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These are the ten go books I find myself reading and rereading the least. I am convinced that I could be a couple stones stronger if I only paid attention to the fundamentals (and kept a cool head), so the books I rely on stress fundamentals and the opening. This list may provoke some stronger players to encourage me to get off my lazy butt.
Got your own list of favorite go books, software or equipment? Send it to us at journal@usgo.org!
This book is one of the Elementary Go series published by Kiseido and covers 38 common corner sequences, or josekis, including the 3-4, 4-4, 3-5, 4-5 and 3-3. For each joseki, only a few basic variations are covered and just like other books in the series, this is a very easy-to-follow book. The part I like most is at the end, where there’s a 4-page glossary of technical terms with illustrations. I believe many beginners just like me are confused with the real definitions of many Japanese technical terms and this book covers at least 21 definitions.
If you’re looking for a complete joseki dictionary, this is a wrong book. But if you just want to learn basic josekis with the common variations, it is an excellent reference book. When I was a low kyu player, I found only about one-third of the josekis in this book showed up in my games. As a middle-kyu player, I have seen more josekis but there are still plenty of josekis covered in 38 Basic Joseki that I’ve never experienced in my real games.
With hundreds of English-language go books and thousands more readily available in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, it's a challenge to suggest that one or another in this embarrassment of riches is a "must-read" but you can be confident that the just-published 400 Years of Go in Japan will long remain in a place of honor in your collection. Until now the best overview of go history could be found in The Go Player's Almanac (another "must-read") and John Powers' essays there remain the gold standard on the subject. But where Powers' brevity and breadth opens the door to the history of go, Grant steps through and pokes around in some fascinating corners. For example, Grant, describing the famous 1582 triple ko game, is not content to re-tell the story of how Akechi Mitsuhide rebelled and killed Oda Nobunaga, samurai warlord and patron of Sansa, the first Honinbo. The rebellion happened the night a triple ko arose in a game Sansa played in Nobunaga's presence, which is why to this day a triple ko is regarded as inauspicious. What makes Grant so eminently readable is not simply his scholarship (which is indeed remarkable) but his eye for the telling detail. "The reunification of Japan was still far from complete, and heavy fighting was taking place in the western provinces.On the night of the triple ko game Nobunaga ordered another subordinate general, Akechi Mitsuhide, to march west.However, Akechi seems to have harbored a secret grudge against Nobunaga, who was fond of making fun of Akechi's premature baldness and his claims to be a great poet." Grant's history of go is replete with this sort of colorful detail, which brings the dates, names and places to brilliant life.
400 Years for the first time brings between two covers an updated version of Grant's 23-part serialization in the British Go Journal. The book is well-illustrated with woodcuts, photographs and includes records of 37 famous games referenced in the text. Slate & Shell has done the go world a terrific service by bringing out this invaluable history. If there is any minor quibble with 400 Years it's that Grant rather abruptly draws down the curtain in 2000 as a new and exciting century of go dawned. While go in recent years has certainly been dominated by new stars from Korea and China, go's history in Japan is likely far from over as a brief afterword on the Hikaru no Go manga and anime notes. It's to be hoped that future editions will take us into a fifth century of Japanese go.
All About Joseki considers the use - and abuse -- of joseki in the early stages of thirty amateur dan-level games. The book was inspired by the warm reception received by the the authors' lectures each Sunday morning on the Kiseido Go Server. A careful reading of the book is warranted, as frequently a diagram may demonstrate the correct use of a joseki that was inappropriate in a different corner earlier in the game.
The first half of this slim 114-page book examines sixteen games. In each game there are one or more joseki errors, either in move order or in the placement of stones. The result of these errors is explored in several diagrams, demonstrating why a particular set of moves in a certain order define a joseki. As such the first half of the book may be viewed as a continuation of the Jiang Mingjiu and Adam Miller book Punishing and Correcting Joseki Mistakes.
The second half of the book considers joseki chosen in fourteen more games. The results of different choices are shown in diagrams and explained in the text. The text focuses not on the first joseki in each game, one that is often easily chosen, but on the second joseki, which is considerably more difficult to coordinate with the stones already in play. This half of the book is considerably more interesting, as its material is unlikely to have been covered elsewhere.
Available at www.slateandshell.com
This is an amazing introduction to the history of Japanese go and the study of pro games. Although it doesn't give you any specific tips on how to study a pro game, it is a very extensive commentary of ten historical games. The comments are directed to the mid to strong single-digit kyu level, but practically anyone could enjoy the book for its historical aspect.
Famous Games is easy reading even without a board in front of you. I managed to read most of it in the many hours of plane rides from Tokyo to Providence. Most diagrams contain only 5-10 moves of the game so it's easy to keep track; this probably also builds reading and visualization skills.
I'm happy with any book that will suddenly instill the desire to try out something new that I've learned! At 3k, this type of book is now few and far between and probably limited to game collections and commentary. I'm glad that this introductory level commentary is available in English.
I purchased this book at the U.S. Go Congress, following the advice of my friend who flips through books to see if there is more text than diagrams. For me, good advice indeed, because this has been the first go book that I've been able to read from cover to cover, and as such, it has already risen to the top of my favorites list.
This book is about the rising young Chinese stars of the early 80's such as Ma Xiaochun, Shao Zhenzhong, Cao Dayuan, Liu Xiaoguang and many more. It takes highlights from many of their games during China's re-entry into the international/professional Go scene as well as profiling these player's background and playing style.
Punctuated throughout with various go proverbs, the author demonstrates how these exquisite plays aren't really trick plays, but rather are deeply rooted in solid go theory. He goes into great detail about moves that either turned the game around or perhaps turned around a given local position.
