Go Player's Almanac

By Richard Bozulich

Cover
Details
Blurb
Contents
Review

Details show/hide

Title	Go Player's Almanac
Author	Richard Bozulich
Publisher	Ishi Press
Code	g40
Date	Jun-92
ISBN	4-87187-040-5
Pages	253
Dimensions	10 1/8. x 7 1/8. - 25.7cm x 18.2 cm
In print status	Out of Print

Blurb show/hide

The Most Up-to-Date and
Comprehensive Reference Book on Go

Here is a book that belongs in every go player's library. Never before has so much information about go been gathered together in one place. In The Go Player's Almanac you will read about the origins of go in China, its transmission to and development in Japan, and its recent resurgence in China. You will also learn how to choose the best in go equipment, the meaning of commonly used go terms, and how the rules differ from country to country. As an added bonus, you will find brief biographical sketches of almost every important go player, both past and present.

And if you want to become a professional player and compete for hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money, there is a section outlining the procedure you would have to go through to become eligible.

Finally, do you like to collect go trivia? Then how many of these questions can you answer?

Which player has won the most tournament games in a row?
Which professional player has won the most games in one year?
Who was the youngest player to become 9-dan?
Who was the oldest player to become 9-dan?
Can you play out the longest joseki?
What's the shortest joseki?
Who were the players in the shortest game ever played?
How many moves were there in the shortest counted game ever played?
How many moves did the longest game last?

You will find these facts and more in the The Go Player's Almanac , all presented in a readable and entertaining style.

This book has been completely superceded in all ways byk40:The Go Player's Almanac 2001, and would have interest only to collectors.

Contents show/hide

Preface		...v
1. The Game		...1
2. Go and the Three Games		...4
3. History and Philosophy		...7
4. Go Players in the Edo Era		...20
5. A Brief History of Modern Go		...39
6. Who's Who in the World of Go		...78
	Part One: Players in Japan	...78
	Part Two: Players in Mainland China	...118
	Part Three: Players in Korea	...120
7. Tournament Go		...121
	Becoming a Professional	...121
	The Oteai: The Professional Rating Tournament	...122
	Newspaper Tournaments	...129
	Television Tournaments	...143
	Other Japanese Tournaments	...146
	Old Titles and Tournaments	...148
	International Tournaments	...150
	Chinese Tournaments	...152
	Korean Tournaments	...154
	European Tournaments	...155
	USA Tournaments	...156
8. Go Records		...157
9. A Survey of the Best in Go Equipment		...162
10. A Dictionary of Go Terms		...176
11. Computer Go		...205
12. Mathematical Go		...218
13. The Rules of Go		...225
	The Japanese Rules	...230
	The Chinese Rules	...243
	The New Zealand Rules	...246
	The SST Rules	...247
	The AGA Rules	...251

Reviews show/hide

Review by David Carlton show/hide

Review Author	David Carlton	Reviewer Strength	1 kyu
Author's Email	carlton@bactrian.org	website	http://www.bactrian.org/~carlton/

This book has been reprinted in a new, revised edition, namely The Go Player's Almanac 2001; you probably want to read that page rather than this one.

This is a book of information about go, rather than a book on how to play go. It has historical information about ancient, classical, and modern go, information about modern players, info on tournament go, a list of records, a chapter on equipment, a dictionary of terms, and chapters on computers, mathematical go, and go rules.

I like this book a lot, and if you care about go, you'll probably like it too. In the US, you feel kind of rootless - you don't personally know very many people who play go or who are even more than vaguely aware of its existence, and while you're aware that there are these professionals in Japan, you don't really know much about them, and they have a sort of mythic status. This book will start changing that, by giving you some historical context and telling you some about current players. The Dictionary of Go Terms is also quite useful; I think it's the most extensive such Dictionary that has been published in English.

As Bozulich comments in the introduction, the book does center around Japanese go, and while there are good reasons for that, it's a bit unfortunate right now, since Chinese and Korean professionals are dominating the international go scene. But a book like this can't always be up-to-date, and there's lots of good stuff in it.

The book is hardcover, and the pages are large, about the size of Go World's pages.