Life In 19x19

I've owned Basic Techniques of Go for a long time and I glanced through it a few times in the past, but I never studied it seriously. I may have been put off by the fact that almost half of the book is devoted to playing high-handicap games.

Since I am returning to playing Go after a long break, I decided to use this book as a kind of refresher course. I am finding it to be surprisingly good. Even the sections on handicap play are quite interesting.

I have read negative reviews of the book in the past and I am wondering if there is anybody else out there who likes this book and feels like they got something out of reading it.

This was the first go book I had after Arthur Smith's book, in other words my first real go book. I learned a tremendous amount from it and even now, for serious students of the game I still recommend it highly. I particularly remember the material on tesuji. This book covers a lot of ground in a small book. I think it would be great for someone getting back to playing.

It is a good book. I think its reputation suffered from two things. First, it was not quite the beginners book that it was partly intended to be. Second, the at times hilarious reliance on japanese terms harmed its accessability.

In reality though, everything is there to make you a competent player. And as a book to come back to with some knowledge and experience, it is a great refresher.

The Kiseido edition uses a lot fewer Japanese terms than the Ishi press one btw.

I really recommend the Kiseido edition as a 2nd or 3rd book just since it touches on such a wide variety of topics. The pointers for handicap play also really seem to resonate with some players who are getting frustrated with being trounced in 5+ handicap games.

Due to it's size, it can't get too deep or real on any given topic but it can be a real eye-opener for some.

I finally saw the Ishi press version, and yes, you'll drown in Japanese terms if you don't already know them.

Bruce "Gomi no Sensei" Young

Horibe wrote:It is a good book. I think its reputation suffered from two things. First, it was not quite the beginners book that it was partly intended to be. Second, the at times hilarious reliance on japanese terms harmed its accessability.

In reality though, everything is there to make you a competent player. And as a book to come back to with some knowledge and experience, it is a great refresher.

You have to remember that when the book came out, the English go literature was almost non-existent. There were no accepted English terms for many go concepts. Even today we say tesuji, sente, gote, tenuki, joseki, seki, hane, ko, aji-keshi, kikashi, and so on. An English rendition of sente, upper hand, had appeared in the English translation of Korschelt, but never caught on (thank goodness!). Not to rely on Japanese terms would have meant inventing a new vocabulary which would have meant nothing to existing Western go players and might, like upper hand, have bombed. Besides, other internationally played games have terminology that came from different languages, like finesse in bridge and Zwischenzug in chess. Better to let English go terms emerge and evolve in the go community.

Bill Spight wrote:You have to remember that when the book came out, the English go literature was almost non-existent. There were no accepted English terms for many go concepts. Even today we say tesuji, sente, gote, tenuki, joseki, seki, hane, ko, aji-keshi, kikashi, and so on. An English rendition of sente, upper hand, had appeared in the English translation of Korschelt, but never caught on (thank goodness!). Not to rely on Japanese terms would have meant inventing a new vocabulary which would have meant nothing to existing Western go players and might, like upper hand, have bombed. Besides, other internationally played games have terminology that came from different languages, like finesse in bridge and Zwischenzug in chess. Better to let English go terms emerge and evolve in the go community.

In that case, wouldn't it have made sense to include a visual glossary? Showing an example of each of the terms?

shapenaji wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:You have to remember that when the book came out, the English go literature was almost non-existent. There were no accepted English terms for many go concepts. Even today we say tesuji, sente, gote, tenuki, joseki, seki, hane, ko, aji-keshi, kikashi, and so on. An English rendition of sente, upper hand, had appeared in the English translation of Korschelt, but never caught on (thank goodness!). Not to rely on Japanese terms would have meant inventing a new vocabulary which would have meant nothing to existing Western go players and might, like upper hand, have bombed. Besides, other internationally played games have terminology that came from different languages, like finesse in bridge and Zwischenzug in chess. Better to let English go terms emerge and evolve in the go community.

In that case, wouldn't it have made sense to include a visual glossary? Showing an example of each of the terms?

Sure, you can do that for some things hane, ko and seki, but try defining or describing tesuji and sente in just a diagram or two!

If the book is entitled Tesuji, or even has a chapter about tesuji, then I think it's okay to not to define it in the glossary. If it's a very easy book, I think it's okay not to use the term at all. If it's an intermediate book, it should be okay to say "we assume you are familiar with tesuji, sente, etc."

The real problem is terms like hane, or even keima. You can translate keima as knight's move, but people still won't know what you're talking about if you don't give them a few visual examples. But you need this vocabulary to talk about moves on the board, or else you're reduced to saying "this move" or "that move" endlessly.

Bartleby wrote:I've owned Basic Techniques of Go for a long time and I glanced through it a few times in the past, but I never studied it seriously. I may have been put off by the fact that almost half of the book is devoted to playing high-handicap games.

Since I am returning to playing Go after a long break, I decided to use this book as a kind of refresher course. I am finding it to be surprisingly good. Even the sections on handicap play are quite interesting.

I have read negative reviews of the book in the past and I am wondering if there is anybody else out there who likes this book and feels like they got something out of reading it.

I found it much more useful re-reading it after I got stronger.