"Beauty" can be enjoyed by players of all levels. By the end of the book, when the author presented a position from one of these games and asked "How should Black/White play now?", I was beginning to see the possibilities. I think what I enjoy the most about this book is the way the author describes the players and the settings for each game that he highlights. It almost gives one the feeling of being there in person, watching the game in progress.
In addition to the many go books on my shelf, I now find an ever-increasing number of go programs on my computer. I have always found the most useful programs to be databases that allow me to examine how professionals have played in various situations. The latest program in this category is the BiGo Assistant.
The deluxe version of BiGo, BiGo Full, comes with an incredible million-game database, including strong-amateur games from online servers. I was afraid the number of games would overwhelm me, but BiGo does a superb job of data presentation. Common variations and winning percentages are shown cleanly and are color-coded by player strength to distinguish between pros and amateurs.
In addition to its search tools, BiGo comes with several other interesting features. My favourite is the “Fuseki Analyzer”, which allows the user to examine variations on a full board and all corners and sides simultaneously, perfect for highlighting the differences between local play and global play. BiGo allows user-defined “subbases”, which can be used to collect the games of a favourite player into a single database.
While BiGo has some nice features, it isn’t perfect. The help system that comes with the program is lacking. Only the most common features are explained, and even then with little detail. I still remain clueless about several parts of the program, even after several weeks of use. BiGo’s search speed can also be frustrating slow. Finding common fuseki and joseki patterns usually takes just a few seconds, but other searches took me a full five minutes.
BiGo comes in three versions, each with a different database: BiGo Full ($199), BiGo Profi ($75) and BiGo Tiny, a trial version. With its hefty price tag and poor documentation I can’t give BiGo a great recommendation, but I do think it has great potential. With a little work, I think the next version BiGo could turn out to be a winner.
BiGo is available from the authors at bigo.ufgo.org
If I can attribute anything to my recent move from 5k to 4k, it has to be my study of tesuji, since that's about all I've studied in the last year. I've never been very good at reading professional games (thrilling, yes, but inscrutable and nothing but trouble when I try to use it in my own play). Joseki? Don't hurt me like that. Kiseido's Get Strong at Go, Volume 6: Get Strong at Tesuji and Mastering the Basics, Volume 3: Making Good Shape (a kind of anti-tesuji/tesuji book wrapped up in one) on the other hand, have been crowding my desk and briefbag for six months.
The thing about tesuji is this: learning tesuji can help you figure out the right move in all the rest of the stages of go. Need to take sente back, but not sure about when to let go and play elsewhere? Ah, now that you know how to make that connection--you can. Confused about how to respond to a move in the corner? You know you have a forcing move that is going to get you life--or your opponent in big trouble from overplay. And how do you know these moves exist? As William James said when asked whether he believed in baptism: "Madame, I've seen it done!" At least, that is, if you've been studying your tesuji.
I'm now thrilled to say I've added two new tesuji volumes to my collection, both excellent. Fujisawa Shuko's tesuji dictionaries -- Tesuji for Attacking (V1) & Tesuji for Defending (V2) -- are elegantly structured, broken down into strategic concepts such as "pressing down," "spoiling shape," "taking sente," and "linking up." Each tesuji is illustrated with right and wrong moves spelled out and explained in light of the principle at hand. I can say with some authority that a lot of recognition took place when studying these chapters, an unhappiness tinged with hope that I won't make that mistake again (or at least, not very many more times).
So, if you're getting ready for a big tournament, or hoping, like me, to someday break through to shodan, these should be essential volumes in your library. With more than 500 pages and hundreds of tesuji to pore over, you will not only develop new moves and avoid some really embarrassing old ones but you'll begin to see the moves that you don't need to make... yet. As Jim Kerwin 1P, once told me, "Every unnecessary move you make is like one handicap stone." Shuko's dictionaries have become an essential guide to necessary and unnecessary moves for me, and a little ease to my continuing Hard Times at the Goban.
Fujisawa Shuko 9P's Dictionary of Basic Tesuji has quickly become one of my favorite go books. Though I am not very fond of the dictionary style of go books, it works really well in this instance. The series is organized by type of tesuji, making it easy to find what you need. There are 11 subcategories in volume 1 ranging from tesuji used for separating, sealing in, spoiling shape, creating weaknesses and taking away bases to capturing and intimidating with ko. Each category gets a 1-2 page introduction, a few pages of moves that are not quite tesuji but exemplify the concept, and then each tesuji gets a page. Each tesuji page has a "Black/White to Play" diagram with a small blurb of text describing what is to be accomplished followed by 3 diagrams and paragraphs usually showing a common/less correct move or order, the tesuji, and a followup or alternate move order. Smattered throughout the book are examples of the tesuji used in real games as well.
The strength of the book lies in its ability to expose you to an enormous amount of tesuji. After thumbing through the book you will most certainly come away with some clever new moves to play. As a 15 kyu, just seeing these tesuji has made me more experimental while playing. Players of all strengths would benefit from exposure to these tesuji. The book is well laid out and organized, making it very easy to read and one of my top recommended go books.
Weighing in at nearly 300 hefty pages, this book will surely make you stronger whether you read it or not, by just carrying it around. Perfect for subway reading because each problem is solvable (or not) in more or less an instant, it seems to be everything an upper kyu or lower dan player would want to know about perfecting the dark art of tesuji. For example, even if we know the wisdom of using a guzumi when someone burrows their way into our 4-4 corner formations, what is its proper use in the center of the board? Or, the warikomi, which "in contrast to the hanekomi . . . is a wedge that has no allied stones adjacent to it, diagonally, horizontally, or vertically"? There isn't much else to be said about this book, except that it is simply another masterpiece from the fertile mind of Bozulich, who has probably done more than anyone else to bring Western go up to Eastern standards over the last three decades. Like its predecessor, Making Good Shape, it is another must-have book for basic players.
