 games. Still, I have a winning record against it. With a 23k rating on KGS, that tells me that this program probably plays about the 20k level. (As a reference, I've read that programs such as ManyFaces or WuLu, both past winners of the Ing Computer Go Cup, play around the 15-10k level).
The program does seem to have a limited self-teaching function: it doesn't often make the same mistake twice. However, I've discovered certain patterns (again, especially in 9x9 games) which will almost always result in a pass by the computer. On the other hand, it seems to be learning how to invade open territory in areas that, when I first started using it, it would have treated as my territory.
If nothing else, AIGO is fun and a good way to pass time. It's also great if you meet someone while traveling and don't have a board handy. And for beginners like me, it's not bad to help break us of bad habits. However, like any other computer software, it still can't replace a human player. I'd like to see some joseki patterns or maybe some life or death problems to load and solve using AIGO; then it would be a much better teaching tool. Still, if you keep in mind that humans won't act as predictably as the software, AIGO is worth the eight bucks just to practice some basic functions.

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Art of Capturing Stones
by Wu Dingyuan and Yu Xing
Published by Yutopian
Reviewed by Steve Fawthrop
January 06, 2003

This is a delightful book of problems. It concentrates on two themes, ishi-no-shita (under the stones) and nakade (big eyes), and offers 91 wonderful problems to get you thinking. It must be admitted that many of the shapes are unlikely to occur in a game (although very few are so artificial as to appear contrived) but that does not detract from the beauty of some of the sequences. I found myself smiling with pleasure over and over when a problem was solved. Without doubt, there is a lot to be learned from this book, but it is not for the beginner. A sound knowledge of basic tesuji is required to appreciate it. You will probably have a thrill of excitement the first time you use one if these techniques in your own games. I would recommend it for high kyu and above.

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Attack and Defense (Elementary Go Series, Vol. 5) (2/12/01)
by Ishida Akira, James Davies, 256 pages (September 1997) Kiseido Publishing Co.
Reviewed by Barry C. Willey, 12K (NNGS)

This is a valuable book is an excellent introduction to the middle game for go players who know the basics. It takes for granted that you are familiar with some basic openings and begins at that point. Focusing on the strategy and tactics of large scale fighting, the authors use the balance between territory and influence to show the reader how to best attack an opponent's stones while defending one's own framework. This book helps novice players develop workable and potent strategies utilizing influence and teaching defense against common attacks. Middle to high kyu players would easily benefit from this volume.

I first read this book when I was about 19K and found it immensely helpful. It sets out basic ideas on how to choose a successful strategy during the middle game. With those principals in mind it gives you specific tesujis or techniques to help put that strategy in play. Next it teaches a few essential defensive moves and three fundamental principals on reducing and invading frameworks. This book helps the novice player place priorities on moves during the chaos that starts to grow during the middle game and encourages players to use their creativity to find their own moves.
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A Beautiful Mind
by Sylvia Nasar
$16, Simon & Shuster
Reviewed by Chris Garlock

Any book with no less than six references to Go in the index is a must-have for the serious player. When the book in question is also the basis for a major motion picture with not one but two scenes featuring the game, it becomes required reading.
Sylvia Nasar's "A Beautiful Mind" is a riveting story of genius, madness, love, and, ultimately, the incredible fragility and strength of our very humanity.
The true story of the life of math genius John Nash is considerably more complicated than the film version now playing in a theater near you, and the book makes for rewarding post-film reading.
Of special interest to Go players, of course, are Nash's encounters with the game of Go, which began in his first year at Princeton in 1949. "There was a small clique of go players led by Ralph Fox, the genial topologist who had imported it after the war," writes Nasar. Fox got strong enough to be invited to Japan to play and invited Fukuda to play him at Princeton. Fukuda, naturally "obliterated Fox" as well as another local player by the name of Albert Einstein.
Go figures in the tale of Nash's descent into madness, as well. At one point, "he imagined he was a go board whose four sides were labeled Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle and Bluefield," writes Nassar. "He was covered with white stones representing Confucious and black stones representing Muhammadans." Later, Nash "was thinking of another go board whose four sides were labeled with cars we had owned: Studebaker, Olds, Mercedes, Plymouth, Belvedere. He thought it might be possible to construct 'An elaborate oscilloscope display...a repentingness function.'"
And the game theory that won Nash the 1994 Nobel speaks as much to the game of Go as to other applications: the possibility of mutual gain rather than zero-sum games where one player's gain is another's loss. Nash's insight, writes Nasar, "was that the game would be solved when every player independently chose his best response to every other player's best strategies."

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Beyond Forcing Moves, Understanding Kikashi and Tactical Timing
By Shoichi Takagi 9D, Translated by Brian Chandler
Reviewed by David Dinhofer

In my never-ending quest for advancement to dan-level play, I stumbled upon this text. The title was a very attractive one, one that implied that, as a kyu player, I have only scratched the surface of this game's complexity. And indeed, this book makes that clear. I look at joseki and I am beginning to see that a joseki is really a fluid sequence meant to change with the "mood" of the game.

