Hello all,

I would be interested to know if anyone has the book, "The History of Go Rules" by Chen Zuyuan, referred to in the shorter (though fascinating) article available on the AGA website (https://www.usgo.org/files/bh_library/h ... orules.pdf).

Here is the text within that article that refers to the desired book (in English or Chinese - I suppose its only available in the latter):

"The author has conducted relevant studies, and the results were presented in a series of
articles published in the Chinese magazine Weiqi Tiandi (The World of Weiqi [Go]) since
2005. A book, The History of Go Rules, a collection of the articles, was published in 2007.
The article here is meant to be a summary of its main points in the hope that it will interest
go enthusiasts outside China."

Thanks!

Chen Zuyuan, who is the expert of go rules history in China, has written at least two books on go rules history. I think I have the book you mention, because its author was so kind to give it to me as a present. It has the ISBN 978-7-80740-147-6, 261 pages, much Chinese text (which I cannot read), a few go diagrams, a few black and white pictures and 12 additional pages with colour plates showing historical or acheological findings. The book cover has shades of grey. The price is 28 Yuan. Contact information states www.shwenvi.com and cslcm@public1.sta.net.cn. The print quality is good, but not very good (so you would hardly buy the book to see perfectly printed pictures of the findings).

Unless you are a rules freak, the book is worth buying only if you can read the text, because the - rather few - go diagrams are not particularly exciting, but pretty much known, for the rules expert.

Good luck with possibly purchasing the book.

Also, I think it possible that we might have difficulty understanding the meaning of the rules in the sense that how they expressed/understood them might be different from how we would interpret the the meaning of the same rule in terms of its result.

Take the concept of "group tax".

Depending on the amount of "tax" per group this could be nothing more than the mathematical consequence of counting stones after filling the entire board (except for the remaining eyes needed by each group). So if the tax per group were 2 .......

The history of Go rules.