Of the commercial go game collections, one of the oldest is the Games of Go on Disk (GoGoD). Initially began as a hobby and informal collaboration between British collaborators T Mark Hall and John Fairbairn, it has grown into an impressive collection of games, articles and programs about go.
GoGoD's largest feature is its game collection. Originally containing only a few hundred games from great masters, it now numbers over 40,000 games, all verified from original sources. Unlike other game databases, GoGoD is distributed as a set of standard SGF games files, making it accessible to Windows, Mac and Linux users. The GoGoD CD also comes with the Kombilo database program, with the game collection pre-indexed for convenience.
Beyond the game collection, GoGoD also has a fantastic encyclopedia of go-related material culled from far and wide. Essays on tournaments and famous (and not yet famous) go players and a potpourri of other articles combine to make the encyclopedia every bit as interesting and valuable as the game collection. The electronic publication format allows for storage of a lot of data; I counted over a hundred articles on various topics. Several accessory programs round the collection off, my favourite being the Names Dictionary, which gives English translations for Asian go players and places.
Although GoGoD's content is superb, its presentation is a little rough around the edges. The encyclopedia, for example, contained uneven formatting and some links to missing articles, while the user interface of some of the accessory programs felt a little clunky. These problems were largely cosmetic, however, a consequence of its authors being primarily go players rather than professional software developers.
I am happy to recommend GoGoD. The game collection alone would justify the purchase price, but combined with the encyclopedia it becomes a great resource for players of all strengths.
The GoGoD collection can be purchased from the authors at www.gogod.demon.co.uk
I think I can say with full confidence that the endgame is the Waterloo for players of all strengths. However, it is a part of the game that, once mastered, could turn the tide in one's favor.
I've had many games where I had a strong middle game lead, only to watch in horror as it was slowly whittled into nothingness by a player who was stronger at the endgame. Get Strong at the Endgame, like the other books in the Get Strong series, features go problems with explanations and diagrams at the end. Divided into three sections, the first problems test your overall knowledge of the endgame, then endgame tesuji problems, and finally endgame calculation problems. I found the tesuji problems the most rewarding; they made me wonder just how many of them I've missed in actual games. The explanations at the end are clear, and incorrect paths are not followed.
I did find myself trying to read out other paths, which I think is good practice to see why extraneous sequences do not work. I think the only problem with this book is that it is not easily accessible to everyone, since I don't believe a beginner could look at the explanations and really understand what's going on, especially in the tesuji section. However, stronger players looking to close a hole in their game will find this book invaluable.
GO Basics is prolific go writer Peter Shotwell's second basics book. Though his Go! More Than a Game (2003) was impressively comprehensive, GO Basics delivers on its sub-title premise of providing concepts and strategies for new players. And while there are many go primers available, this book stands out with Shotwell's unique approach to teaching the fundamentals of go.
Many fundamentals-oriented books teach by using isolated 19x19 board examples. Such an approach may adequately demonstrate a concept but often fail to provide the new player with an understanding of the relationship of the concept to the entire game. In contrast, GO Basics uses seven professional 9x9 games to teach the reader everything found in a complete game of go.
The first game takes up half the book, covering the opening game, including captures, ladders, nets, and tesuji. In the middle game, Shotwell reviews life & death, eyes, territorial play, running fights, sente, gote, ko, and seki. The endgame is handled with another unique approach. First, the beginner's play is reviewed by showing the reader what not to do. This is followed by a review of the professional's play in the endgame, which of course, is the right way to play. The last six games cover advanced concepts such as sacrifice, big ko's, cross-cuts, hunting big groups, invasions and thinking territorially.
Also included are an actual 9x9 go set and the American Go Association CD-ROM's treasure trove of materials with its interactive playing program, cementing GO Basics as a complete primer for beginners, young and old alike.
Vincent Solimine lives in Glen Cove, NY. You can reach him at vsolimine@optonline.net. Got a different opinion on this or other reviews? Send it to us at journal@usgo.org!
Guo Juan 5P is well known for her skill teaching go to Westerners. She emphasizes the basics that many of us, being self-taught, are missing. Now Guo is offering professional go instruction in a completely new format - on line, with audio. I find that audio commentary makes a huge difference. You understand so much more hearing your teacher's voice than just reading text. Plus it's more interesting and fun. And at just one Euro per lesson, you can't beat the price.
Working with a team of professional teachers, Guo makes cutting edge knowledge available and easy for Westerners to understand. The lessons cover all aspects of training from 30 kyu to 5 dan. Lectures include an introductory course for beginners, professional game analysis, lessons on the star point and 3-4 point, opening theory, typical mistakes, how to win a won game and more. New lessons and topics are added regularly. In fact, there are so many lectures that there is a study plan, based on one's level, as a guide to the site.
To access the lessons, students set up a Paypal account and then choose from a list of pre-recorded lectures, which range from 30 minutes to over an hour. The board is similar to KGS but with audio rather than written commentary. A pause feature allows you to stop the lesson and read out variations in your head. A scroll feature allows you to move throughout the lesson. Once you purchase a lesson, you have access to it for 30 days. This means you can study on your own schedule or stop a lesson at any point and go back to it later.
