Customer Reviews

Learn To Play Go, Volume II: The Way of the Moving Horse

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the second volume in the Go teaching series authored by Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-hyun. It takes the basic principles laid out in "A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game" and begins to tie them together into coherent game play. This is no trivial task, as anyone who has struggled through the first few months of Go playing will tell you.

Learning is a habit that a good go player has to have. This short, easy to read volume lays the rest of the framework needed to start the process. The authors start with an introduction to the real task of the game, claiming and achieving territory. This is a more theoretical approach than the 'you need two eyes' approach of volume one, and, for the first time, the player is lead to looking at the whole board and the fine art of moving in a game where nothing moves.

This little bit of theory out of the way, the book turns to the core skills of Go playing - attack, defense, capturing, Ko fighting, hand-to-hand combat, the endgame, and the intricacies of life and death. All of the discussions are good. I give a special tip of the hat for the attention the authors pay to the playing of Ko's. It is one of the marks of beginning players that they avoid these repeating capture attacks like poison. Here the authors give enough attention to this strategy to get anyone past their doubts.

While this volume goes deeper than volume one, it is by no means heavily written or over analytical. Plenty of illustrations and examples, but the chapter tests are gone. There is a final exam though. Almost painlessly, the beginner is eased into having a good basic concept of what Go is about.

This was the second book I purchased for learning go (the first was Charles Matthew's 'Teach Yourself Go'). For the beginner, Go can be somewhat frustrating to get into. There is a plethora of books that will teach you the basic rules, but these can also be learned from a variety of web sites.

After these, the average beginner knows the rules, but not how to actually play. An opponant will play a stone right next to one of theirs, and they don't know how to respond... do I play above it? or on the other side? do I ignore it and play another hoshi (star point)?

This book teaches the reader about making jumps (how to expand on territory you're claiming or keep from being captured), base extensions (in order to stake out territory), and the basics of ko fights and contact fighting (what happens when stones are played right next to each other). If you've done a bit of playing and problem solving online, I would recommend picking up the next book in this series at the same time. As soon as you finish this book, you'll begin to see more patterns in games and understand that there is more you should be seeing behind the moves. As a result, you will probably want to study the game more, and the next book is really still a mid-level book.

My only complaint about the book would have to be just that. The niche it fills, for the reader who has learned the rules but isn't ready for serious study of go patterns yet, isn't filled unless you have both the second and third book in this series. These probably should have been published as one larger book. That notwithstanding, it's an excellent second (and third) book of Go.

As a side note, while the fourth book in this series is quite interesting, it is not as much of a prerequisite for studying other books, such as the Elementary Go Series, as book II and III.

Janice Kim's easy to follow Go "Learn to Play Go" series is by far the best for any beginner interested in learning how to play. Much easier to read and follow than any other english Go book avaliable.

I started out playing Go on-line, but not having any success in learning anything past the basic rules, I quickly started looking for Go literature that would help me further understand the game. I found several supposedly "beginner" books intended for the complete beginner, but they were difficult to read and follow.

Janice Kim's series, after the first few pages, had me absolutely hooked! Her explanations are clear and she does a good job of providing background information about Go's history and contemporary Go players.

The best way to improve your game and your appreciation of the ancient oriental game for those who don't have a chance to play with more experienced players- and even then, this series is an excellent supplement.

A must have for any interested go player! ^_^

Suppose you wanted to learn to play chess or bridge. Well, you would ask people to tell you the rules. And you would improve just by trial and error. But you might also need something you could use for a textbook or reference that would guide you through the steps to become more than a beginner. That's true in Go as well.

One problem with Go is that it is often hard for a beginner to have any idea what the score is. In bridge, you know the score. In chess, you can see if you are ahead in material. In Go, it is tougher to see how you are doing. It makes it that much more confusing for an untrained beginner.

