It's been a long time coming, but now it can be purchased: http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoReviewArchive

Unfortunately there's no discount for buying the whole set, and the discs are $75 each! (plus shipping)

Seems like a lot, but if you want (nearly) a lifetime of study material and interesting historical Go reading, it's worth it! 160 issue... say you spend a month on each... we're talking plenty of years! I suspect that buying an equivalent amount of printed material would cost a fair bit more.

And, as study materials go, one does have to realize that Go Review is (in some ways) a bit dated. However, for Go weaklings like me, it has more useful information than I could ever hope to learn.

Wow, that's way too much. Compared to the cost of the Go World PDFs, it's quite outrageous.

I bought the Go World, but at that price I won't be buying the Go Review discs.

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Other than the cost could someone offer a comparison of the two? - i.e. is it obvious to people who've read both (I've read neither) that Go Review was the 'golden era' of publishing and that if someone had $100 to spend they should spend it on one of the GR DVDs (and save the difference) rather than all of GW? I had a look at the samples and Go Review seemed to have more essays than Go World, which I like.

I get the impression that a lot of English language books have been published in these journals then re-released (such as the great Joseki debates in GW). Is there a lot more here than what made it to book form?

thanks! (only 7 months 'till Christmas!)

edit: yes I know only some of the 'debates' were published in GW.

edit#2: "Is there a lot more here than what made it to book form?" with 160 volumes I guess there has to be!

Trying to answer CNP's questions: hard to do. I haven't really studied the Go Review in depth, so these are just some impressions:

- For many years, GR was over 100 pages per issue -- GW is (I think) usually about 64.

- Game commentaries in the early issues of GR wasn't all that good, but there were a few outstanding ones.

- Much more in the way of introductory material. In fact, you can really see the early GR as the Nihon Kiin's way of trying to spread Go knowledge into the western world.

- Early issues (at least) had usually one article in German.

- Lots of fun historical data, even to the level of printing letters from players around the world, reporting their own country's tournament results.

I think early Go Worlds had some of these same qualities. In more recent times, GW is more focused on game reviews from major matches, and of course nowadays it includes games from Korea and China (I don't think I ever saw that in GR.)

It's also interesting to read the very different prose style of the early issues. The English Go jargon hadn't yet developed, I guess, and generally the writing style might strike one as a bit odd. Adds charm.

So, here's another question: How long does a DVD of data last? My ink-on-paper Go Reviews are 40 to 50 years old, and will probably last another century if I take care of them. How does a DVD compare?

Well, it's about twice the cost of the Go World archive, and the Sensei's library page says that it's about twice the material, so while I can totally understand that the price is a dealbreaker for many people, I wouldn't call it outrageous.

The short answer is nobody really knows. These are probably produced on demand like the GWA,so the dye layer will probably be the limiting factor. There are many variables though, who manufactured the blank disc, what dye formulation did they use, what are the storage conditions you keep it in, etc.

I've seen studies that quote storage life times of anywhere from 2 to 100 years, depending on the above factors. Nobody knows for sure about the longer spans since this media has only existed for a handful of years. I personally view even the best DVD recordable discs as having a 5 to 10 year lifespan.

The bottom line is you should make a copy when you buy the discs, and keep copying to newer media every few years.

Hi,

the scan quality of the sample issue is quite good and the price of only 1.4 Dollars per Go Review issue (average over the 3 sets) is a steal. Of course it is a great price only if one likes the content and really reads much of the material on the DVD(s) ...
I also liked the ads from the sixties in the sample issue.

Cheers

hackinger

I have the Go World DVD and about half of the Go Reviews in hardcopy.

Just a brief comparison, based on my desultory skimming a random selection of maybe 10 to 15 issues of each, and reading an occasional article now and then.

Go World is better edited and more polished, with a focus on Go news and annotated pro games. The amount of instructional material appears to have decreased over time. The game annotations are at quite a high level (usually over my head).

Go Review is a little rougher, especially the early issues, although they ironed out most of the biggest problems with terminolgoy and format pretty quickly. The focus in Go Review is on instructional material rather than news and games. Many Go Review issues have only one annotated game (quite frequently a handicap game or amateur game), a few pages of Go news, and the rest is devoted to Instructional Articles and problems (usually with detailed solutions).

For example, I picked a random issue of Go Review (1962, v. 10), and read all four instructional articles:

"Basic Go Techniques in Non-Handicap Games" (pp.14-27) was about fuseki techniques. Although I already knew some of the principles discussed, the examples were interesting. This article also had a really interesting discussion of one-point jumps into the center during fuseki which contained some very useful ideas I haven't seen anywhere else.

"On Sente and Gote" (pp. 33-40) is about using sente moves rather than gote moves to deal with threats. I found the whole article very interesting and informative.

"Tactics in the Corner" is on josekis (specifically, about attaching to a knight's approach to the 4-4 piont). I found this less interesting (I haven't really studied josekis yet and I'm not ready to start). The comments do go into quite a bit of detail.

"Fundamentals of the Opening Stage" (pp. 71-79) is about fuseki strategy (I would say at the mid-to-low SDK level) and, once again, I found it very instructive with some good examples of how I should be thinking about fuseki strategy (but I'm not quite there yet).

There are also some problems in the magazine, including a section of whole board problems ("Whither next play?) that seemed very good but were too advanced for me to solve (I got all 10 of them wrong), although I could usually grasp some of the detailed answers.

Some of the instructional material in Go Review has been collected and published in book form; however, I am guessing that a high percentage has not. Speaking in general terms, the quality of the instructional material in Go Review seems to be quite high, and appears mainly targeted at the single kyu (and sometimes higher) level.

My overall impression is that there is a ton of instructional material in Go Review, much of it very interesting stuff. However, the material is less organized than a book (e.g., there might be a series of articles over a number of issues on one topic) and the articles are sometimes less polished than you might find in a book.

I look at the new Go Worlds when I get them in the mail for detailed recent Go news and to play over an occasional game, but I am more likely to take a Go Review off the shelf when I have a spare half hour and go through one of the instructional articles. A lot of the material seems targeted right around my level (or a little bit higher which makes it challenging but not impossible to grasp), and I actually find reading a short article on a fairly random topic less intimidating than books like "The Endgame" from the Elementary Go series.

Thanks for that review.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Kiseido has a sample issue (PDF link) for those who want to check it out.

I just skimmed through it but my impression is that it's a lot of good material badly translated. The translation is kind of charming though.

Has anyone here purchased these discs?

I am thinking about buying this (even though I find it too expensive), but it would be really nice if some previous buyers could confirm that the overall quality of the magazine (scan and content wise) is good. I know there is a sample available, but it's just 1 sample, would still be nice to hear from someone who actually looked at the whole thing.

thank you

At about $1.40 per issue, I think that's a reasonable offer. In fact it's a little cheap. I spend $95 a month for the insei league, and this is probably a better value pound for pound.