I find this site to be an effective and fun way to study. The audio makes it more dynamic and I retain more from the lessons. The ability to review lessons at my own convenience is great: I can study seriously or just watch a recent pro game review after a hard day at work. It's a comprehensive go school that fits my schedule and budget.
Guo Juan's online lessons are available at www.audiogolessons.com
Ishigure's In the Beginning is a great introduction to the opening, the most interesting part of go and of course the least well-understood, not only by beginners, but even by the greatest go players. In chess there are 20 possible first moves, in go there are 361; every beginner knows all too well the utter sense of lostness the first time she plays on the full 19x19 board.
Ishigure does a wonderful job bringing some sense to the beginner's bewilderment. The first section of the book deals helpfully with the basic moves in the corner, extensions, pincers and invasions, though I do wish he had talked a little about fuseki (the different combinations of opening moves). Although I am fairly clear about the relative strengths of each of the corner points, 3-4, 4-4, 3-3 etc., a little theory concerning the standard openings, e.g. Chinese (3-4 3-4) and Ni-ransei (4-4 4-4) would have helped me. I also wish that he had given some credit to tengen (opening in the center point of the board), even if he couldn't go into any depth with it.
The second portion of the book is concerned with ten strategic principles, including playing away from strength, reverse strategy and efficiency. I found this section quite useful, with Ishigure's fairly straightforward explanations helping me understand the game better. Even if you already have some clue about each concept, Ishigure's clear illustrations illuminate different tactical and strategic ramifications.
The last section of the book is a set of 10 difficult whole-board problems. Though I did nail a few of them; I was also quite clueless in my answers to the others. Don't expect to solve them perfectly after reading through the book. They require a good sense of the game that just reading books won't give you.
In The Beginning is well worth the price of admission. I am surprised that some reviewers find it so intimidating; compared to Toshiro Kageyama's ever-popular Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go this book is quite an easy read. That said, it is definitely not a beginner's book. Still, anyone under 20k should be able to get something from it. If you've worked through a decent second go book like The Second Book of Go by Richard Bozulich (which I highly recommend) and have a decent number of games under your belt, you will profit immensely from Ishigure's tutelage.
Between opponents of equal strength in the middle and endgame, it can be notably difficult to make up for a poor opening. Ishigure's book addresses this oft-neglected stage among amateurs and is targeted at elementary to intermediate players. As you and your opponents become stronger, the opening becomes increasingly critical.
In The Beginning gives you the tools and analytical insight for the early stage of the game. Chapter 1 focuses on general strategy and tactics while Chapter 2 expounds on nine principles to consider when assessing the direction of play and application of tactics. Ishigure does a very good job of guiding one's thinking as to which moves can give the greatest potential profit and stability while adversely impacting those of one's opponent. He also takes a whole-board approach to help the reader understand the timing of moves and when some of these become strategically urgent.I especially like the way Ishigure presents his ten problems in Chapter 3 and how he assigns relative values to several possible moves. Even if you don't pick any of the optimal moves, you can at least see if you are applying some elements of good opening sense. He explains at least three of the choices to show why they are superior, of modest value, or inferior. He also explains how a move in the right direction of play but of one more or less space, or on a higher or lower line, may completely change its value.
With the number of computer programmers who play go, it should come as no surprise that several have written useful go programs for the community. One of the most interesting is Kombilo, a go database. Named after the Esperanto word for comb, Kombilo is designed to comb through game records for positions or players of interest.
Compared to commercial go databases, Kombilo is unique in several respects. First, it is free to download, and users are permitted (and encouraged) to further distribute copies. Kombilo also runs on a variety of computer systems; versions are available for Windows, OS X and Linux. Unlike other go databases, however, Kombilo does not included a collection of game records. Fortunately games are easy to find online, and this is a minor issue.
My first experience with Kombilo was reading the manual, and I was immediately impressed. A handy tutorial details the program's features, and the documentation quality puts many commercial competitors to shame. Similarly, I found Kombilo's search capabilities to be comparable to commercial programs, although I did find the text used to present search results to be a little small. Users are able to define custom menus items for common searches, a handy features for those studying a particular opening or player. And in what must be its most interesting feature, Kombilo comes with a list of references to games for which English-language commentaries are available. If a search yields a game commented in Go World, Kombilo will let you know.
Kombilo measures up extremely well against the various commercial go databases. It has many useful features, and the price is right for everyone. I would highly recommend Kombilo to anyone looking for a go database.
When I first heard that a book bearing Lee Chang Ho’s name had been translated into English, I was initially dubious. In Asia, it is common practice to issue poor go books under the name of a new title holder, and I wondered if this might be the case here. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find Lee Chang Ho’s Novel Plays and Shapes to be a highly original and useful addition to my go library.
Each of the book’s fifteen chapters is devoted to a single new move, typically a joseki variation or branching point in the opening. The analysis is extremely thorough (46 diagrams in one case), providing the major strategic variations before coming to a (not always favorable) conclusion about the new move. The discussion of positions focuses largely on issues like prospects for development and the relative value of thickness and territory. These strategic concepts take some playing strength to understand, and the book will be most useful to dan-level players.
While the quality and quantity of analysis present in this book is excellent, it does not come as a light read. Being largely focused on the full-board position, the book does not pay much attention to some of the tactical details. Readers are expected to fill in the blanks on their own, a style that seems to be common in Korean go books. Whatever the merits of the approach, which I personally favor, it does provide interesting problems for study.
Lee Chang Ho’s Novel Plays and Shapes aims to present the thinking and analysis behind some recent innovations in professional and fills that goal admirably. This book will be invaluable for players looking for study material, but those needing a light read for the subway should probably look elsewhere.