Shoichi Takagi has carefully chosen about twenty games to demonstrate the art of kikashi (making a defensive move with the best return) and sabaki(making good shape with the most efficiency in a difficult situation). As a 1-2 kyu player, I am not sure I would have considered the possible sequences and variations mapped out by Mr. Takagi. Now, on my second reading, I am beginning to make some sense of it.

Master Takagi breaks up the book into three sections; Basic Concepts, Putting the Concepts to Work, and Masterstrokes. Each section has examples that clearly demonstrate the concepts with alternate sequences that a kyu level player might make(at least, ones I probably would have made). When I learn the alternatives, I think to myself that I don't know if I will ever remember them in times of stress.

But I also can't help thinking about the alternative that I would not have thought about before. The book is well organized with good diagrams. Brian Chandler's translation is clear and to the point. Summary portions of this text have good descriptions and definitions.

I think the weaker kyu player will not learn as much as the weaker dan players. But both will gain insight into the complexity of the game. I plan on rereading this book at least once a year to understand a little better that which was completely incomprehensible the year before.
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The Book of Go
By Bill Cobb
Sterling Publishing, $14.95 128 pages
Reviewed by Terri Schurter

Bill Cobb's "The Book of Go" is an excellent introduction to Go for the rank
beginner. It comes complete with a set of stones and a reversible 9x9 and
13x13 board. Aside from the audience for which it is intended, The Game of
Go is also a "must read" for anyone considering the capture game as a method
of instruction, and also for collectors of Go literature.
The first half of the book is spent explaining the rules of Capture Go and
offering strategies for play. Problems for Capture Go are also offered, and sample capture games are analyzed. After a thorough, clear, and interesting explanation of Capture Go the reader is introduced to full-fledged Go. Concepts such as the rule of ko, establishing connections, and life and death are clearly covered. The life and death problems are easily solved, as they should be in a beginners' book to make them accessible, and to build confidence in the reader.
Basic strategy and tactics are covered next including ladders, nets, snapbacks, and throw-in sacrifices. Go proverbs, study problems, and a list of recommended go books round things out.
Readers are left wanting more and knowing where to find it. The chapter on
"Go on the Internet" points readers to the right resources including links
to KGS, IGS, the American Go Association, and my own archive of E-Journal
articles about online Go.
"The Book of Go" fills a glaring gap in existing Go literature; there are beginners' books such as Go for Beginners, which are fine for those who actually have someone to play with after the reading is over. However, The Game of Go is the only book I have seen that is truly aimed at the uninitiated, and offers
a means to begin learning about Go without the help of an experienced
player. Two Go newbies could open this book and accomplish some serious Go
learning on their own.
"The Book of Go" is a strikingly well designed book that will attract attention in bookstores, where it is already available. The timing of this book is excellent since it comes quickly on the heels of the release of the hit movie "A Beautiful Mind" which has piqued the interest of the general public in Go. Bill Cobb and Sterling Publishing have pulled off a brilliant tesuji with the publication of this excellent beginners' book.
Available at http://www.sterpub.com/home/home.asp

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The Breakthrough to Shodan
by Naoki Miyamoto 9-dan
Translated by James Davies
Reviewed by Christopher Shelley

Go books in general suffer from two flaws: they are narrow in scope (many times by necessity), and they are written in a flat style, often by someone other than the purported author. The Breakthrough to Shodan has neither of these flaws. Because it was taken from a set of lectures transcribed into magazine articles, it rings with the author's voice in a lively prose. In addition, the book's scope is broad enough to appeal to any kyu level player.

"Breakthrough" is divided into sections that deal with low handicap games. Within these sections, Miyamoto describes "Strides," or principles, by which black can rid him or herself from negative attitudes. By taking the reader through five-, four-, and three-stone games, Miyamoto deals with negative attitudes and complex joseki.Miyamoto shows how dan-level players often hoodwink weaker players, even those who are strong fighters. His treatment of the Taisha Joseki exemplifies this: the Third Stride in Chapter 7 is "Know the Taisha, but don't play it." After reviewing several complex variations, demonstrating the pitfalls, he shows the reader a simple variation that stresses thickness. It is an easy variation to remember, but what makes it so important is that it works with the power of the starpoint stones.

Miyamoto does this with many popular joseki: shows how black tends to get into trouble with complications, squandering the influence of the starpoints, rather than playing perfectly serviceable joseki that compliment influence. Starpoints are about influence, and influence favors fighting. But without sensing the direction a wall made from handicap stones exerts power, fighting can degenerate into who is the best reader. (Hint: against a dan, it's rarely the kyu.) Therefore, fighting should take place, but in an arena where black has the advantage. The Breakthrough to Shodan shows the reader how to create this arena, how to see through white's false threats, and to trust the power of influence to create territory naturally, through a positive approach.Each chapter ends with two whole-board problems that test the reader's positional judgment.