And that is where we come to books on Go for the beginner. There are a variety of introductory books, such as the ones by Cho Chikun, or Kaoru Iwamoto, or Richard Bozulich, or Peter Shotwell (not to mention older ones such as those by Otto Korscheldt, or Edward Lasker, or Kaku Takagawa, or Arthur Smith). Some are by famous Go champions, some are not. But one can read any of these books carefully, play a few games, and still be a very weak player.

For a set of books that can take one from a complete beginner, teach one the rules, and get one to single-digit kyu strength (or close to it), I like Janice Kim's 5-volume set the best. And this is the second volume in it (second edition, 1998).

I think these books teach the fundamentals better than the other books I mentioned. In this book, one learns about making bases, running with attacked stones (that moving horse!), invading and reducing territory, and a little about attacking and defending. I liked the example of a ko fight where one side runs out of ko threats but still comes out ahead (although losing the ko) because the winning ko threat was to try to escape from a ladder (adding stones to the ladder was worth as much as the ko). And I liked the emphasis on preventing the "tiger's mouth" formation as a fundamental concept of contact fighting.

This book is really easy to read: one does not even need a Go board to understand it. And I thought it was a good idea for Kim to refer to White (generally the stronger player) as "she," and Black as "he."

The first book in this series is for total beginners, and it teaches the rules of the game. That material can be absorbed very quickly. After that, this book ought to be easily readable for anyone who is interested in the game.

After reading vol. 1 in the series I began to play a few games, and gained confidence. After reading this second book in the series, my game went from strength to strength. I have re-read the book a few times and it continues to point out mistakes that I commonly make. I can now give some quite reasonable players a run for their money. Highly recommended.

As a beginner, I was scrambling to find some good books to take me the first steps beyond the basics.. and this was it. Well written, clear, lots of examples and 'what would you do' scenarios.. this book is the perfect guide to beyond the elements of Go.

By far the best series of Go books for beginning to intermediate players. So much of success at Go, at least of the recreational player who does not have a huge amount of time to devote the game, hinges on mastering some basic ways of thinking about problems and "stances" that help to identify opportunities avoid pitfalls or common mistakes. This book continues the focus on these elements initiated in Volume I by concentrating on a small number of principles and skills that are the key to doing well at beginning and intermediate Go. This book, like the subsequent volumes in the series is written with the beginner in mind, but should by no means be ignored by even the advanced intermediate player--any player at any level who can truly master and consistently apply the concepts presented in this book will be a stronger.

Being new to playing Go, I found this book to be extremely helpful. It's simple but effective explanation of the three core phases of the game acts as a fantastic introduction to some of the most essential elements of play. A lot of concepts that were a bit hazy with me came into concrete solidity after reading through this book. I've read a lot of free instructional material on the internet, but Kim's coverage of the same material in this book is far more clear than any of those free sources.

This second book in the series is needed if you have only read the first volume in the series. I found that The Second Book of Go (by another author) is more advanced than this . Requirements being that material in Janice Kim's first and second book be known to be able to follow along well in The Second Book of Go.
I think after reading about the Learn to Play Go series . The were originally written for Jeong Soo=Hynu's students by him. i just wish i would have taken into consideration that probably he had many younger student. I find these books useful in that the first 2 books had helped me play a better game. The books just skim the surfaces of different techniques and types of moves of the game. I would surely suggest these books for someone with a short attention span who desires to learn how to win a game in the beginner ranks. But as for me , i will move on to more thorough go literature.(some of which can be downloaded on [...]

I will post this to the first four books of the series, which I bought all at once.
I was hoping this series, as popular as it seems to be, would be the Go equivalent of Yasser Seirawan's "Play Winning Chess," but this series has nothing in comparison. I agree with other reviews that describe the books' lack of depth. There is actually so little information presented in the first four volumes, that they might as well be combined into one book for the same price as one of the books. There are also glaring typographical errors throughout every copy.
Don't let the glossy covers fool you, in my opinion, this book series is nothing but a money grab. (I liked this book the best and thought it was a decent, if very quick, intro for the very beginning player).