Go Reviews

Kogo's Joseki Dictionary
Reviewed by Philip D. Waldron 6d

       Whatever their strength, every go player has had the experience of encountering a new joseki variation or forgetting an old one. When that used to happen to me, my first instinct was to start flipping through the pages of my joseki dictionary. These days however, I just load Kogo's Joseki Dictionary on my computer. Kogo's is a massive electronic joseki collection compiled by Gary Odom of Portland, Oregon. It contains nearly 7000 joseki variations, ranging from sequences from the days of Shusaku to New Fuseki experiments with the 5-5 and 6-4 points. The bulk of the material in Kogo's appears to be compiled from the various English language joseki references, evidently supplemented by other sources. Kogo's Joseki Dictionary is freely distributed on the Internet as an SGF file, for which there are any number of freely available viewers. Coming in at less than 1 MB, the file is easy to transport by floppy or email. The dictiona ry is a good deal more portable than the paperbacks it replaces, and seeing players consult it at tournaments on their Palm Pilots (between rounds, one hopes!) is now a common sight.
       Good as it is, using Kogo's is not without difficulties. Notably absent in the collection are the numerous star point josekis that figure so prominently in modern go. Navigating the multitude of variations can also be a chore on SGF viewers with poorly designed user interfaces, and some viewers print warnings about Kogo's slightly nonstandard file format. The largest shortcoming I have found, however, is a limitation of the electronic medium. Being able to see only a single board position at a time on the computer screen makes it difficult to browse though many joseki variations for a desired result. For that, having a paper reference with many diagrams per page is still the way to go.
       Overall, Kogo's Joseki Dictionary is an invaluable resource for go players. It is fast and convenient, and the price can't be beat. While it will never replace my dead-tree joseki collections, there is no reason it shouldn't be part of every player's library.
       Kogo's Joseki Dictionary can be downloaded at: http://waterfire.us/joseki.htm