The end of the book is a set of problems derived from the large-knight's extension from a starpoint, and here Miyamoto shows the techniques white has used over the years to terrify and bamboozle kyu-level players, and the correct refutations.Since the book never really moves past handicap go, it should perhaps be called The Breakthrough to One Kyu. But this is quibbling. Miyamoto's philosophy of "You don't need to be fancy to win at handicap go," shows again and again how to find attacking moves that work with thickness and take territory. This book was worth four stones to my go strength, and any kyu-level player can gain from its expansive approach and clear thought.

Available from Ishi Press: http://www.ishigames.com/intermed.htm
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Cho Hun-hyeon's Lectures on Go Techniques, Volume One
Translated by Sidney W. K. Yuan
Edited and diagrammed by Craig R. Hutchinson
Yutopian Enterprises, paperback, 220 pp. $17.50.
Reviewed by Neal L. Burstein, Ph. D.

Cho Hun-hyeon 9-Dan came to Japan to study Go at the age of ten. He won many tournaments with clean 3-0 sweeps, long dominating Korean Go. His lectures help the intermediate player to answer attacks by building secure shape and structure for the endgame. For example, the connection of two stones to form a "full" triangle after a hane is often seen in strong games. Cho shows us by example why this is essential to prevent problems later. When two stones touch on the third line, do you play up or down, extend or hane? Cho demonstrates the preferred sequence of moves that will stand to the endgame and shows why other results are inferior. The problem sets are, like joseki, fighting patterns analyzed to obtain a good result.
The book format is brilliantly designed. Each topic comprises a set of clearly numbered diagrams to illustrate weak and strong play. Each diagram is supported by a caption and brief explanation. There is no other text to confuse the reader. The brief introductory chapter illustrates connects, cuts, shapes, and hanes in detail. Problem sets comprise the bulk of the book, each answering situations that arise in play. Each problem is set on a right-hand page with a handful of stones already in correct position. The possible solutions follow two per page, clearly captioned, to show good and bad responses for each side. The diagrams save 1000 words in illustrating correct stone placement relative to those already in position. What else is Go is about?
This book is ideal for players of 10-24 kyu. Strong players might review for fundamentals missing from their game. Writers, translators, and Go book editors would do well to study and utilize the clear format.
Available at www.samarkand.net.

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A Compendium of Trick Plays
Edited by the Nihon Kiin
Yutopian Enterprises
Reviewed by Lon Atkins, 12K

Don't buy this book if you think it will arm you with dozens of dazzling swindles with which to win games quickly. Buy this book if you are a student of joseki, tesuji and shape - in other words, a student of go!

If you study joseki, you'll find here many trick plays that could foil your joseki efforts if you were to face them for the first time in a real game. If you study tesuji, then you'll see plenty of them here - trick plays are all about setting up tesuji. And if you study shape, you'll see how adhering to the principles of good shape can save you from trick plays and how mindlessly reacting with "natural" moves can sometimes destroy your shape.

There's a mixture of material here: basic trick models, historical examples, theory of trick play, pop psychology, slippery places in joseki, and even some cartoons. The crown of the book is a section of 25 problems by Maeda Nobuaki 9 dan. Solving them will enhance your practical skills.

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Counting Liberties and Winning Capturing Races
By Richard Hunter
Published by Slate & Shell
Reviewed by Dennis Hardman
November 3, 2003

This book deals with the rather narrow (but valuable) techniques of winning localized life-and-death fights occurring between groups of stones where it is a race to see which group lives and which group dies. The book describes the basics of what actually counts as a liberty, categories of liberties (e.g., inside vs. outside), how these liberties figure in the fight, and the types of fights that can occur (Type 1, Type 2 with a Ko on the outside liberties, etc.). It provides the reader with "formulas" for evaluating a fight without having to explicitly read out every line of play. The trick is to correctly count the number and type of liberties to determine the type of fight so that one can ultimately apply the "formula". Later chapters show how the techniques are used in realistic fighting situations, and provide about 50 problems and several commented professional games to drive the concepts home. Well written and nicely laid out, I would recommend this book to players of all strengths, particularly those with a mid-kyu ranking. However, this book should be valuable to even the strongest player because, as the preface points out, "Many players, even quite strong ones, have a poor grasp of these fundamentals." http://www.slateandshell.com/

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Cross-Cut Workshop
by Richard Hunter.
Slate and Shell, $10.
Review by Barney Cohen, IGS 7k*

