Customer Reviews

Tesuji (Elementary Go Series)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I really am not qualified to review this book, but I will anyway. I have been playing go for a couple of months, but my level of play is not nearly equal to this book. I had wanted something to give me better ideas about strategy. I guess this book does that, but not in a straightforward manner. The book just consists of problems. While those are good, I really don't think that I know enough yet to complete the problems. They are by no means easy and I had a hard time visualizing what was going on. All in all, don't buy this book prematurely. Make sure that you have a very good grasp on the game first.

This is a very good book on Go, but not a first book on the game (get an intro book first). The author has a clearly systematic way to approach situations on the Go board and shows the reader how to pick them apart. It has many good problems from easy to very difficult.

This is one of the most important books that I read when I was learning go. After I read it, my strength instantly jumped by several stones.

This book is all about local tactics. Tesuji are certain clever tricks for accomplishing various tactical goals. This book introduces the basic tesuji which are the foundation for becoming stronger at go. After reading this book, you will be armed with a slew of handy weapons for vanquishing your opponents, and the game will be much more fun than it was before.

The book is well written and well organized. Each chapter is devoted to a particular tactical goal (e.g. cutting groups apart) and introduces several tesuji for accomplshing that goal. There are many good examples, and exercises with solutions, to help you master the techniques.

If you're stronger than about 10 kyu, then you probably know most or all of this material (which is a testament to how essential it is), although if you're not too much stronger than 10 kyu then it might still be useful to read the book for review, do the problems for practice, and make sure there are no gaps in your knowledge. If you're weaker than around 15 kyu, then you are probably not yet ready for this book, but you should look forward to the time when you will be.

I am a 7kyu KGS/AGA (ranks are roughly the same) and recently bought and read this book. It took me about 6 hours to read/do all the problems but someone around 12kyu would probably take 8 to 10 hours. I believe reading it improved my play by about 1/2 of a stone but would improve a 12kyu by a full stone or possibly 2 stones.

Reading through it at 7kyu, I found the problems good, though possibly on the easy side, and rarely needed to read the hints or explanations. The goal of each problem (such as "black to cut the white stones") is always amongst the 2 to 5 sentences of explanation which makes reading the book slightly annoying in sections I understand well (would be nice if the problem statement was also be below each board image).

If you are in the 8kyu - 13kyu range you should definitely get this book as I believe it is the most efficient time per rank improvement book you can get. If you in the 5kyu - 8kyu range it will still improve your play enough to be worthwhile (though a lot will be solidifying ideas you already know).

Unlike a couple of the other reviews on here, I would not suggest starting this book if you are between 13kyu and 30kyu. I help new players in my local club, and feel reasonably well qualified when I say the ideal range is 5kyu-13kyu. I often see newer players trying to read books slightly beyond what they can understand, thinking it will help them get better faster - it only ends up giving them more headaches and frustration and makes the time spent reading to rank improvement ratio very bad! Even if a 17kyu can struggle and eventually understand the problems he/she will probably not be able to implement it in a game.

This is not a book for complete beginners. You ought to have read at least one book to teach you the rules and more (I recommend Janice Kim's set of five introductory books). And I think you need to have played some games against some double-digit kyu players and some single-digit kyu players. That way, you will know how it feels to need to connect stones, or connect groups, or separate enemy stones or groups, or escape with stones. You'll know how it feels to need to find a good move to make something out of a tough position.

Still, the problems in this book are quite reasonable. I had more trouble with the ones in Volume 4 of "Graded Go problems for Beginners." The problems are instructive and are well-explained. And as I said, these problems are clearly goal-oriented. There are sections on capturing cutting stones, amputating cutting stones, and various kinds of ko. There are problems involving fights between eyeless groups, between eyeless and one-eyed groups, and between two one-eyed groups. There are sections on linking groups and on cutting groups apart. On making shape. And so forth. It's just the sort of book that will help you in all phases of tactics in real game situations.

Right from the beginning of the book, you're already learning! I'm ranked an 18kyu and i just read the first 25 pages of the book and i've already learned so much more than i have from most of the books i've tried reading. This is a great buy, but may be a little hard for 20k or weaker ranked players.

Good book. Each topic has a discussion and a set of problems.When the situations arise in a game a beginner/intermidiate play may not recognize the more subtle solutions due to game pressure. It's good to go through the book and see what happens in various situations to have a chance to recognize them in game play. I had hoped it would isolate principles to keep in mind during play but that's not quite the approach. The book works by example and expects you to figure out if there is an underlying principle. That's why I rate it a 4 rather then 5. However, it may just be the nature of Go that this is the style of learning.