Customer Reviews

Go Pack

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The box came with a nice portable board that folds in half, and has a smaller board on its flipside. The pieces are decent for the price tag. More importantly though, it also comes with an excellent pocket-sized book that teaches you all the rules you need to know, and enough tactics and strategy to get you started. Its explanations are clear and it has helpful exercises and accompanying solutions which clarify the rules. The only pet peeve I have is with the twelve challenge problems at the end of the book. The author provides hints, but intentionally omits the solutions. He gives a URL for his homepage, where he claims he has the solutions to the challenge problems, but that link is broken. If anyone finds the new address, please email it to me (or just email me the answers).

This comes with a nice (albeit rather small) set with a board and plastic pieces. The accompanying book is a nice introduction for absolute beginners. It is also a well made book, sewn in signatures so it won't fall apart. You'd be hard pressed to find a book and a set at this price. The book covers the rules and some basic tactics and then has one game examined to show some strategy. A great way to start out and see if you like the game.

The next step would be to get Iwamoto's excellent "Go For Beginners" (rather meatier than the book here, and a superb book) or the series of books by Janice Kim. Then Ishi Press has a series of books, mostly by James Davies. If you do want to get more serious about the game you will certainly want to get a bigger and better set. For that check out Yutopian.

Incidentally you can play Pente aka Go-moku aka 5-in-a-row on this set as well.