Thank-you for your time Bill, I appreciate it.

Problem 80 is incorrect, it should be a ko (see following). IIRC it was the only problem in the Living section of the book that was a ko, so may have been better placed in the Ko section.
From the book examples here, the book appears to be a modified translation,

because I don't recall there being failure diagrams in the original.
For example, here is a scan of problem one (and two) from a later printing of the original at the Japanese National Diet Library:

So just a fair warning for those wanting to seriously study the collection with this version: there will be some wrong or incomplete solutions. Also, the organization may not be optimal.

Fifth, the examples given here by Bill are not from the SmartGo book.

Sixth, logan ignores the standard tsumego convention that game-deciding kos (and approach kos) are usually classed as won by the player who gets to capture the ko. (Just as ladders are always assumed to work.) I discuss this also in GTAM.

Seventh, there is a major error in the blue marks in the Show portion above. The portion marked B/W to play actually says "White to play and live". The point is that Black would not risk losing everything for a ko he can't win, but would let White live and would take life himself in the corner. Shusai's wording implies that.

Sorry for any misunderstanding. By "the book" I meant the original. I do not have the e-book. I am the one who translated myou as exquisite.

You will note that that page says for each problem that there is a variation on the next page. Those are the variations that I included in the SGF files.

Edit: Besides, now that I check, they are not failure diagrams.

Am I the only one to find this thread extraordinarily snide? Lots of innuendo, wrong assumptions, errors...

Right. While it is conceivable that, in a real game, Black would have enough sufficiently large ko threats to opt for the approach ko, the tsumego convention is that the board is otherwise empty. This follows the general principle, not just in tsumego, that everything that is relevant is shown.

Edit: I worked on the position a bit, and, as far as I can tell, even if Black can win the approach ko, he will normally do better to opt for live-live.

This follows the general principle, not just in tsumego, that everything that is relevant is shown.

No problem Bill, thanks for clearing that up. Although I am a bit confused why you posted it then But, whatever

This is a huge can of worms and another issue. I won't get into this common argument. But with regards to Shusai's book there are a few things to mull over:

1. Shusai pulls no punches when giving Black's maximum resistance in other problems. He uses the final solutions as the basis for titling the problem as "Black to play," "White to play for ko," "Black to play for ko to live," etc. But in this problem he ignores this for the so-called, "game-deciding ko" convention.

2. Most kos in the book are game-deciding. There's no choice but to ignore any ko threat and take them. Shusai doesn't avoid the strongest resistance in these problems.

3. Shusai doesn't retitle or give the mainline variation as how Black or White should play in a real game.

4. One player is clearly winning before most of these problems even begin.

5. Problem 103 is a particularly interesting case of a game-deciding ko where Black captures the ko first and White cannot win the ko, yet it's titled, "Black to play for ko."



I used to think this. But after looking through so many endgame books, I now don't believe this any longer. (If you don't put who's ahead on ko threats in an endgame problem, then there's going to be a lot of problems.)

Am I the only one to find this thread extraordinarily snide?

There's simply a better version of this book waiting to be published.

You become very emotional and aggressively riposte whenever anything critical is said about your books.

Hi John, I'm wondering if anyone has you have some sample content of John Fairbairn's your new publication of the Shikatsu Myoki? I'm particularly curious about how he you edited and organized the material. Some time ago I considered working on an English version of this book, but there were already good versions in the Asian languages. Thus, to avoid stepping on copyright issues by just publishing the same solutions in the same organization I would have had to artificially change a few diagrams, artificially mix it up, and throw in a few words to make it appear different enough. But that felt insincere and inappropriate. The other direction would have been to ask permission from the original author(s)/publisher(s) to basically reprint it in English (providing them royalties and so on). So I'm wondering how he you did it. Usually he has you have some sources or notes about the texts he you used. Thank-you.

I may not be able to afford space flight, but i am not about to start critiquing Virgin Galactic's service in any way. Nor would i hold a grudge towards Virgin for not catering to the confines of what i can afford within my lifestyle.

My point being that this isn't a question of affordability or availability, so lets not try to justify the criticism by diverting from the topic at hand.


Logan was not asking for opinions and if you look at the first post i think you would find that it would be a very good candidate for a direct personal message to John himself.




I just don't think it is right to critique and judge the books organization or content until he has read the book.

First you wondered why logan didn't get the book and check it himself.

As for the personal message. it depends a lot on who is asking and who should be the private message recipient.

Now whether there has been previous bad blood or grievances held by anyone here personally i dont know but i dont think that is for us to go into publicly.

Let's leave it here, you didn't get what I was pointing at, and I don't want to fight for someone else's points of view.

You see i somehow think that John would be quite capable and happy to answer a private message about one of his new books - which is selling after-all.

And of course there is always Anders of SmartGo, who would give a fellow go player the shirt off his back if he thought they needed it. So if the question was not asked of John i can only think Anders would be the next best in line to answer any such queries.