Caught in a cross-cut? Then extend! Or at least so goes the famous proverb. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), Go is rarely that simple. After studying a large number of next move problems, Richard Hunter observed that the extension was rarely the correct solution to a cross-cut problem. His suspicions were apparently confirmed by watching advice from two professionals on Japanese TV. Consequently he undertook an extensive study of situations in which cross-cuts arose in actual play. This research led Hunter to identify nine (yes nine) basic patterns that frequently arise from cross-cuts, depending on the presence or absence of other friendly or opposing stones in the vicinity.
The results of Hunter's study, which was first published in a series of articles in the British Go Journal has now been pulled together in the form of a slim book, entitled Cross-Cut Workshop, the latest offering from Slate and Shell Press. The material in the book contains the original articles plus a dozen new problems for additional practice. The depth of presentation is suitable for Kyu-level players, although low-level Dan-level players may wish to review it.
I recommend this book highly. Hunter's approach is wonderfully didactic: He presents the nine basic patterns in two parts. For each pattern, he shows you how to handle the cut correctly and what can happen if you play incorrectly. Problems are provided along the way to test your understanding of the material. And additional problems are included at the end to reinforce the lessons.
Apart from the immediate lesson of how to handle a cross-cut, the book shows Kyu-level players the importance of being able to look at a situation and mentally work through several different patterns. It is not enough to simply come up with your next move (i.e. extend -- more of the time wrong anyway). Hunter demonstrates how you must adjust your strategy to the presence of surrounding (friendly and opposing) stones and be able to work out an entire sequence of moves before playing the first stone. Learn that lesson, and the one afternoon that you spend reading this book will be repaid many times over.

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DieOrLive software
By Lyu Shuzhi
http://www.szsoftware.com/
$29.95
Reviewed by Chris Garlock, 1d

Ask any pro how to get stronger and the first words out of his mouth invariably are "Study life and death."

The problem (pun intended) is that studying life and death (tsume-go) is hard and, let's be honest, boring. I love these elegant little problems but until a couple of weeks ago five a day on the subway each morning was all I could find the time for. Forget about cracking the book on weekends.

Now, thanks to Lyu shuzhi's 'DieOrLive' software, I'm solving more than 20 problems a day, seven days a week. DieOrLive makes life and death studying so easy, fun and addictive that it may well become the go crowd's "Minesweeper."

The tsume-go student's dilemma is whether to cudgel your brains until you solve the problem or to give it your best shot and move on. DieOrLive solves the dilemma by speeding up and easing the process of solving over 1,000 problems, grouped as basic, beginner, intermediate or advanced. You match wits against the program, which responds instantly to each move. Solve the problem successfully and you're rewarded with a "success" message; if not, you get a "failed" message.

Either way, the instant response and easy interface proves remarkably addictive. Success spurs you on to solve more problems while failure sends you back to take another crack at it. The software itself doesn't care: you can drop in at whatever level you like, re-do problems you already worked on or try out new ones.

The astonishing thing is that after just a few days I found myself instantly spotting successful sequences where it would have taken me several minutes before in a book, if I'd even had the patience to keep trying. And the proof of the pudding is that none of my opponent's groups are safe anymore. Try DieOrLive and your opponents will soon be calling you "killer" too.
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EZ Go
by Bruce & Sue Wilcox
Ki Press, 1996
Reviewed by Lon Atkins, 15K

When we start playing go, reasonable mastery of the game seems very distant. One technique to determine the position of a distant point is called "triangulation." Triangulation involves taking a bearing on that distant point from two rather widely separated sites.

Bruce and Susan Wilcox have written a book based on concept as opposed to inculcation. It camps a far distance indeed from the problem books. EZ Go -- based on a series titled "Instant Go" that ran in the American Go Journal in 1977 and 1978 -- covers all the basic concepts from making shape to attacking weak groups. It offers some useful original ideas, like sector lines. It's also full of proverb-like rules of thumb.

I don't suggest that anyone start with EZ GO, but after working hard in the traditional forms, you might benefit a great deal from the concept-based, metaphor-driven approach offered here. As you read EZ Go, the material covered in traditional books may gain an extra level of meaning. Likewise, EZ Go's concepts will resonate more strongly. That's the benefit of triangulation.
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Fighting Ko
by Jin Jiang
(Yutopian, 1995, original Chinese version February 1987), 146pp
Reviewed by Clayton Wilkie, 1D

This is a handy pocket sized book that relies mainly on teaching by example. It amounts to a thorough survey of how ko situations can arise, how they fit into the overall logic of the game, and what the effects of avoiding them would be. Most of the book is suitable for middle to high kyu players, but the final chapter and concluding problems move up to the dan
range.

Fighting Ko contains a few pages dealing with capturing races, including the best explanation I have seen of a basic principle governing them. Unfortunately, it is presented with no special emphasis, right along with the less satisfying rules of thumb you have probably seen elsewhere. Further, this section should logically lead to a discussion of capturing races involving ko, but the only related topic, on approach move kos and the like, precedes the capturing races.

