Customer Reviews

Life and Death (Elementary Go (Kiseido))

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One of the first mountains a beginning Go player has to climb is deciding when a group of pieces has a living shape and what do to get a group into shape. Until this is mastered one is playing 'accidental' Go. In other words, lacking a tactical target, issues of life and death are settled without a clear picture of the desired effect. Which is why early play at the Go board often feels like someone just pulled the rug out from under you.

No surprise then that there are many books on tactical play and analysis. James Davies' "Life and Death" is a very neat volume that organizes itself around shape and provides the basic proverbs that will help a player get a good start. Only experience will completely demystify life and death, but this book provides the kind of lessons that help a players bootstrap themselves up to a respectable game.

Each chapter is short and to the point, with several examples and a number of carefully thought out problems and status analyses. Since the focus of the book is not to test the player's IQ but to provide information in digestible pieces the material is easily accessible, which is not always the case with Go books. Lots of additional review problems are also provided.

The advantage to this entire series is not only the transparency of the lessons, but the author's careful adherence to a size and format that makes this a truly portable book. Go, especially in it's most minimalist form (a small magnetic set, for example) is every bit as backpack friendly as checkers and is much more fascinating. "Life and Death" is an excellent companion for the serendipitous traveler.

This book contains Go life and death analysis from easier to more complex shapes. Of each shape the basic vital points are explained for both players. Special cases of each shape are presented as problems. Much of the problems are in form of 'what is status?', but also 'white to kill', 'black to live', 'white to make ko' kind of problems appear. Reading this book takes quite a time, but as result gives some stones in Go strength. I strongly recomend to have in addition some lighter (like: In the Begining) Go reading to relax with if cracking problems taxes too much.

If you are a Go beginner, I recommend studying (as I did) the book of Go problems for 30-25 Kyu before this one.

But after that and Richard Bozulich's book, this is certainly the next book to turn to.

I'm currently studying this book, "Life and Death," and another book in this series by the same author, "Tesuji."

"Life and Death" is a step easier than "Tesuji," although counter-intuitively they are volumes 4 and 3 in the series. Although the techniques used to kill or save groups come from "Tesuji," the positions in "Life and Death" are simpler, more basic and far, far more common. The problems are a bit easier. So I recommend studying this one first.

Introduction:

Life and death is one of the critical elements in the/a game of go, but what exactly is it? It is simply whether a player's stones are captured or prevented from being captured (though I won't go into a deeper explanation here). It's simple, yet very important. To become a strong player, an important fundamental is to be strong in life and death, and if you ask any go player (amatuer or professional) how, the answer will be "Solve lots of life and death problems."

Solving problems helps strengthen a go player's reading ability, and with repetition, the shapes in the problems will be more familiar to the player when they appear in his games (reading is when a player mentally forsees how the game will continue, thinking about different continuations, and to the find the best result possible for both sides). These fundamental shapes also appear in life and death.

The Book:

Content:

Normally, books about life and death are simply "problem books," which simply contain life and death problems. Life and Death (the book) is a bit different, and is mainly concerned about the fundamental shapes that appear.

The book begins with a small introduction about life and death, and defines some common terms that the reader will need to know. Moving along, each chapter is devoted to a specific shape, or theme. A chapter is begun by introducing the reader to the shape and showing them some of the common continuations that can occur. On the next page, the reader is put to the test, and is given some problems to solve.

Difficulty:

N.B.: The content in this book is aimed at stronger players who are at least in the single digit kyu range (9k up), and will not be suitable for beginners. For beginners, some books I recommend are the Learn to Play Go series by Janice Kim, to learn about the basics of life and death, and for life and death problems, the Graded Go Problems for Beginners series by Kano Yoshinori and 1001 Life and Death Problems by Richard Bozulich.

Summary:

Pros:

* Smooth process: I like how the reader is introduced to the shape and it's continuation, then is given problems to tackle himself.

