Encyclopedia of Go Principles (Mastering the Basics) (Volume 9) (9) - Softcover

Bozulich, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 4906574793 ISBN 13: 9784906574797

Publisher: Kiseido, 2015

Synopsis

Go is played on a very large board, consisting of 361 playing points. During the opening phase, there will be perhaps 50 to 100 candidates for a plausible move, and, for each of these candidates the opponent’s many possible responses must also be considered as well as your responses to each of these responses, and so on. An exhaustive brute-force search for finding the best move is clearly impractical. Clearly, a go player needs some principles to guide him.After the opening phase ends, difficult decisions must still be made in the middle game — which groups should be attacked and which of your own groups need to be defended; in which direction should you attack; should you invade or simply reduce your opponent’s potential territory? The expert go player definitely needs some principles to guide him in finding the best move. Even in positions where brute-force analysis is required in determining whether a group lives or dies or trying to increase your liberties in a capturing race, certain principles can provide valuable hints for finding the key moves.The purpose of this book is to bring together all the strategic and tactical principles of go. All of these principles can certainly be found scattered in the thousands of go books that have been published, but nowhere are they found collected in one place. Books on the go proverbs, which are supposed to incorporate most of the principles of go, contain only about 50 proverbs, many of which are unhelpful, such as ‘If you don’t know ladders, don’t play go.’ On the other hand, many important strategic ideas aren’t included in the go proverbs, such as ‘Be willing to transfer a moyo from one part of the board to another.’Each principle is supplemented with as many examples as the principle warrants. All of the go proverbs that have some concrete relevance to strategy or to tactics are included. With all these principles contained under one cover, a go player can embark on a systematic study of them. Once all 100 principles have been firmly implanted in your mind, you will instinctively and intuitively recall the relevant principle through pattern recognition when they arise in your games.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Bozulich was born in Los Angeles in 1936. From the age of four until 17 he studied to become a concert pianist. He then studied Mathematical Logic at UCLA from 1953 to 1956 under Richard Montague. He transferred to UC Berkeley and graduated in mathematics in 1966. In 1967 he went to Japan to study go. In 1968 he founded Ishi Press Inc. in Japan and published more than 45 books on go. In 1982 he founded Kiseido Publishing Company and has published more than 60 book on go under that company.He started publishing a go magazine, Go World, in 1977. 129 issues were published until he stopped publishing it in 2013. He is said to be the most prolific writer of English-language go books, having written or translated almost 50 books on the game. He lives in Chigasaki, Japan and is the president of Kiseido Publishing Company.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kiseido
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 4906574793
• ISBN 13: 9784906574797
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 290