What the book does not provide are hints on how to find ko threats, and how to play so that when a ko arises, you do not find yourself devoid of ko threats. There are only a few examples of effective ko threats in the book. Study of this book should help a wide range of players to recognize
ko possibilities in their games, but it will not help you fight them.
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First Kyu
By Dr. Sung-Hwa Hong
Good Move Press/Samarkand
Reviewed by Chris Garlock

One of the best go books has a scant handful of diagrams and very little on tactics or strategy.

"First Kyu," the novel by the late Dr. Sung-Hwa Hong, is the story of Young-Wook Kwon, a young Korean student who abandons his career and family in pursuit of the life of a professional go player. Anyone who's been even lightly bitten by the go bug will be entranced by this slim yet substantial novel, packed with fascinating details of the rocky road to professional.

Dr. Hong's premature death recently at just 51 robs us of not only a charming man and strong go player, but of a great teacher, as well, for "First Kyu" is much more than just the tale of one go player's trials and tribulations. The novel, which clearly has a strong autobiographical flavor, explores the conflicts between duty and dreams, and the difference between desire and determination.

Of most interest to go players, of course, is the window "First Kyu" provides into the game as a way of life that does not yet exist in this country. In Korea, in addition to the select group of players who earn a living as professional players, it is also possible to eke out a life as a club pro or as a gambler in go games called "bagneki" where players and spectators wager large sums based on the margin of victory.

The lure of the easier way, then, is another theme in "First Kyu," as Wook must choose between gambling and the purity and rigor of studying the masters in the quest to become a professional. Of course, it is in this study that we, along with Wook, learn the real lessons of go and life. Give up a little to gain big. Slow down, beware of speed. Greed for a win takes the win away.

"Every book will reveal its truth if read one hundred times." This Confucius quote refers to Wook's review of collections of master games, but it applies to "First Kyu" as well. Just 98 more times and I can write a better review.
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Five Hundred and One Opening Problems
Mastering the Basics Vol. 1
By Richard Bozulich and Rob van Zeijst
Kiseido Publishing Company; 2002; 256 pages
Reviewed by Peter Shotwell

Cognitive Psychologists say that the clearest measurable difference between novices and expert Go players is that experts turn visual patterns into verbal principles, and novices do not. This is most obvious in the opening, where 'intuition' must be used to find what is important.
Each of the 501 problems are introduced with one of 25 different principles, such as: 'Take profit while attacking your opponent's weak stones!'; 'Push back the border of your opponent's territory while expanding your own!'; and 'Rob your opponent's stones of their base, then attack them!'
The book is meant for all levels of players. The problems are taken from amateur and professional games, so that all kinds of opening shapes are considered.
It is easy to agree with the authors, who advise, 'If you have to find the same kind of move in similar patterns over and over again, spotting that move in a game will become second nature.'
Richard Bozulich is a 5-dan amateur and editor of Go World. Rob van Zeijst is the legendary Dutchman who has beaten 6- and 7-dan Korean pros.

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Five Hundred and One Opening Problems
By Richard Bozulich
in collaboration with Rob van Zeijst (Kiseido)
Reviewed by Barney Cohen, IGS 4k*

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a
fool." Touchstone, As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 1.

In "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go," Kageyama Toshiro advises us to
practice the fundamentals if we want to get stronger. In the same way
that ceaseless practice enables professional baseball players to field
ground balls effortlessly, go players should practice Go fundamentals
until it becomes second nature for them to spot certain key moves,
punish their opponents' overplays, and instantly kill commonly occurring
corner patterns. Practice, practice, and more practice. And in go, that
means spending time doing mental gymnastics, working one's way through
problem books of all descriptions.

For Kyu-level players like myself, Richard Bozulich's new series:
"Mastering the Basics," is indispensable. The second book in the series:
"Volume I: Five Hundred and One Opening Problems has just been
published." (Volume II: One Thousand and One Life and Death Problems
was released earlier this year and was reviewed in the August 19th issue
of the E-Journal). The current book is designed to develop your
intuition and feel for the opening, consisting of little more than page
after page of opening problems. In a brief introduction, co-author Rob
van Zeijst explains the importance of playing urgent moves before big
moves. He also suggests how to properly evaluate opening moves that
either strengthen your own stones or weaken your opponent's. These basic
ideas are illustrated and reinforced over 250 pages of problems compiled
by Richard Bozulich based on positions he's collected from professional
and high-level amateur games.

The book's central thesis is that by correctly applying a rudimentary
set of basic go principles one can fairly easily identify the most
important point to play in the opening, which later will tilt the game
in your favor once the serious fighting begins. Many players simply love
to fight and the temptation for us is to launch full-steam ahead into
premature invasions or other such maneuvers just to initiate
confrontation. This superb book encourages us to practice careful
consideration and calm, qualities that all strong players certainly
possess.

