Master Go in Ten Days

By Xu Xiang, Jin Jiang Zheng

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Details show/hide

Title	Master Go in Ten Days
Authors	Xu Xiang, Jin Jiang Zheng
Translator	Dr. Sydney W. K. Yuan
Publisher	Yutopian Enterprises
Codes	y11, PAY11
Date	Mar-96
ISBN	0-9641847-8-8
Pages	166
Dimensions	8 1/4. x 5 7/16. - 210mm x 138m
Publisher's URL	https://www.yutopian.com/yutop/cat?product=PAY11

Go - Life, Liberty and the purity of Territory through Connection and Influence. Each player seeks to discover the strategy and tactics necessary to acquire the most territory. Ideally each move should pose multiple threats to create or destroy Life, Connection, Influence and/or Territory.

Master Go In Ten Days provides ten lessons on the basic tactics and strategies in Go. The first day's lesson begins with the basic rules to include both the Chinese and Japanese counting methods. From there additional lessons cover tactics for capturing stones, opening strategy, the tactics and strategy for corner engagements, the tactics of life and death, fighting tactics, sacrifice tactics, attack and defense, endgame tactics and finally three famous games are provided with comments.

The objective of the ten lessons is to help one along the path to reaching three or two kyu level in amateur strength. To reach such a level one must learn how to read the board at least two to three plays ahead. Master Go In Ten Days provides guidance, examples and exercises to get you started in how to understand and read the board. The secret is to get your board and stones out an practice the examples and exercises repeatedly until you have mastered them. Then acquire over the board practice by playing stronger opponents implementing the concepts presented in Master Go In Ten Days.

Contents show/hide

First Day Lesson - Basic Knowledge of Go
	1)	A Game of Competition for Territory	...1
	2)	Stones and Board	...1
	3)	Playing and Counting	...1
	4)	Basic Rules	...3
	5)	Liberties and Capturing	...3
	6)	Prohibited Plays	...5
	7)	Territory and Vacant Points	...5
	8)	Connecting Stones	...6
	9)	Connect and Cut	...6
	10)	Diagonal Plays and Bamboo Joints	...7
	11)	One Point Jumps	...8
	12)	Two Point Jumps	...9
	13)	Knight's Jumps	...10
	14)	Live and Dead Groups	...11
	15)	Ko Fights, Ko Threats, Answering Ko and Eliminating Ko	...12
	16)	Ending a Game	...13

Second Day Lesson - Capturing Stones
	1)	Playing Atari and Capturing	...14
	2)	Ladders	...15
	3)	Double Atari	...16
	4)	Fencing in Plays	...16
	5)	Embracing Atari	...17
	6)	Throwing-In Plays (Snap-Backs)	...17
	7)	Double Cuts	...18
	8)	Wrapping Tactics	...20
	9)	Forcing a Shortage of Liberties (dame-zumari)	...21
	10)	Under-the-Stone (ishi-no-shita)	...22
	11)	False Eyes	...22
	12)	Exercises	...23
	13)	Exercise Solutions	...30

Third Day Lesson - Opening Strategy
	1)	Sequence of Opening (fuseki) Plays	...38
	2)	Important Points in the Corner	...38
	3)	Defending the Corner	...39
	4)	Approaching the Corner	...40
	5)	Extensions	...41
	6)	Special Features of the 3rd and 4th Lines	...42
	7)	Three Consecutive Star Point Openings (san-rensei)	...43
	8)	Shusaku Opening	...44
	9)	Chinese Opening	...45
	10)	Star Point and 3-4 Point Opening	...46
	11)	Diagonal Star Point Opening	...47
	12)	Non-Linear and Linear (mukai-komoku) 3-4 Points Opening	...48
	13)	Exercises	...49

Fourth Day Lesson - Common Joseki
	1)	3-3 Point Joseki (san-san)	...55
	2)	3-4 Point Joseki (komoku)	...55
	3)	4-3 Point Joseki (hoshi or star)	...66
	4)	4-5 Point Joseki (takamoku)	...69
	5)	3-5 Point Joseki (mokuhazushi)	...70
	6)	Exercises	...71

Fifth Day Lesson - Life and Death
	1)	Straight Three is Dead	...76
	2)	Bent Three is Dead	...76
	3)	T-Four is Dead	...76
	4)	Square Four is Dead	...77
	5)	Flower Five is Dead	...77
	6)	Knife Five is Dead	...77
	7)	Grape Six is Dead	...77
	8)	Straight Four is Alive	...77
	9)	Bent Four is Alive	...78
	10)	Bent Four in the Corner is Dead	...78
	11)	Coffin Corner is Dead	...78
	12)	Kill by Hane and Vital Point	...79
	13)	Kill by Clamp	...79
	14)	Kill by Vital Point and Throw-in (1)	...80
	15)	Kill by Vital Point and Throw-in (2)	...80
	16)	Exercises	...81

Sixth Day Lesson - Tesuji Exercises
	1)	Diagonal Plays	...84
	2)	One-point Jumps	...85
	3)	Peeping Plays	...86
	4)	Descending Plays	...87
	5)	Knight's Jumps	...88
	6)	Butting Plays	...89
	7)	1-1 Points	...90
	8)	Clamp Plays	...91

Seventh Day Lesson - Sacrifice Tactics
	1)	To Gain Influence	...93
	2)	To Play Sabaki (light and flexible plays)	...95
	3)	To Kill	...96
	4)	To Connect	...97
	5)	In Capturing Races	...98
	6)	To Gain Territory	...99
	7)	To Gain Sente	...101

Eighth Day Lesson - Attack and Defense
	1)	Three Point Jump from a Large Knight's Corner Enclosure	...102
	2)	Five Point Jump from a Large Knight's Corner Enclosure	...103
	3)	Extensions from a Small Knight's Corner Enclosure	...104
	4)	Extensions from a One Point Jump Corner Enclosure	...107
	5)	Extensions from Star Points in the Corner	...109
	6)	Attack and Defense Following Joseki	...110

Ninth Day Lesson - Endgame Tactics
	1)	On 2nd Lines	...111
	2)	On 1st Lines	...116
	3)	In Corners	...118
	4)	Initiative (sente)	...121

Tenth Day Lesson - Annotated Famous Games
	1)	Nei Weiping Versus Fujisawa Shuko	...130
	2)	Go Seigen Versus Hashimoto Utaro	...137
	3)	Takemiya Masaki Versus Fujisawa Shuko	...149

Go Concepts for Outward Influence			...167
Japanese Terms for Go Concepts			...167
Index			...170

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 an introductory book. It starts off with the rules, so it could conceivably be the first go book that you read, but if it is the first go book that you read then it'll probably by the last one that you read because it will convince you to take up another hobby. It's more plausible as a second go book that you read, since most of the lessons are spent introducing elementary tactics and strategy. I wasn't that thrilled with the presentation, though; there's lots of stuff in here, but I don't think that it would be too accessible to anybody who was just starting. (In that respect, it reminded me of Basic Techniques of Go, though the books aren't particularly similar in style. They're just both too hard.)