Available at www.yutopian.com
My first introduction to go databases was a demonstration of MasterGo in 2002. At the time, I was sure that go databases would become extremely important study tools. Several years later, this has turned out to be the case and MasterGo has proven to be a solid contender in the field.
Like other go databases, MasterGo allows both full- and partial-board searches, depending on the user's interests. Searches are extremely fast, taking only a second or two even on outdated computers. Each search result includes a list of possible variations for the next move, and the frequency and winning percentage for that line of play. A handy “tenuki meter” indicates how often players left a joseki position unfinished, and the option to restrict searches by date allows the user the examine the evolution of a fuseki or joseki pattern. For those interested in studying a particular position or player, the program includes bookmarks for saving your favourite games.
While most of MasterGo's features can be found in other database programs, it pulls away from the crowd with its user interface. Data is always presented clearly and I never found myself cursing a poorly designed dialog box or obscure menu item. The documentation is superb: a twenty-three page electronic manual and dozen videos give a thorough explanation of all the program's features.
MasterGo is an excellent program, but it does have a couple of drawbacks. The program does not save the results of previous searches, so systematically studying a position requires reentering it each time. With a retail price of $100, MasterGo also feels a little overpriced. A free trial version is available, however, to allow users to decide for themselves.
Drawbacks aside, MasterGo is a polished and well-designed piece of software, and I have no hesitation giving it a strong recommendation.
I don't have a top 10 list of books, but I've been very impressed with these:
With a variety of go databases now available, MoyoGo is another recent entry from Europe. Like other database programs, it is useful for finding games of your favorite player or searching for that joseki or fuseki that you just messed up.
After loading MoyoGo for the first time, I realized I had no idea what to do next. MoyoGo unfortunately comes with no manual, and its help system consists of a few short "tips" that display upon start-up. While some demo videos are available, they are not enough to avoid an aggravating trial-and-error learning process. Compared to the extensive documentation and tutorials provided with other database programs, MoyoGo comes up painfully short.
Those willing and able to get past a fairly steep learning curve will find that MoyoGo has a number of useful features. A complete SGF editor for analyzing electronic game records is provided, along with the option to export board position to a variety of graphics formats for web publishing (although MoyoGo offers no support for printing). Users can also search through the Sensei's Library website from within MoyoGo, allowing for easy searches of unfamiliar terms.
The game database is, of course, MoyoGo's most important feature (and perhaps its most controversial, containing game records that were acquired from other collections without permission. Read more about this issue in the November 11, 2005 E-journal) and this program tries something new. Its pattern matching system not only reports exact matches, but also suggests moves based on its analysis of similar professional and strong amateur games. In professional games, I found that MoyoGo predicted moves about one-third of the time during the opening and early middle game, but in most cases these involved following known lines of play. The system performed extremely poorly whenever games required strategic decisions, and this weakness became even more evident when analyzing amateur games. In one game I examined, MoyoGo suggested several small tactical moves rather than taking an empty corner. My experience was that MoyoGo's analysis got worse as the strength of the players decreased, noticeable even for low-dan games.
My overall assessment is that MoyoGo is not yet ready for prime-time. The documentation is inadequate and its crown jewel, the pattern matching system, becomes progressively less useful to weaker players. While the program certainly contains some useful features, most can be found through other free programs and are not enough to justify the purchase price.
MoyoGo Studio is available from the author at www.moyogo.com
Thanks to their amazing dominance in international play, there is a strong interest in what Korean pros are thinking these days, and happily the number of go books being published in English in Korea is rapidly increasing.
The Korean Baduk Association published Jungsuk (Joseki) in Our Time by Seo Bong-soo and Jung Dong-sik in 2000, a survey of current Korean pro thinking about a wide range of joseki. In 2004 the publishing company Oromedia began a series of books with the text in both English and Korean. First were Korean Style of Baduk 1: Avalanche Jungseok & Mini-Chinese Opening by Lee Chang-ho and Kim Sung-rae, an exhaustive study of these two topics, and Contemporary Go Terms: Definitions & Translations by Chihyung Nam, which provides cross-referenced definitions of go terms in English, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
Then came the two volume set of Train Like a Pro by Kim sung-Rae (with an answer book), which is the problem set given to young players studying to become pros. The latest addition to this series is Think Like a Pro: Haengma by Youngsun Yoon, which explains recent Korean pro thinking about the flow and shape of sequences (haengma) in the opening and early middle game. Although the English in these books is sometimes awkward, they are still readable. These books are available from Slate & Shell (www.slateandshell.com) and Yutopian (www.yutopian.com).
Some joseki books, like Ishida Yoshio's 3-volume Dictionary of Basic Joseki and Takemiya Masaki's Enclosure Josekis, are not only excellent reference texts, but make for worthwhile reading on their own. Together, these books will teach any kyu-level player the basics of joseki, fighting, and making good shape (though the former text is a bit dated, while the latter is sadly out of print). In the preface for Fujisawa Shuko's Reducing Territorial Frameworks, translator John Power writes that Fujisawa's book "is intended to complement the coverage of invasion techniques presented in Enclosure Josekis." While Fujisawa achieves his goal, he does so without the spark or attention to detail found in Ishida's and Takemiya's masterworks.
One problem is the nature of the subject matter itself: reducing moves simply aren't sexy. Invasions are dramatic, decisive, and can quickly turn the tables in a game; but reducing moves - as Fujisawa himself states in the introduction - are slower, steadier, and can lead to a long, drawn-out match. While reducing moves are an important element of go, one reads a book on them in the same spirit that one takes a multivitamin: because it's good for you, not necessarily because it's fun.