Consistent with an emphasis on the simple and powerful, the book's
layout is elegantly straightforward, with four new problems on each
right-sided page and the solutions on the back of that page, which means
you never have to go hunting in the back of the book for a solution.
There's also a helpful hint beneath each problem; I suppose the authors
must have grappled with where to place these hints - either underneath
the problems or in the solutions. My personal preference would have
been to have them under the solutions and my strong recommendation is
that the reader cover up the hint when attempting a problem the first
time.

None of the problems are devoted to the first dozen or so moves in the
game, so if you're looking for basic opening lessons check out Janice
Kim's books or "Get Strong at Go Volume 1: Get Strong At The Opening,"
before delving into this book.

While the positions that arise in my own games rarely resemble anything
remotely like the positions that show up in professional games, this
book does a terrific job of hammering away at some very fundamental
concepts of opening strategy that will definitely serve kyu-level
players well as they look for the right move in their own games. I am
sure Kageyama Toshiro would approve.
- available at http://www.kiseido.com/

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Galactic Go, Vol. 1
by Sangit Chatterjee and Yang Huiren
Published by Yutopian
Reviewed by Steve Fawthrop
Feburary 04, 2003

The aim of Galactic Go isn't clear. The title certainly gives no indication -- what exactly is "Galactic Go"?

From my reading, it appears that Galactic Go is an effort to explain middle game fighting in 3-stone handicap games. The chapters, however, are organized according to the opening joseki moves, and not according to middle game principles. Since it also contains long sections on obscure joseki which would be more at home in a joseki dictionary, perhaps the intent is to explain the choice of joseki in a 3-stone game. I couldn't tell.

But that's not the biggest problem. Galactic Go is rife with errors. Diagrams are missing stones and labels, text sometimes does not correspond to the diagram, and, at times, the explanatory text is simply confusing.

For example, one diagram declares failure for black because a ladder does not work when, if fact, black gets a good position by a simple geta capture. In one chapter, the diagrams switch back and forth between a joseki and its mirror image, making the sequence hard to follow. In another, the text alternates between two different threads without explanation or transition.

Diagram explanations are sometimes far too spartan. There are long series of diagrams in which the text essentially adds no more than "Black did this. White did .that. What should Black do next?" It makes for dry reading. Moreover, several interesting moves are passed over completely.

When moves are examined in the text, the level of detail varies so widely that it is hard to know what level the book is aiming for -- I would guess about 7 kyu to 2 dan.

I was left with the impression that Galactic Go was put together quickly without much planning and analysis. The mistakes I found make it hard to trust the remainder and so call into question the validity of the book as a whole.

The authors say there will be three more volumes in the series. I hope that more effort is put into the remaining three.

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Get Strong at Attacking
Published by Kiseido
Reviewed by Peter Shotwell

At first glance, Kiseido's 'Get Strong' series looks like other problem books that are based around simple principles. For example, Vol. 10, 'Get Strong at Attacking,' shows how one theme, 'Attack from Strength,' is usually used in the middle game, but in a handicap game, it is correct for Black to attack early on. Another principle is that to attack by capping or using knight's moves should mean 'Do Not Try to Kill.'
The series is unique, however, because after doing some of the problems, one begins to feel there is a reason for the order they are presented in, and trying to figure this out seems to lead to a deeper and more-lasting level of personal understanding. Is this perhaps because the Right-Brain -- the original
source of Go's appeal -- is more used since there are few words to explain that
order until you supply them?

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Get Strong at Invading
by Richard Bozulich
Kiseido Publishing Company, $15 US. 150p.
Recommended: 20k-2d interested in a random assortment of invasion sequences.
Reviewed by: Paul Thibodeau

"Get Strong at Invading" is one of the early volumes ('95) in the 'Get Strong at Go Series', and it shows.

The back cover 'guarantees' it will increase a weak kyu's invading ability by as much as 6 stones, but will also 'fill in the gaps' for a 'strong dan'. It is divided into three sections, Invasions on the Side (65 problems mainly covering 3 and 4 point extensions between two stones, Invading Corner Enclosures (84 problems), and Invading Large Territories (not actually about invading large territories, but reducing large frameworks (moyos).

The last section is the best, running 46 pages for 22 problems. The first two sections have a variety of useful patterns, but generally the treatment is poorly organized and scant, and this is where the book really suffers. A kyu player will learn more, and learn it properly, by studying "Attack and Defense" by Ishida and Davies, while a dan player can't do better than "Enclosure Josekis" by Takemiya and "Reducing Territorial Frameworks" by Fujisawa.
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Get Strong at Tesuji
Richard Bozulich, $15, Kiseido.
Reviewed by David Goldberg, 7k

The next best thing to having a personal teacher is a problem book. After I try a problem, I can flip to the answer and get immediate feedback. As a relative beginner there are a couple "theory" books that have helped my game (Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, Opening Theory Made Easy), but it is mainly the drill of problem books that have raised the level of my play.

