Tesuji (Elementary Go Series) [Paperback]

James Davies (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 198 pages
• Publisher: Kiseido Publishing Co; 2 edition (May 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 487187012X
• ISBN-13: 978-4871870122
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,082,267 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Making The Right Move, December 29, 2001

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Tesuji (Paperback)

Lately I've been refreshing my skills at the Japanese game of Go. I was addicted to the game in college, but I've had no real opportunities to play since that time. Recently I discovered some Go players in my circle of acquaintances, so I decided to bring my skills back up to an acceptable, i.e., non-embarrassing level.

Buried in my half-shelf of books on the game are several by James Davies, who started out translating Go books, and went on to write several himself. He has a pleasant, clear writing style which makes his exposition of some of the mysteries of one of the world's most popular games a pleasant pastime.

Tesuji are combat tactics of life and death on the go board. Many times they are obvious, but most of the time they require seeing just a bit deeper than the immediate hack and slash. The eye needs a lot of practice to recognize the opportunities for using various tesuji. To a beginner they often seem like magic, to a good player they are the scalpels and tweezers of combat.

Davies does a fine job of explaining the workings of many tesuji and provides an almost inexhaustible supply of problems to work through. I feel he could have spent a bit more time on the solutions, but I never found one I couldn't figure out eventually. Perhaps his reticence actually encourages deeper learning. This is intended primarily as a beginner's book, but I think intermediate players would find it useful as well.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book, although less approachable at first, July 13, 2004

By 

Shorebird (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tesuji (Paperback)

Tesuji are tactics and clever plays in the game of Go. (another definition is the best play in a local area of the board), and are used to accomplish different objectives (linking groups of stones or splitting your opponent's groups apart, winning a semeai/capturing race, etc.).

Content:

Tesuji's content is very useful, and contains all of the fundamental tesuji needed to lay a solid foundation.

The first chapter is devoted to reading, then continues into the tesuji. Each chapter's theme is accomplishing a certain objective, and provides a few tesuji that are used to accomplish it. At the end of each section on a tesuji, the reader is given a problem or two to try it himself, and at the end of each chapter, around 10-12 problems, using all of the tesuji. The difficulty of the problems vary, but are never frustratingly hard.

Pros:

Lots of diagrams and problems.
Content is explained well, provides refutations for the sample problems.

Cons:

The book is not an easy read, and I was not able to start fully benefiting from it until I was a strong mid-kyu (15k-10k). Beginners will find this book to be too hard.

Conclusion: Barring the difficulty for weaker players, Tesuji is an excellent book, and a must for every go player.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Execelent excercise for go situation analysis, September 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tesuji (Elementary Go Series) (Paperback)

This book is compact and high quality. First the book presents pattern and board situation where that pattern is present, then right and wrong choises in that pattern are analysed. After that one to three board situations are presented for reader to find the best move sequence. Common factor in these problems is that solution contains the presented pattern at some point. This kind of chapters are grouped together by the goal which is tried to reach. At the end of such group is collection of problems (8-12 roughly) in which the goal is fixed but solutions variably contain some of the patterns presented. Thus, this book contains a lot of problems to solve and explanation of ideas behind. For me this book has provided some ability to spot on board locations which need further consideration.