Reducing Territorial Frameworks is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 weighs the value of reducing moves versus outright invasions. Fujisawa lists twelve objectives of reducing moves (e.g., maintaining territorial balance, limiting a moyo), and proceeds to give examples of each objective from professional games. Reducing josekis for the side, the corner, and the Chinese fuseki are presented in Chapters 2 through 4. Chapter 5 examines reduction tactics from professional games, and Chapter 6 presents a series of whole-board problems for the reader to solve.
Power, who also translated Ishida's and Takemiya's texts, continues with his clear literary style and avoids the overuse of Japanese Go jargon. Fujisawa's book, however, suffers from a number of problems. First, even for a joseki text, it's a very dry read. Fujisawa's writing is logical to the point of being stale, and it lacks personality. The humor, keen insights, and nimble handling of trick plays that made Ishida's and Takemiya's writings so memorable are lacking here. Second, the treatment of the side and corner reduction josekis, perhaps the most valuable component of the book, is too superficial. The josekis are limited to only the more common variations, and while the variations shown are useful, if not a bit simple, many of the josekis are truncated after a half dozen moves (some are over in just three), leaving the reader to wonder how to maintain one's fighting form after the joseki has ended. Reducing moves can often lead to prolonged fights, and a short-coming of this book is that a general overview of how to handle such fights is not given a methodical treatment, but is left instead to more specific examples during the examination of professional games. Third, the art of reduction is, as Fujisawa admits, rather abstract, and despite his best efforts to establish some guidelines on where and how to reduce, much seems to depend on whole-board positioning and one's intuition. Finally, throughout the text, Fujisawa demonstrates the powerful one-two-punch of how to coordinate reducing moves with a subsequent invasion, but the examples he presents only end up giving the reader a taste of this application, leaving one longing for something a bit more satisfying and grounded in the fundamentals.
The upside is that once the lessons from Fujisawa's book are fully digested, the reader will be armed with a formidable new set of skills when facing that opponent who loves to build moyos. The reduction principles outlined here build upon those found in elementary Go books such as Ishida and Davies's Attack and Defense. The basic joseki are easy to apply, and Fujisawa's sabaki techniques also demonstrate how to prevent one's groups from becoming heavy during the attack. The difficult part is that once the first half dozen moves of the reduction are complete, readers will be left to their own ingenuity in handling their groups afterwards.
One of the best English-language go books published this year is also the briefest. And therein lies the challenge of Bill Cobb’s Reflections on the Game of Go: how can you make these 116 exquisite pages last longer than the few hours it would take to devour at one sitting, as I did?
In the interests of full disclosure, let me say at the outset that Mr. Cobb is my tremendously capable Assistant Editor at the E-Journal and Yearbook and in fact I edited many of the Reflections articles when they first appeared in the pages of the Journal or E-Journal. Unfortunately, I can claim very little of the credit for the originality and brilliance of the jewels collected here; at best I simply helped to polish them a bit.
While there has been a veritable deluge of English-language go books in recent years (thanks in no small part to the efforts of Slate & Shell, the U.S.-based publisher co-owned by Cobb), there are still very few non-technical books. Those of us interested in the history, art, culture and philosophy of the game must content ourselves with the relevant sections of resources like The Go Player’s Almanac, GO! More Than a Game and Invincible, as well as the novels Master of Go, First Kyu and The Girl Who Played Go. Terrific books, all, but slim pickings nonetheless.
Reflections packs 44 fascinating essays into this slim book, elegant investigations into philosophical questions raised by the game of go. It was philosophy that brought Cobb to go, when his studies in Buddhism led him to Japan and Japanese literature put a copy of Kawabata’s Master of Go in his hands. Cobb not only learned the game but has been certified as an International Go Instructor by the Nihon Kiin and in the mid-1990’s brought his many interests together in a popular course on go and Eastern philosophy at the College of William and Mary, where he was a long-time faculty member in the Philosophy Department.
A practicing Buddhist, Cobb’s explorations of the philosophical implications of go are always solidly grounded in the here and now. Some of my favorite essays deal with losing: in “Two Ways to Lose,” for example, Cobb differentiates between useless and useful losses. Sometimes the philosopher even dabbles a toe in controversial waters, as when Cobb weighs in on the deeper implications of clock use in tournament play. The essays shine with originality and can be re-read for deeper revelations.
Accessible to go players of all strengths, Reflections is an especially useful read for newer players who will find it a wide and welcoming window into the world of go. More experienced players will savor the reminders of the complexity of this simple game.
Of the many commercial go-related software programs, SmartGo has one of the longest lineages. First begun as a doctoral thesis project by Anders Kierulf in 1984, it has since evolved into a comprehensive go package.
Users of the previous SmartGo versions will be relieved that its core features remain as good as ever in 2.1. A graceful and intuitive SGF editor allows game records to be reviewed, commented and printed. The computer go player is still present and has slightly improved in strength. Finally, a tsume-go module, capable of solving many dan-level problems in only a few seconds, is a hidden gem for players of all strengths, and I found it extremely useful when trying to determine why my solution to a tsume-go problem was incorrect.
Of the new features in SmartGo, two stand out in particular. An automated problems module has been added to make studying easier, and comes complete with over 2000 problems for a range of player strengths. The most exciting addition, however, is the improved game database, which has been completely integrated into both the game editor and computer go player. Users can check out patterns of interest, and the computer player's access to the database has noticeably enhanced its openings.
