Life In 19x19

The “Yi Kuo” endgame problem collection composed by the legendary Chinese master Huang Longshi is our gift to all the Go fans.

For reasons unknown for a long time it was impossible to find it online. We had to travel to China to get this book. At last anyone can give these incredibly beautiful 17 century problems a try. You can find them inside the course “Huang Longshi: Legend of Blood and Tears”:

https://gomagic.org/courses/huang-longs ... -and-tears

The problems in PDF and SGF can be found inside the final free lesson “Treasure Chest”.

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Do be aware that it is far from certain (and unlikely even) that Yi Kuo was written by Huang Longshi.

I haven't yet got round to pulling all the threads together, but as I understand the situation at the moment, the original was published by Wu Tianyin in 1710 (i.e. in the 18th century), some 20 years after Huang had died, and his preface does not mention Huang (or anyone else) as the author. Huang is mentioned, along with Zhou Donghou, simply as exemplars of go skill to aim at. The content, as Wu explains, is to give the reader some basics on the long road to such mastery. (That's precisely what the title Yi Kuo indicates, after all.)

The attribution to Huang as author dates from a copy made in 1800, omitting Wu's part in the book. This copy was probably made to praise Huang as a fellow townsman (which he points up by referring to him as Ganjiang Huang Longshi) in some petty "our team's better than your team" argument (the other "team" in this case being Fan Xiping and Shi Xiangxia, believe it or not!). The rarity of either copy is seen as a sign that only a few private copies were made and that they were not meant to be widely published. In any case, it was the latter copy which was re-printed much later by the famous collector Bao Ding, who at the time was unaware of the Wu Tianyin preface.

Another reason for the rarity is the "bland" content, as someone put it. I have also seen this book described by a modern Chinese scholar as "it is basically worthless and cannot be considered a book at all, but at most as a random transcription by someone else, a go enthusiast maybe." Forgery, piracy and misattribution were rife in the old Chinese go world.

But, as I imply, I am reserving judgement, and I'll welcome any further information or corrections.

PS My current total of Huang games is 130.