All about Thickness Understanding Moyo and Influence A completely new kind of go book. Two-color printing makes the advanced concepts of thickness and influence graphically clear - and instantly understandable. Most go books are top heavy with text and endless exploratory diagrams. Ishida's approach in this book is the opposite - large diagrams, simple explanations, a minimum of mind-numbing text - yet this is the most successful attempt in the go literature to convey to go players at all levels the secrets of building thickness and making effective use of influence. How do you build influence? In what areas of the board should you aim to control? In what directions to the stones exert their force? How close should you approach a strung enemy position? How many points can you expect to convert a thick position into? The answers to these questions and many other questions will be apparent at a glance when you read this book. All about thickness, the first book of its kind, was a best seller in Japan. Go players around the world should find th English version as Japanese go fans.

All About Life and Death The most complete work on tsume-go ever published in English. Life and Death is a critical subject area for go players. Cho leads the reader through all of the important patterns that occur in play. Because of the vast range of material included, beginners will profit from the book, while experts will still find a challenge. For beginners through dan level players Use it as a text to study life and death in detail Use it as a problem book to sharpen your reading skills. Use it as an encyclopedic reference. Volume 1 covers basic corner shapes and the 'comb' pattern. Volume 2 analyzes the 'carpenter square', shapes on the sides and corner shapes arising from josekis and attacks on corner enclosures. About the Author: Cho Chikun is the foremost Korean practitioner of the Game of Go. He began his professional study at the game of six, becoming the youngest-ever professional at 11. At the age of 24, he won the prestigious title Meijin, and is the only go player ever to have held all top four Japanese titles at the same time. Cover illustration: The Courtesan of Hell dreaming of skeletons at play. A comical ukiyo-e print by Gyosai (1874). From the Ishi collection.

Objectives of this bookTo explain which points are vital in given shapes.To show how good shape is achieved, and bad shape exploited, in fighting contexts.To integrate shape proverbs into your knowledge of go.To look behind the proverbs to another level of more explicit mechanism, to provide supporting material, and to explain exceptions.To break down the barrier between tesuji and joseki points of view, connecting pure intuitions with learned knowledge.To demystify many common tesuji.To help the reader to visualise how and where a tesuji might happen in thefuture, a requirement for a dan player.To discuss the choice of variation at a point in a joseki, when tactical reasonsalone aren't a sufficient guide.To address as we go along questions about suji, or correct style, covering some of the content of the many texts on 'kata and suji' in the Japanese literature.To contribute to the local, critical theory of go, by attempting a systematic listing of possibilities in a pattern, with criteria for choosing amongst them.To develop an ingrained respect in the reader for the principles of good shape (for example: connect but remain light and flexible, don't fill in your own liberties without very good reason, develop rapidly but also take into account eye shape).To provide a reference on shape (there are an index of shapes and a proverb index at the end, to help you refer to particular patterns).To show in action the comparative method of go study.

Fundamental Principles is a clear presentation of the basic guidelines that you should follow in playing the game of go. Yilun Yang is the most famous go teacher in the US and this is an extremely popular book.

Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 1998.

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.