Software that attempts to be a jack-of-all-trades often ends up being master-of-none, and at times SmartGo falls victim to this. Both the tsume-go module and the new IGS client feel as if they were bolted on as an afterthought rather than being a truly integrated component of SmartGo. Data presentation within the database module also felt lacking compared to dedicated databases. Alternate game variations were presented well, but additional information such as frequency of play and winning percentages were not.
Regardless of its rough spots, I found SmartGo to be a well designed and extremely useful package. While individual features are sometimes better implemented by other dedicated programs, as a complete suite SmartGo is tough to beat.
SmartGo is available from www.smartgo.com
Popular culture references to go are few and far between, so last weekend's New York Film festival screening of an entire feature film about the legendary Go Seigen was much anticipated in the U.S. go community. After all, the game's appearance in Ron Howard's 2001 film A Beautiful Mind sparked one of the biggest-ever surges of interest in go (and won Best Picture).
Unfortunately, director Tian Zhuangzhuang has turned in a boring and confusing biopic that even the most dedicated go player will be hard-pressed to sit through, much less recommend to non-playing friends.
This turgid film manages to transform the fascinating life of the 20th century's greatest player into a one-dimensional portrait slapped carelessly onto celluloid. In 104 very long minutes we learn virtually nothing about either the game of go or Go Seigen himself. After a promising beginning in which we glimpse the still-active octogenarian himself, we plunge into 1930's Japan where the young Go Seigen is about to take on Shusai, the last hereditary Honinbo (whose historic game against Kitani five years later became the basis for Kawabata's classic novel The Master of Go). But the film seems to lose interest in this titanic struggle -- between old and new, age and youth, Japan and China -- and spins off in ever more confusing subplots.
The racism and exclusion from tournaments that Go faced in the 1930's, his deep rivalry and even deeper friendship with Kitani, the co-creator of the "Shin Fuseki" that revolutionized modern go, Go's struggle to regain the top after a devastating accident at the peak of his career, are all simply hinted at amid disconnected fragments of his classic jubango matches and sketchy jumbles of other vignettes. Even film basics break down: at one point, several minutes after we see Go felled by a motorcycle on a Tokyo street, a superimposed title helpfully informs us that "in 1961, Go was involved in an accident . . ." While director Tian Zhuangzhuang is shooting in Japanese, which he does not speak, and recently came off a 9-year break during which he was barred from film-making for years by the Chinese authorities, this hardly explains the failures of his latest effort.
The film's strongest theme revolves around Go's "retirement" from play to pursue involvement in Jiu, a religious sect where, according to the film, he fell under the spell of the sect's leader and self-styled "living goddess." In reality, Go - always a deeply spiritual person - did belong to this sect, but his "retirement" lasted just over a year, from March 1945 to August 1946, a period when not much professional go was being played anywhere in Japan. It's interesting to note that the negative portrayal of religious involvement as cult-like takes place within the ongoing controversy over the Chinese government's actions toward the Falun Gong movement.
Go Seigen's life had more than his share of triumph and tragedy. The tragedy of The Go Master is that a fascinating life has been sold terribly short. Other than a handful of exquisite shots of Go playing, the film is virtually unwatchable. Only the film's last shot finally gets it right -- Go is playing a ceremonial retirement game, and his opponent begins by playing on the central, or tengen point, a nice homage to the man who revolutionized a 4,000 year-old game. Hopefully, we won't have to wait 23 years to see another film about go but in the meantime your best bet is to find a copy of the 1983 The Go Masters, and settle in with your popcorn and soda for a truly remarkable film.
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The Middle Game of Go by Sakata Eio is the first book in a series dealing with middle game strategy and thinking. Sakata uses his own games to demonstrate key points and thinking throughout the middle game of go. There are four games that illustrate different approaches in different situations.
Studying this book helped improve my middle game; I am a player who falls behind frequently after the middle game ends, but after reading this book, I had better my success in the middle game. The Middle Game is great because it shows all of the variations of a move, not just the commonly used ones. Although all games covered are professional level, they are so well-explained that even kyu players should be able to understand. However, this book may be too advanced for mid-kyu players, and I recommend it for mainly for high-kyu to shodan players.
“Giving six or more handicap stones, white is forced to play as if half the white stones are dead.”, The Nihon Ki-in Handbook of Handicap Go
A recent E-journal reader asked Janice Kim: "Are there any books that show how to fight against handicap stones?" Janice provided excellent general advice, and I would like to suggest this book as a good place to explore the subject further. I am a 2-kyu online player and I often find myself giving handicaps -- often large handicaps -- to other players. Even though I am comfortable with the standard even-game opening patterns of approach, make a base, approach, pincer, jump out, it is quite daunting to face a field of black stones spread throughout the board – everything you know about the opening seems trite and meaningless in that environment.
Most books I’ve read (like Takagawa’s excellent The Power of the Star Point) don’t have white make unusual moves. But it’s the unusual moves that tend to trip black up. The Nihon Ki-in Handbook of Handicap Go’s main virtue for the white player is showing reasonable moves that can be tried to thwart black. These are not necessarily trick moves, but honest to goodness attempts by white to achieve the best that can be achieved when the odds are stacked heavily against him. Also presented is the overall idea of dividing black’s forces and playing loosely on a grand scale. The moves appropriate to this are ones that you don’t often see in other books: jumps down and invasions on the second line, large and extra-large knight jumps toward the center, knight move attachments, double-diagonals, etc. Of course, the correct responses for black are shown, but often more educational are the errors black is likely to make and the follow-ups, which are also given.
