For those who like to plan purchases or drop hints to parents, spouses and rich friends that an iPad would make a reasonably acceptable Christmas present, here's a heads-up on the latest "From the GoGoD Archives" book about to appear under the SmartGo Books banner.

It is "Unfinished Symphony", being an account of the lead-up to and progress of the (shortened) ten-game match between Go Seigen and Karigane Junichi in 1941~42. Projected price is $10 and availability will be about a fortnight from now, i.e. in mid-October 2013.

Apart from detailed commentary of six games, there is the usual comprehensive historical background. In this case that means an extended biography of Karigane with a poignant story of his early love life and his equally poignant old age pottering through Ginza, and the fullest account yet about the Keiinsha. In addition, while we can't quite match the drama of "Dallas" perhaps, a court case over allegations of being over-ranked and a major rant by Baron Okura put even the squabbles of L19 in the shade.

Obviously this book is intended to fit into a framework of my previous (Slate & Shell) and forthcoming books on Go Seigen's matches, but this is the first complete version of these books to appear in the interactive SmartGo format.

Please try to resist the temptation to ask about Haemorrhoid, Swindle or dead tree versions, as none is planned at present.

Looking forward to it, ever since reading Shuei's life I've wanted to read a little more about Karigane... and see what Go did in this match, too.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Glad to see the 10-game series books are continuing. I guess I really will need to break down and get an ipad now.

I hope I can eventually buy it. Unless SmartGo Books ever expands to other platforms, this will be the only one of your books or GoGoD I haven't purchased.

Sounds great, i look forward to it.

Have a couple questions about this series, seem to recall reading some time ago that something like 6 or 7 volumes were planned or hoped to be produced, is this still a general goal and if so, do you anticipate adding more biographical content on Go Seigen in forthcoming books in the series? Also, I have Kamakura, 9 Dan Showdown and Final Summit and was wondering where Symphony fits chronologically?

Btw thank you so much for filling a void in the english language by making these wonderful resources available!

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"Tsumegos are for reading power and Tesujis for knowing which moves to read"

Thank you. US fits in just after the Kamakura match.

I still hope to complete the series and much work has already been done on the Hashimoto and Iwamoto volumes, but no timescale. The volume on Iwamoto in particular will extend the GSG biography, though all volumes add extra titbits.

Still no prospect of paper versions.

Awesome news, we wish you and publishing team all the best in creating, compiling the remaining works!

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"Tsumegos are for reading power and Tesujis for knowing which moves to read"

wow very professional and mature

I am confident that this discussion has now been set back on track.

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Occupy Babel!

John, many thanks for this book.

I own and have read&enjoyed all the previous books in the ten-game series too, but this one hit some special spot in me. Perhaps it's Karigane's style, perhaps there's a difference in the way the games are commented, perhaps my ability to enjoy pro games has matured, perhaps all of those. The fact was that I had real trouble putting this book down

Please do continue the series in any format you deem fit.

(Although personally I would be willing to pay postages and some decent sum to get even a pile of basic A4 prints, would bind them myself - I trust in paper more than any particular brand of consumer electronics.)

I own copies of all of JF's books published on paper or in Kindle format. I do not own a Kindle but Amazon has a (free) reader app for PC. I don't want an I-Pad nor do I want a smart phone. I'm unhappy that the decision to publish in Smart-go book format requires the purchase of a device. I guess I'd be willing to pay for a PC app but buying a device is too much to ask. So I join Oren in not purchasing this book. Fortunately I can read Japanese and I have Japanese sources for the games but I'll miss JF's inimitable color commentary.

Anders Kierulf did release details of the smartgo book format at http://www.smartgo.com/blog/20130710.htm , so it should be possible to create a viewer for any platform. I would investigate it myself if I had time, though another barrier is having no example files to test with.

I don't like closed formats a whole lot and formats closed to a particular platform especially. However, here I don't see much of an option for an author of go books wanting to publish digitally. The other options that spring to mind (pdf and Kindle) are easy to pirate and lack any kind of interactivity or tailoring towards delivering go material. I'm convinced that someone could pirate SmartGo Books and unlock all purchases in the app but it would be a lot more hassle than uploading a file from your hard drive to a torrent (pdf) or just running a piece of software to remove the DRM and then uploading it (Kindle).

I hope you see more problems than just 'hassle' when talking about pirating books.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Eh? You think people who do this even remotely consider this as immoral?

Was hoping they do... apparently not.
Was hoping their excuse was ignorance... apparently they cannot even claim that.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Sure, but you can't actually buy the interesting content outside of the Smartgo app.

I'm thinking of a game a friend of mine's company released for Android and iOS. It was free to play with some in-app purchases for power-ups etc but you nothing excessive, you could reasonably play the game without putting a penny into it. Within a few weeks there was a hacked version of the app with unlimited in-game "gold" available in China. The interesting thing was, they hadn't released in China yet, or localised it, but a pirate group had not only gone to the trouble of hacking it but translating everything as well and releasing it for free.

Ignorance of what they're doing is the last thing these people suffer from.

Not saying people who hack and pirate are not knowledgeable. Often a lot of skill is needed.
My point is that they seem ignorant of the damage they are doing in the long run.
But maybe this is not correct as well. Maybe they just don't care...

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!