"Graded Go Problems for Beginners" were my favorite problem books when I first started playing. I could find a volume that was hard enough so that I learned something, but not so hard as to be frustrating. If, like me, you found those books useful, I strongly recommend "Get Strong at Tesuji". Similar to the Graded series, it's simply a list of 534
problems and their solutions. If you are comfortable with problems at the level of Graded Volume III then you should find Get Strong at Tesuji useful, too.

Unlike Graded, it has some problems that simply ask for the best move, and don't tell you what you're supposed to do (kill stones, live, connect two groups, etc). I found this to be an especially nice feature. It also rates the difficulty of each problem, although I didn't make much use of the ratings. If you like drilling yourself with problems, I highly recommend Get Strong at Tesuji.
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Get Strong at the Endgame
by Richard Bozulich
Kiseido Publishing Company, 1997, 200 pp., $15 U.S.
Reviewed by Paul Thibodeau

Get Strong at the Endgame is one of the best books in the 'Get Strong At'
series. It contains a total of 291 endgame problems, followed by an appendix
comparing a 3d amateur's and a 6D professional's playing of the same
full-board endgame position against a pro 7-dan. The amateur loses by one
point, the pro wins by 7, a pretty big swing of eight points.
The book begins with 42 problems to test your endgame skill, thirty-six on
11x11 and six on 9x9, almost all from Kano Yoshinori's 'Endgame Dictionary'.
The author recommends writing down the moves and final score of each problem
without looking at the solution, proceeding directly to the tesuji and
calculation problems, and then returning and redoing the test to compare
your answers. While this method will show you what a big improvement the
book makes in your endgame, most may simply want to work through the
solutions the first time, without losing any advantage.
The 120 tesuji problems illustrate various local situations where you can
reduce the opponent's territory anywhere from one point to total devastation
compared with ordinary looking endgame moves. The 101 calculation problems
give you practice in knowing how many points an endgame move is worth, in
sente or gote. The final section contains twenty-eight 11x11 'practical
endgame problems', again composed by Kano. These help put all the skills
together in complicated endgame situations.
This book is nicely crafted and well thought out, with good explanations,
suffering only a little from the series' general problem of a lack of
instructional material. It does a good job of noting the different value of
sente and gote moves, for example, but one could still miss the forest for
the trees without caveats like that from Ogawa and Davies: 'A player who
could not count at all, but understood the difference between sente and
gote, would have the advantage over an opponent suffering from the reverse
affliction.'
Nevertheless, 'Get Strong at the Endgame' is well done enough as a problem
book that in my opinion it would be fine as a challenging first endgame book
for players stronger than 4 kyu. Players at the low dan level will find it
just about right. Players less than 5 kyu will probably get more from Ogawa
and Davies' excellent Elementary Go Series book: 'The Endgame'. Learn these
skills, and you will be amazed at how many times you find yourself coming
from behind and winning the game.

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The Girl Who Played Go
by Shan Sa
translated from the French by Adriana Hunter
280 pp.
published by Chatto and Windus of London, a division of Random House
Reviewed by Roy Laird
July 15, 2003

In The Square of The Thousand Winds, a Chinese girl plays go. Serious go, toppling opponent after opponent. The time is the early 1930's and the Japanese are invading. Hearing that "terrorists" from the Chinese Resistance meet at the Square to plot their next moves, a Japanese soldier visits the square in disguise, to spy on them. Instead he falls into a game with the girl who plays go. They meet at the square day after day to continue this strangely compelling game. Meanwhile, we watch their lives converge toward a startling climax.

The award-winning author seems to know her Asian history and literature, and even fills us in with footnotes when the characters participate in major historical events, or discuss history. Attention to detail is so "granular" that the Chinese girl depicted on the cover is even holding authentic Chinese stones! (Chinese stones are flat on one side.) The writing is sprinkled with thoughtful little gems, but seems mostly halting and disjointed, and the occasional intrusion in the translation of Britishisms like "chivvying" is a bit jarring. Most of the chapters are only a few paragraphs long -- just when we're beginning to immerse ourselves in a scene, it's over. Nonetheless, as often happens with good books, I am left with vivid memories and images, and thoughtful questions about the meaning of war. You have to admire the author's ambition. Through these gradually intertwining lives, one Chinese, one Japanese, she seeks to illuminate a dark era of occupation, torture and violent death, and to some degree she succeeds.

As a go player, I was happy to see the game presented as in a compelling, dramatic way. The Japanese lieutenant goes to the Square on a mission for his country and the Emperor, but finds himself hopelessly seduced by go. He confesses to his Captain, who shows his understanding by quoting the Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zi: "When you lose a horse, you never know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing." In the end, the game becomes the means by which two minds meet in a profound, life-altering way.

