Mine just arrived. I also don't own Ishida, but happen to live someplace where it is available from the library. So I can do a very quick, shallow comparison. Keep in mind I'm just a sdk, so I don't really study joseki, but just find it helpful to be able to look up something that happened to me in a game.

The previous discussion about volume 1 (3-4 point) has centered a lot on whether it was too similar to Ishida. This was both unfair and not entirely unfounded. Most of the main 3-4 lines -- at least the basic joseki covered by this dictionary -- perhaps haven't changed that much since the 70s. Couple that with the fact that there are really only so many ways to say 'black pushes and cuts' or the like, and some of the stuff in 21st cen volume 1 seemed very similar to the stuff in Ishida. If you dug around, you would see there were some significant changes (lines added, lines dropped, especially in the 2-space high pincer), but it was a fair question to ask whether or not it was worth having both the Ishida and Shinji dictionaries.

Even if that was a show stopper for you with volume 1, it is clearly much less true of volume 2 (4-4, 5-3, 5-4, 3-3). The contents have shifted much more obviously relative to Ishida, with 4-4 picking up much more coverage, at some cost to the others. In fact, the preface even says something about that, pointing out that the 4-4 is much more popular now and that the coverage has expanded from 726 diagrams to 1213 relative to 'our predecessor'.

Examples are easy to find -- starting on the second page, Shinji devotes 17 diagrams to a line that is not covered at all in Ishida, and from my first brief flip through that sort of pattern continues.

So, if you big question was: does the new basic joseki dictionary expand on the 4-4 compared to Ishida, the answer is a clear yes. The other differences also continue -- Shinji doesn't give examples from games, so if you really like to see those, you will need Ishida.

Thanks for your review. I haven't bought the 21st century dictionary yet (though I have Ishida). I keep thinking of an episode in 3rd rock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RIe8c11s0E, though if you're not a fan of that show it probably won't mean much . - but I mean it as a criticism of the line of argument X contains sequence A, and Y also contains sequence A so X equals Y.

Actually for in game examples all you need is a modern game database like GoGoD and a pattern search - which is why the examples have been cut I heard (on L19). I really like reading different versions and interpretations, including following how joseki are treated differently in different decades - interesting in itself.. so I won't be getting rid of Ishida anytime soon, even when I get round to buying the new one.

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I am John. John-I-Am.

Has anyone read volume 2 of this yet? Now that both parts are out, I'm considering getting them since I never got Ishida.

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"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

Great work, thanks. This was precisely what I was fearing, and wanted confirmation of.
Anyone know maybe whether there are plans in Korea to release a "real" 21st century Jeongsok dictionary?

You mean a whole dictionary or just books like New Openings of the 21st Century by Kim Sung-Rae from Yutopian. Currently Yutopian sells vols 1 and 2 in English and vol 3 in Korean.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

I was thinking a pretty comprehensive dictionary like Ishida/Takao.
But something like the Kim Sung-Rae books would work I guess, if they really showed all Joseki that have changed meanwhile. So you could try to look up a joseki in those books first, and if you don't find it in there you can fallback to Takao. Although I'd prefer using just one really modern and comprehensive dictionary.