Customer Reviews

Winning a Won Game, Volume 2: Go Seigen's Lectures

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This well written book will help the player greatly improve their game. It will help the beginning and intermediate player save their groups and kill their opponent's groups. The book teaches by presenting a series of puzzles that gradually becomes more difficult. The puzzles are presented in such a way that the ideas are reinforced and enhanced as the reader progresses through the book. This book is ideal for the serious player wishing to improve his or her game.

Go Seigen is easily the best Go player of the 20th Century. Born Wu Qingyuan in Fujian province (1914). Go's father taught him the game when he was eight and he took of like a rocket. At the age of 11 he was winning against most of China's top players. Finally Go, the national champion of China in 1927, was offered the chance to play and study in Japan. His career in Japan was every bit as spectacular. In 1932 he reached 5-dan ranking. This was a period of some turmoil in Go. Many players, Go included, where trying new openings and breaking with tradition. In Japan, where the traditions around the game are intense this caused a great deal of argument. By the war, Go Seigen was and 8-dan, and already the most formidable player in Japan.

Go remained in seclusion during the war, but returned in force in 1947. Two years later, at the age of 36, Go Seigen was made 9-dan. The highest rank possible. His games throughout are marked by a crystal clear ability to grasp the workings of a game and turn them to his advantage. As a reader of his games one is constantly struck by how much of the game Go is able to see. It is if every move, no matter how tactical always has a strategic reason behind it. "Winning a Won Game" is the second in a series of lectures between the master and an anonymous player focused on how to create and keep an advantage at the Go board.

The style is to show the game at it's crisis point, then go back and play through the game (with heavy commentary), and the carry it through to the moment of decision. Go Seigen's pride is well earned, but he is not ashamed to reveal his mistakes as well as his moments of brilliance. Even though I am far from a 9-dan I found much to absorb, and intend to return to this volume many times. There are ten games, seven that were one and 3 that were lost. All are wonderful, and I am determined to track down the first volume in this series. There are great examples of 3-3 and 4-4 openings. Well worth the price.

If you play go like I do, you spend a lot of time sticking your neck out and then scrambling for survival while your opponent tries to cut off your water. Sometimes (too often, actually) you wind up just a little further out there than you thought you were going to be and reaching out to the safety of a stable formation becomes desperately important. Obviously, a book entitled `Connecting Stones' was written just for the likes of us.

This is a puzzle book with a very specific point, how to make connections in unclear situations and rescue inner groups that are at risk. That this happens to occasionally destroy the group you are trying to make the connection through is an extra benefit. If murder is what you want to do then I heartily recommend the second volume in this series 'Capturing Stones.' Wu Piao and Yu Xing alternate problems with solutions throughout in a clear style that makes occasionally obscure tactics seem obvious.

Don't take that to mean that these are simple puzzles. They aren't. The back cover insists that the problems are in order of difficulty in each chapter. If that is true, they were all tough enough that I didn't notice the difference. These aren't one step tesujis but carefully orchestrated maneuvers that can require you to spend time working things out on a Go board. The second chapter "Linking Up by Capturing Stones" spends a lot of time on 'wrapping' techniques, which are every bit as spectacular as 'playing under the stones.'

The other chapters include "Connecting at the Edge of the Board," "Utilizing Support from Friendly Forces," "Endgame Moves," and "Exercises and Applications." About 200 good, profitable teaching puzzles in all. This series of intermediate puzzles from Yutopian Enterprises is one of their best, and I hope that they add more too it in the future. See you at the tables soon.

Ce livre s'adresse probablement aux joueurs plus avancés que moi (17 kyu sur KGS). Il est dense, écrasant même. Je remets cette lecture à plus tard. Probablement que les joueurs en Shodan peuvent le lire comme s'il s'agissait d'un roman, mais pas moi.