Customer Reviews

Mathematical Go: Chilling Gets the Last Point

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Here's where all of you who are bored with Computer Chess and conventional mathematics should be spending your time. This is a deep book that hints at many interesting subjects. If you're a combinatorial games theorist you already know about this book. If you arent read this book and become one

There is a small community of programmers attempting to create Go playing computer programs and this effort has met with some small success. To say the least, this work is in it's infancy - at least if this book is any indication.

If you're actually interested in Go, this book is not going to be much help. There are numerous alternative publications suitable for learning about the game. By the authors' own admission, virtually none of the "endgame positions" featured in this book would ever appear in a real game of Go played between humans with reasonable skill.

I imagine the material is somewhat interesting, at least in the abstract sense, but I would not recommend it to anyone looking for more than that.

The title of the book should be understod literally. The book is not about 'last point' in sence of final argument to the topic, but really about which player, white or black gets the last point in Go game. This also means, that if you utilize all knowledge from this book either in your playing of Go or incorporate it into Go playing program, you at best score 2 points more territory in comparison to you opponent than without this knowledge. Reading this book is revealing in some sence, since it proves some 'common sence' assumptations wrong and gives some insights of mathematical handling of the Go, but the scope of the book is very limitted.