Seven chapters cover handicaps from nine stones down to three. The beginning of each chapter briefly reviews the strategies for both players. Next, the basic patterns of play are expounded by presenting a series of partial games. For example, in a nine-stone game, black’s reasonable responses are the diagonal attachment and the one-point jump. There are nine examples of these two patterns. Each partial game presents the pattern move in a variety of contexts as the opening progresses around the board, putting moves into the context of the whole board. Indeed, the ideas behind the opening play (stressing building up a particular area, attack, connectivity, etc) are kept in mind by showing when different follow-ups to the pattern move are appropriate.
Page 66, for example shows a situation where black might likely play the diagonal attachment, but by strengthening white just this little bit, he makes possible the second-line invasion that would otherwise be a failure. The book is full of gems like this – showing not only best play by black, but likely play and how to exploit it. I have begun to put these techniques to use in my own games, and it seems to be making a difference – honestly it’s too soon to tell. Nevertheless, I have definitely added some new weapons to my handicap arsenal.I’d like to close this review with a bonus tip for kyu readers: I’ve won so many games because black mistakenly plays the hane instead of extension in the 3-3 invasion after a pincer. Learn this and immediately get two stones stronger!
Of these stories, my personal favorite is "The New Year's Eve Disciple", in which Nakayama starts a game against Suzuki Goro 6 dan professional on New Year's Eve, 1959. At 5 AM on January 1, 1960, after eight hours of play, Suzuki drew Nakayama's attention from the board, said "Right!" and with that resigned the game. Traditionally, a disciple plays only two games against his master while training to enter the professional ranks, one at the beginning of his training and one at the end, either as a prize for promotion to the ranks of professionals or as a parting gift, indicating the time has come to select a different career path.
Suzuki had recommended that Nakayama begin studying five years earlier, in 1954, but it was not until 1962, at nearly at the maximum allowed age, that Nakayama qualified as a professional. After rising rapidly to 3 dan, Nakayama continued to gain strength and rank, gaining another dan each decade from 1963 to 1993. He may be only professional to continue improving in such large steps over three decades. The hallmarks of Nakayama's go are the persistence and patience for the decade it took to reach professional, and the three decades since.
The second section, consisting of three game commentaries, includes a mirror go game in which two ladders approaching from opposite corners collide after more than fifty moves. By move 129, its all over; Black has lost his initial advantage and the game, which must be perhaps the most bizarre on record. The third and final section contains 20 whole board problems, several of which focus on ladders. The problems give a whole new meaning to Kageyama's command to amateurs to practice reading ladders till they are immediately clear. Surely Kageyama did not mean to include these ladders!
More than worthy of its name, The Treasure Chest Enigma holds a cherished place in the libraries of many English-speaking go players.
Printed privately and available online at sources including Yutopian
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Weiqi in Culture is designed as a primer on the rudiments of go. In just 83 pages (subdivided into 21 lessons) it covers a range of basic topics, from cutting and connecting to ladders, nets, enclosure, extensions and more. The translation from the original Chinese version is good. Interestingly, the counting method introduced is the Japanese one, though in Lesson 7 the Chinese method of counting both stones and territory is suddenly referred to without previous or subsequent explanation.
Unfortunately, this otherwise admirable book suffers from a serious disconnect between its title and content. Although ambitiously titled Weiqi in Culture, it is not about go's place in culture, the evolution of go under a changing culture, or even about reflections of culture in go or its playing style. Instead, we get tantalizing but very brief cultural remarks at the head of each lecture. The book's subtitle is a more accurate description of the contents: "Introductory Teaching Lectures." The same problem shows up in the individual lessons, when, for example, the two lectures dealing with the basics of end-game play bear the improbable and mysterious titles "Iconic Culture in a Silent World" and "Spiritual World/Immortal Youth" respectively.
This book is the first in what will presumably be a multi-volume series. The author, Wu Songsheng, is generally regarded as the second-best go player in China from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, perhaps the most crucial period in the development of contemporary Chinese go. We therefore have good reason to hope for more substantive writing from the author in subsequent volumes.
With their poor graphics and retarded play, the first computer go programs did little to impress. Advances in algorithms combined with faster computers, however, have led to programmers to make marked improvements over the past years. And so it was with interest that I loaded up WinHonte to see what modern computer go players could do.
I began by giving the program a nine-stone handicap, and I saw immediately just how much go programming had improved. WinHonte built good territories and stayed connected, giving me few opportunities to complicate the game. It knew which cut-off stones were not worth saving and didn't get preoccupied with stones that I had sacrificed. I was particularly impressed with WinHonte's tactics; it came up with clever sequences often enough that it couldn't be by accident. The program generally played well enough to keep the games close, usually losing by 10-20 points. Most surprisingly, WinHonte plays very much like a human, making similar moves and mistakes to other players of its level. WinHonte's author rates the playing strength of the program at 4-9 kyu, an assessment that seems fair from my experiences.
While WinHonte plays well, away from the board it is not so strong. Its user interface and SGF game editor are best described as minimalist; most basic features are present, but lack the polish of many other go programs. More seriously, WinHonte's teaching options are also quite limited. For example, while it is possible to get WinHonte's to give its territorial assessment of a position, it is not possible to get its suggestion for the next move, nor is it easy to move back in the game tree to explore variations after a disaster. With the users of computer go players largely being beginners, these features seem too important to leave out.
Overall, I found WinHonte to be a worthwhile go playing program. Its low price ($30) compares favourably to competitors, and it is strong enough to give beginners a good game.
WinHonte can be purchased from Jellyfish Software: www.jellyfish-go.com
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Last updated on January 1, 2007
