Go: a Complete Introduction to the Game

Played throughout eastern Asia for thousands of years, go has captured the imagination of more game players than any other strategy game. Today, go is becoming increasingly popular in the western world as more and more people discover its beauty, elegance, and strategic depth.

This book is the best and most authorative introduction to this ancient and fascinating game. Written specifically for the western reader by one of the strongest players in the world, it presents the rules, tactics, and strategy of this unique game in a step-by-step, easy to understand way.

Besides showing you how to play, it contains essays about the world of go which will broaden your knowledge and understanding as well as pique your interest. From history to modern tournament play, from traditional playing sets to computer go, you'll find it in these pages.

 

Cho Chikun was born in Seoul, Korea in 1956. He came to Japan at the age of 6 and became the youngest-ever professional go player at only 11. He is considered to be one of the great prodigies in the history of go. By the age of 27, he held the four top Japanese titles simultaneously, a feat that no other player had accomplished. At one time or another, he has held every one of the seven major titles, the Grand Slam of professional go. In the 1990s he was the undisputed king of the Japanese go world, holding the top three titles: Kisei, Meijin, and Honinbo.

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 with that company. Together with John Power, 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.