Get Strong at Life and Death
By Richard Bozulich
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Details show/hide
| Title | Get Strong at Life and Death |
|---|---|
| Author | Richard Bozulich |
| Publisher | Kiseido |
| Code | k58 |
| Date | 1998 |
| ISBN | 4-906574-58-0 |
| Pages | |
| Dimensions | 8 1/4. x 5 3/4. - 210mm x 147mm |
| Series Info | Get Strong at Go, Volume VIII |
| Publisher's URL | http://kiseido.com/Strong.htm#K58 |
Blurb show/hide
This Book is part 8 of the Get Strong at Go Series
Killing isolated groups or finding a way to make two eyes for them is an important technique that every go player must acquire. Positions in which you must determine whether a group is alive of dead occur in almost every game, and the player whose skill at killing a group or finding the moves that will give his own group two eyes stands the better chance of staging an upset. In fact, life and death is regarded as so important that apprectices studying to become go professionals are required to spend many hours each day solving life-and-death problems in order to improve their analytical abilities. Solving a life-and-death problem requires the reading out of the solution as well as the numerous variations and moves that the opponent may respond with. This often requires reading more than six moves deep and keeping a picture in your mind of the resulting positions of all variations. Such activity can be likened to mental weight training.
Although this is first and foremost a problem book (containing 230 problems), the explanations of the main topics make it useful as an introduction to life and death and it should be accessable to players who have read an introductory go book and played a few games. Divided into three partsm the first part systematically covers the basics of life and death, starting with the fundamental concept of eye space. Next, the three essential tesujis used to kill groups are introduced: the hane, the placement and the throw-in. In another section the reader is shown when it is appropriate to expand his eye space and when he should fall back and play on a vital point. Also included in this part are a complete explanation of the bent-four- in-the-corner shape and the ten-thousand-year ko. The last two sections in this part present a thorough analysis of the comb formation and the carpenter's square.
>Part Two contains 100 life-and-death problems of postitions that arise from josekis and their variants. In many of the standard pattterns presented, small changes are made in the configuration of nearby stones and the effect on the status of the group under seige is illustrated in a series of problems. The material in this part is aimed at stronger players.
The final part contains 64 problems for the reader to review and practice the principles learned in the first two parts.
Contents show/hide
| Preface | ...iv | |||
| Some Important Terms and Concepts | ...v | |||
| Part One | ||||
| The Basics of Life and Death | ...1 | |||
| 1. Eye Spaces | ...2 | |||
| 2. Bent-Four-in-the-Corner | ...14 | |||
| 3. Reducing Your Opponent's Eye Space | ...20 | |||
| 4. Expanding Your Own Eye Space | ...31 | |||
| 5. Creating False Eyes | ...37 | |||
| 6. Exploiting a Shortage of Liberties | ...47 | |||
| 7. Ten-Thousand-Year-Ko | ...53 | |||
| 8. The Comb Formation | ...56 | |||
| 9. The Carpenter's Square | ...62 | |||
| Part Two | ||||
| Life-and-Death Problems Arising from Joseki | ...68 | |||
| Part Three | ||||
| Miscellaneous Problems - 101 Problems | ...135 | |||
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 is divided up into three parts. The first part is on the basics; it has sections on nine areas of life and death, each of which starts off with a small amount of introductory material (usually less than a page) and then has lots of problems. The second part contains 100 problems about situations arising from joseki; the third part contains 64 miscellaneous problems.
I've read the first part of the book fairly thoroughly, and the second and third parts much less so. I quite liked the first part: it did a good job of diagnosing my weaknesses and strengths. Don't get discouraged if you find some sections of this part to be quite difficult: you may well find that some of the other sections are very easy, so that will give you an idea of what to work on.
I couldn't manage to concentrate on the second and third parts. I expect that I would have done better if I'd had a sheet of paper with me to cover up some of the answers, because the book has an unfortunate habit of giving you many problems at once (as many as twelve) before giving you the answers to any of them. Unless you're a lot better at life and death than I am, you'll have a very hard time concentrating on really doing that many problems at once, so you'll want to flip back and forth between the problems and solutions. I've heard other people say that they liked those sections of this book quite a bit; certainly we've all had unpleasant experiences having our corner groups die after what we thought were joseki, and pleasant experiences finding the weak spots in our opponents' corner groups.
The first part would probably be a decent follow-up to Davies' Life and Death. They say and I agree that the second part is aimed at stronger players; in general, this book seems notably harder than Get Strong at Tesuji but in line with the difficulty level of other books in the Get Strong at Go series. If you're looking for a life-and-death book like Get Strong at Tesuji, try One Thousand and One Life-and-Death Problems instead.