This novel takes its place in a growing lexicon of "go stories". The ongoing, periodically adjourned game that progresses through most of the book invites comparison with Kawabata's "The Master of Go," which won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. After the degrading portrayal of women in Sung-hwa Hong's tough, dark "First Kyu", it's nice to see a woman who is not just the central character, but clearly the master of a her fate -- and a strong go player to boot!

Most of all, "The Girl Who Played Go" brings to mind the classic film "The Go Masters", a historic Chinese-Japanese film that has been called "an Asian 'Gone With the Wind.' " Unfortunately, "The Go Masters" is not commercially available at the present time, but if you go to ftp://ftp.hikago.flirble.org/pub/Misc/ with a high-speed modem, you can download a 300 MB .avi file and view this incredible masterpiece

I ordered my copy of "The Girl Who Played Go" from amazon.com at for about $20, it makes a good read, and a great gift.

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Go as Communication
by Yasuda Yasutoshi 9-dan
Slate & Shell
Reviewed by Simon Goss
March 31, 2003

"Am I the only one who feels that people, children and adults alike, look tired?" So writes Yasuda Yasutoshi 9-dan in the preface to Go as Communication. Yasuda's attention had been caught by a news report of the suicide of a bullied school child, and he had become "... obsessed by the notion that I had to do something about the social problem in addition to simply popularizing Go." The first part of Go as Communication describes Yasuda's visits to kindergartens, schools, homes for the mentally disabled, day care centres for the elderly and a school for the deaf. Almost all those he writes about have some kind of difficulty communicating with others. Many are, to a greater or lesser extent, socially excluded as a result. In the second part of the book, Yasuda gives advice on how to teach go to children of different ages in large groups, and how to teach it in the other kinds of institution he has visited. Part three gives a brief account of similar work that has been done in the Netherlands, Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and the USA. Yasuda is well known as the inventor of Capture Go, and what he says about it came as a bit of a surprise to me at first. I had always been led to believe that Yasuda's main aim was to popularise go, and that beginning with Capture Go was basically a technique to lead people to it gently. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Popularizing Go" is a phrase that is used occasionally in the book, but it isn't the objective. Yasuda states his objective in terms such as "help change society" and "do something about the social problem". He teaches Capture Go as a game in its own right. He recognizes that a few people will move on to regular go, but doesn't get excited about it. If most people stick with Capture Go and enjoy it, that's fine with him. Indeed, he explains that some of the mentally handicapped people he meets will probably never understand even the capture rule, but will anyway enjoy and benefit from the even simpler game of just placing go stones on intersections, and that's just fine too. Will this book do anything for you? Well, if you want to improve at tesuji or joseki, definitely not. It contains a basic explanation of the capture rule, but if you're any stronger than 36-kyu it will teach you nothing at all about the game. If you want to teach go to bright people who are able and willing to give you ten minutes of their attention, it may not help you much either. If you want to teach go to large groups of people with low or mixed abilities and/or motivation, then it will certainly give you food for thought and may even help you. But the people I'd really like to see reading this book aren't go players at all, but school teachers and care workers. If you can think of a person like that to whom you could give a copy of this book, I think you'd be doing them, and go, a huge service. (A longer version of this review originally appeared in the British Go Journal, #129, Winter 2002)

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Go Elementary Training & Dan Level Testing
A CD-ROM edited by Yu Bin and produced by Jiang Jujo
People's Posts & Telecommunications Publishing House
Reviewed by Lon Atkins, 14K (9/10/01)

Interactive learning produces superior results when compared with static (i.e. "book") learning. If you don't have a teacher, or even if you do, this CD may hasten your acquisition of go skill. The problems range from the 17 kyu level to amateur 5 dan level.

The user interface of this program is annoyingly amateurish, but the organization of material is excellent. The program offers two formats.

"Promotion" consists of 150 steps of 20 problems each. You get ten tactical problems, five corner pattern (joseki) problems, and five whole board problems. 90 points (18 correct answers) are required to advance from one step to the next.

It's possible to cheat yourself with brute force iterations until the solution is found. Not good. But if you play straight through and fail to reach 90points, you start over from scratch. This kind of iteration is good. It drums the patterns into your brain.

"Test Your Level" lets you declare your strength (Beginner, Middle or High) and then choose from the three problem categories provided in "promotion."

Go Elementary Training & Dan Level Testing is a terrific tool that can be played a bit every day. Working an interactive element into your study regimen will pay off in many ways.
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Go Elementary Training and Dan Level Testing
by Yu Bin 9 dan and Jiang Jujo 9 Dan
Reviewed by David Dinhofer (10/8/01)

It has been hard for me to find a book or program that fits my particular