Master the fascinating game of Go with this expert guidebook. Go is a two-player board game that first originated in ancient China but is also very popular in Japan and Korea. There is significant strategy and philosophy involved in the game, and the number of possible games is vast--even when compared to chess. Go has enthralled hundreds of millions of people in Asia, where it is an integral part of the culture. In the West, many have learned of its pleasures, especially after the game appeared in a number of hit movies, TV series, and books, and was included on major Internet game sites. By eliciting the highest powers of rational thought, the game draws players, not just for the thrills of competition, but because they feel it enhances their mental, artistic, and even spiritual lives. Go! More Than a Game is the guidebook that uses the most modern methods of teaching to learn Go, so that, in a few minutes, anyone can understand the two basic rules that generate the game. The object of Go is surrounding territory, but the problem is that while you are doing this, the opponent may be surrounding you! In a series of exciting teaching games, you will watch as Go's beautiful complexities begin to unfold in intertwining patterns of black and white stones. These games progress from small 9x9 boards to 13x13 and then to the traditional 19x19 size. Go! More Than a Game has been completely revised by the author based on new data about the history of early Go and the Confucians who wrote about it. This popular book includes updated information such as the impact of computer versions on the game, the mysterious new developments of Go combinatorics, advances in Combinatorial Game Theory and a look at the current international professional playing scene.

A look at how Black players came to shine on the basketball court.

More than a Game covers the years that follow the one featured in the ESPN documentary series "The Last Dance." After leaving the Bulls at the end of the 1997-1998 season—the year featured in the new ESPN documentary series "The Last Dance"—Phil Jackson had one year off and started to write this book—together with his old friend, fellow player and coach, the basketball novelist Charley Rosen. Then Phil took the LA Lakers coaching job, Rosen followed him there, and by the time they finished writing this book it was 2000 and Phil had won yet another NBA championship, the first of five he would win with his new team. In More than a Game, Jackson and Rosen look backward to their origins as players and coaches, forward to the future of the game of basketball, and linger in the moving target of the present—lavishing page after page on the Triangle Offense and all the ways it reveals the essence of the game of basketball they both love so much. This is Jackson in his prime, transitioning from the Bulls to the Lakers, a master of the art of winning, who would go on to claim more NBA championships, eleven, than any other coach in NBA history. As he writes in More than a Game of his newest championship team: "We won because our fundamentals were sound, because Shaq was so dominant and Kobe was so creative, but we also won because we developed a certain confidence in our ability to win."

Go is a strategy game played throughout eastern Asian for thousands of years. This introduction to the game presents rules, tactics, and strategies.

A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why—and how—we play them. Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism”; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games—and for us. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human.

More than a Game discusses how African American men and women sought to participate in sport and what that participation meant to them, the African American community, and the United States more generally. Recognizing the complicated history of race in America and how sport can both divide and bring people together, the book chronicles the ways in which African Americans overcame racial discrimination to achieve success in an institution often described as America's only true meritocracy. African Americans have often glorified sport, viewing it as one of the few ways they can achieve a better life. In reality, while some African Americans found fame and fortune in sport, most struggled just to participate – let alone succeed at the highest levels of sport. Thus, the book has two basic themes. It discusses the varied experiences of African Americans in sport and how their participation has both reflected and changed views of race.

"More than the Game: Building Relationships for a Winning Culture" is a fictionalized memoir in which Coach Warrington finds himself struggling. At the end of another long season, he's lost the locker room after several defeats. Worried about his team's record, he vents at his players, saying that they should "commit to getting bigger, stronger, and faster, or they might as well quit." When the Titans lose their final game, the school's athletic director suggests that Coach Warrington meet with a mentor to improve the program's culture. At first, Warrington is offended-he can't admit to needing help, but he also can't resist the opportunity to regain his edge, so he agrees to meet once a week with Mitchell McClellen, a retired teacher and ball coach. Mitchell shares his three-phase formula for winning: The Process of the 'Ship. Coach Warrington learns to view success as more about legacy than just winning. Can Coach Warrington heed his mentor's advice and change his program forever?