It is doorstep time again!

This is Book 5 in the Museum of Go Theory project, which looks at the evolution of go theory, mainly in the period 1600 ~ 1900, and mainly in China, which has by far the greatest amount of source material.

This book presents the 1890 book 100 Games of Chen Zixian, and so can be seen as one 'bookend' of that era.

Chen was one of the two great guoshous of the 19th century. The other was Zhou Xiaosong. Zhou is sometimes referred to as the Chinese Shuwa (partly because he was born in the same year, 1820). The slightly younger Chen might be considered the Chinese Shusaku in that he too died tragically early. But rather than teacher and pupil, Chen and Zhou were great rivals who respected each other - more like Genjo-Chitoku. They beat everyone else down to two stones, and when Chen died, that vacuum took the drive out of Zhou's go. He still made great contributions to late 18th century go, as he lived a rather long life, and the most notable was his great book of longish commentaries. I hope to present Zhou's book later.

This book of Chen's games, compiled by an amateur fan, lacks commentaries, but does contain over a dozen games with Zhou, other even games (some very famous) with top players , and more than a sprinkling of handicap games, from two to four stones.

The milieu in which Chen and Zhou plied their trade was very different from that of Edo players in Japan. I have therefore taken the opportunity to add text to the book by describing this milieu of Chen and Zhou and showing, at considerable length, how it evolved.

This book has thus become something of a fascinating romp through China’s go history. It goes back a long way at times, and scurries down some rabbit holes, but always with the aim has been to show how and why the 19th century scene evolved.

Although the main focus is on anecdotes illustrating the lives of Chena and Zhou, the topics ranged over are the history of go in Yangzhou (the equivalent of Edo in Japan) and the history of Chinese grades, from the time of Mencius to Deng Yuanhui's comprehensive survey of 1895. You will meet the original Mulan, Stinky Toes, a chrysanthemum muncher, Iron Head, a carnivorous monk, a lovesick emperor, and a welshing viceroy, as well as everlasting sorrow, dreams. poetry clocks, broken sandals, 2x2 boards and silversmiths. And more! As a result, the go players of the past really come alive. The games are rather good, too, and are presented in a format that makes it very easy to play them over with your push new board and stones.

The book is available on the usual Amazon outlets. Or will be soon - it can take time to trickle round the various country-specific outlets. One link is https://www.amazon.com/100-Games-Chen-Z ... 156&sr=1-1 and the ISBN is 979-8393428563.

Thank you for all the wonderful books! This one I even managed to find online and order a couple of days ago, before your announcement here

Any plans to republish older books? I realize I don't have "The Insha Game: Honinbo Shusai versus Karigane Junichi" and a few others which Slate & Shell doesn't sell anymore.

Generally speaking, I have no immediate plans to reissue out-of-print books. For two reasons: (1) Books sell badly enough even when brand new, and trying to sell a book that many people will already have is surely a mug's game; (2) I have a queue of new books "knocking at the door."

But I did give into pressure and reissue Kamakura some time back. That went well enough, and reissuing books is not that onerous so long as the diagrams don't need redoing. So, maybe, watch this space.

Nevertheless, it's just possible that you have the Insha Game already. It was issued as a double reversible book together with Jowa's Three Brilliancies, so if you don't have the Insha you don't have the Jowa. But if you do have the Jowa you may have the Insha without being aware of it. That could be because Bill Cobb changed the title and called it (though only on the cover) "Power: Honinbo Shusai defends the Nihon Ki-in."

My proof copy of Go in old Okinawa just arrived, so if that's OK, that should also be available in a week or so.

I've tried to find which one it was and where you’d mentioned it the whole day. Thanks!

I'm very intrigued by this one. It looks like the kid of thing that's hard to find information on, whatever the language.

Thank you.

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一碁一会