Improve Your Intuition is based on a series of articles. Takagawa wrote for Go Review , an English language journal published by the Nihon Kiin (Japan Go Association) from1961 through 1977 that was the primary source of information about Go in English during that period. These articles aim at providing an understanding of the basic principles of good play and will be useful even to beginners.

ByintuitionTakagawa means the ability to perceive basic features of the situation on the board without having to engage in reflective analysis to find them. This sort of ability is acquired through experience, but in order to have good intuition, we must have good experience. That is, our initial practice needs to be guided by correct principles. It is these principles that Takagawa was so skilled at laying out and clearly illustrating. His discussion of how to play correctly is lucid and precise. The principles are basic and widely applicable to common situations. This makes his lessons unusually valuable.

The first volume of Takagawa's lessons focuses on situation in the opening stage of the game. The second volume deals with patterns of attack and defense, and the third examines how to reduce a large moyo . The original articles have been slightly edited for these volumes, primarily by substituting English translations for some of the Japanese Go terms that were common in English writing about Go in those days.