Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56557 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Making The Right Move
Lately I've been refreshing my skills at the Japanese game of Go. I was addicted to the game in college, but I've had no real opportunities to play since that time. Recently I discovered some Go players in my circle of acquaintances, so I decided to bring my skills back up to an acceptable, i.e., non-embarrassing level.

Buried in my half-shelf of books on the game are several by James Davies, who started out translating Go books, and went on to write several himself. He has a pleasant, clear writing style which makes his exposition of some of the mysteries of one of the world's most popular games a pleasant pastime.

Tesuji are combat tactics of life and death on the go board. Many times they are obvious, but most of the time they require seeing just a bit deeper than the immediate hack and slash. The eye needs a lot of practice to recognize the opportunities for using various tesuji. To a beginner they often seem like magic, to a good player they are the scalpels and tweezers of combat.

Davies does a fine job of explaining the workings of many tesuji and provides an almost inexhaustible supply of problems to work through. I feel he could have spent a bit more time on the solutions, but I never found one I couldn't figure out eventually. Perhaps his reticence actually encourages deeper learning. This is intended primarily as a beginner's book, but I think intermediate players would find it useful as well.

A great book, although less approachable at first
Tesuji are tactics and clever plays in the game of Go. (another definition is the best play in a local area of the board), and are used to accomplish different objectives (linking groups of stones or splitting your opponent's groups apart, winning a semeai/capturing race, etc.).

Content:

Tesuji's content is very useful, and contains all of the fundamental tesuji needed to lay a solid foundation.

The first chapter is devoted to reading, then continues into the tesuji. Each chapter's theme is accomplishing a certain objective, and provides a few tesuji that are used to accomplish it. At the end of each section on a tesuji, the reader is given a problem or two to try it himself, and at the end of each chapter, around 10-12 problems, using all of the tesuji. The difficulty of the problems vary, but are never frustratingly hard.

Pros:

Lots of diagrams and problems.
Content is explained well, provides refutations for the sample problems.

Cons:

The book is not an easy read, and I was not able to start fully benefiting from it until I was a strong mid-kyu (15k-10k). Beginners will find this book to be too hard.

Conclusion: Barring the difficulty for weaker players, Tesuji is an excellent book, and a must for every go player.

Warning: Difficult (not for the novice)
I really am not qualified to review this book, but I will anyway. I have been playing go for a couple of months, but my level of play is not nearly equal to this book. I had wanted something to give me better ideas about strategy. I guess this book does that, but not in a straightforward manner. The book just consists of problems. While those are good, I really don't think that I know enough yet to complete the problems. They are by no means easy and I had a hard time visualizing what was going on. All in all, don't buy this book prematurely. Make sure that you have a very good grasp on the game first.