* It is kind of a quasi-reference book, especially for the corner shapes, but is definitely not a life and death dictionary.

* Size: Though it's not related to the content of the book, it's a small book, which is a handy thing.

Cons:

* Price: My major gripe is the price, which unfortunately is the norm for go books translated into English. But still, $15 for this tiny book...

Conclusion:

Life and Death is an excellent book for the stronger kyu player to learn about the more difficult fundamental shapes that appear in games.

After the first 20 pages, I was making 20-point plays
in games that I would never have seen before this
book. Whole categories of life and death problems
can be reduced to simple questions about the shape of
their potential eyespace. Having this in your favor
is something that every player needs to know.

Some of the problems are fairly tricky at the 10kyu level.

Having recently read a few books that tried to answer the question, "What is Life?" I was glad to find this one! The answer is simple. Life is two eyes! If you have only one eye, you are dead.

That is why the door group is as dead as a, um, doornail. It only produces one eye.

You can't enjoy a game of go unless you have a pretty good idea if your groups are dead or alive. And this book is good at teaching you to see which shapes can form two eyes and which shapes can not. The chapters and quizzes in this book are excellent training. If you can answer the "status?" questions correctly, you are well on your way towards doing some serious damage to many of your opponent's more dubious formations.

Once you have learned the elements of go and have played some games, what comes next? Well, you need to learn a little about fuseki and joseki. And tesuji (or you won't be able to understand this book). But the first topic you need to learn really well is this one. And that's where this book comes in handy.

I find this book very helpful. I was looking for basic principles to apply in various situations. This book does that. I'm still only 2/3 through but the lessons learned so far had an immediate benefit; I'd say 2-3 kyu improvement overnight. I'm currently at 12 k.

This book introduces different life and death situations and variations of them. Actually the book has 36 groups of different shapes of life and death situations. Every group has the same vital characters which are explained with few words and examples. After that thera are a few problems and pretty good answers to problems. This happens again in every chapter.

This is a book you HAVE TO READ WITH GO-BOARD! You should try to solve problems, that gives you good overview what is important in every shape. I found it educationnal to "play" problems with someome. Both try to kill or save a group. That worked for me and my friend.

This book is good for a player who has already played a few games and notices he/she is loseing groups which he/she thinks should be alive.

I learned to notice new good and bad shapes in my games.

Perhaps others will not have as much difficult as I've had with many the types of problems in this book, but most of the concepts have been very tough to get, so far.

One of the things that makes the problems and concepts hard to grasp is that small differences in the types of positions can make the evaluation different. Whether or not stone are connected or loose, whether having one eye more or less will meaning the difference between living or dying or making ko or seki, and how the seemingly more improbable move is the one that is correct, have to been easy things for me to understand so far.

But as someone who tries to take his study of the game as seriously as possible, such things are fundamental. And these small problems give a good window into the tactical intricacies of the game, and if having troubles with the problems is frustrating for right now, I can still imagine that the rewards for perseverance will be good over the board.

So, if you're a fairly experienced player wanting to get better, or even just barely past the beginning stage, than there are few places to begin that next step than with this book. Get it, study it, get frustrated with it and yourself, but keep coming back to it.

This book is perfect for advanced beginners who are ready to continue disciplining their game. The slow building of complexity, the ordering of patterns, and the perfectly framed problems make this book hugely useful. Less experienced players be warned, however; Davies often boldly pronounces many statements that would be self-evident to more advanced players, but which may be more cryptic for starting players. Consider the perfunctory "Since each half of the white group touches both of the internal liberties, White is alive" (page 17). Having studied the problem, laid it out on the board, and worked through variations, I am pleased to say I NOW understand precisely what Davies means (and I'm a far better player for it, given the ubiquity of this arrangement). But without a board and stones nearby and some patience, this statement would have required more textual explanation for someone at my level (maybe 13 kyu?). In other words, prepare to GET TO WORK to improve your game.