Richard Bozulich RIP rumors

[Stable]

He was the author or co-author of at least half the go books I own. It's very saddening to hear he is gone.

[kitanifan]

Sorry to hear that, he's done great things.
RIP

[Tengen]

Never met Richard, but still sad to hear the news. Just made a quick count and found that I own nine of his books. Hopefully his contributions will continue to pave the way for more western players.

[HKA]

eastern mist lifted
enthralling landscape revealed
farewell to our guide

[ez4u]

eastern mist lifted
enthralling landscape revealed
farewell to our guide

Thank you HKA

[wms]

I was also sad to hear that he passed. He sponsored KGS for several years and was always helpful and fair; his promotion of KGS early on in his books had a lot to do with making it as successful as it is today. On top of that he flew me to Japan at his own expense twice during that time, two very exciting trips for me! And of course, as many people have said here, he wrote and/or published a lot of books that were instrumental in developing my interest in the game.

[shapenaji]

Very sad. "Get Strong at Tesuji" was my favorite book when I was starting out, his layout was beautiful, you could do tons of problems quickly and really work on your shape.

Compare it to "Tesuji" by Davies, while Davies was thorough in his categorization of certain types of positions, it didn't have that same kind of "Get strong at drinking from the firehose" teaching method which I love.

Thank you for all your contributions Richard.

[Loons]

When I was ordering a book from Kiseido, Richard Bozulich rather gave me the impression that he had at least two eyes.

If the reports of my demise were accurate, then you would be corresponding with the ghost of Richard Bozulich.

[tchan001]

So who is this mysterious "guest-writer" who spread this unconfirmed report. It's pretty awful journalism if it turns out that RB is not resting as peacefully as we are led to believe.

[gogameguru]

I did some background checks on the person who sent the obituary to me (as part of a group email) and exchanged emails with him before publishing this information. He is not the same person who wrote the obit, but he seems legit, as far as I'm concerned, and I don't think he's even a Go player, just an old friend of Richard's.

The address they used to contact me was one that Richard, and not that many other people have.

So after some research, I made the judgement that the information was true. I know from an unrelated personal experience that it's a thankless task delivering news like that to people. You can't put a grieving person through the third degree and you expect that people won't falsify things like that. Personally I wouldn't be able to function as a human being if I doubted everything at that level.

Richard hasn't responded to direct emails from us, or other people trying to confirm the situation. And you'll note that we're one of Kiseido's customers too.

However, for a couple of days, there have been a number of people receiving emails from 'Richard Bozulich' when they order from Kiseido. At the same time, he's still not responding to emails from several people trying who are trying to clarify things, including me. A few people have forwarded me messages from Richard and it's all incredibly peculiar...

So either Richard is alive, and is in no hurry to clear things up (for some reason), or someone else is impersonating him (for some other reason), or there's something even stranger going on.

I'd be very happy to learn that Richard is truly still alive and I'd publish a correction in no time. However, until Richard confirms that himself to me or one of several other people I trust, all we have is rumours and silence... I'm not sure what to think about this whole thing yet, but I've absolutely no intention to publish anything more about it until we have some real confirmation.

[kirkmc]

So, wait, you got the obituary by email, but don't have any link to it being published anywhere? Dude, journalism 101: always confirm your sources.

If this is false, then my apologies for relaying it here.

[gogameguru]

Kirk, please reread what I wrote above.

I actually put a lot of time into this whole thing, verifying things and otherwise. And not all newspapers publish obituaries online, by the way.

[kirkmc]

Kirk, please reread what I wrote above.

I actually put a lot of time into this whole thing, verifying things and otherwise. And not all newspapers publish obituaries online, by the way.

Still no excuse. Did you contact other go associations who might have more knowledge of Richard personally? Did you send an e-mail to Kiseido?

[tchan001]

Maybe RB is too busy to respond to enquiries on this topic because he's too busy filling in orders placed with Kiseido during their wonderful sales until the end of November.

[Horibe]

Kirk, please reread what I wrote above.

I actually put a lot of time into this whole thing, verifying things and otherwise. And not all newspapers publish obituaries online, by the way.

Still no excuse. Did you contact other go associations who might have more knowledge of Richard personally? Did you send an e-mail to Kiseido?

My recall, the article is now down, was that the posting clearly stated that the obit would "soon be published" or something like that, in the "Japan Times" or something like that.

So, by my recall of the post, I was not sure it was published - so kirkmc, given your strong "no excuse" policy - it seems to me you did not read it very well before you posted it here.