Review: Shusaku's Very Best Moves

[John Fairbairn]

This is a review of one of the Nihon Ki-in’s iGoBooks, and so is indirectly also a review of this mode of e-book publication.

The book is “Shusaku: the very best moves” (秀策極みの一手, ISBN 978-4818206151) by Takagi Shoichi 9-dan, who has written before about classical go and is extremely reliable. I chose this book to review because it could well appeal to the many western readers who have studied the games of Shusaku. If all you have studied is “Invincible”, however, you may be very pleased or very disappointed, depending on whether you are a bottle half-full or half-empty person.

The book is blurbed as being a selection of 30 examples of the “strongest Honinbo’s” vision of the overall game and his positional judgement. As readers of the “Life of Honinbo Shuei” will know, there is at least one candidate – “the Meijin of Meijins” - to dispute that appellation, and Shusaku’s famous record of 19 Castle Game victories in a row can now be seen in not quite so glorious a light. Against that, Takagi shines such a powerful torch on Shusaku’s best moves that it reminds even a jaded old cynic like me just how much there is still to appreciate in classical go.

The 30 selections are sometimes presented essentially as next-move problems, but sometimes with Shusaku’s move already played, but either way the real task is to say why it was such a good move. This is not a standard problem book, and there are no right or wrong-move headings over the subsequent diagrams. Instead, the move is analysed over several pages with between a half-dozen and a dozen diagrams, simply marked Diagram 1, Diagram 2, etc. Nevertheless, it is obvious from the actual game what the correct move is, and the diagram sequences are short enough to ensure, usually, that the point being illustrated is limited to one option, or very few. There is substantial text, and since there is no single theme to the book (e.g. sabaki, thickness, tesujis) the content is wide-ranging. The sort of comment you might miss if you don’t read Japanese is rather meatier than the common “if Black 1, then White 2”. It is more along the lines of “the Black stone can’t be said to be a weak group here” or “the triangled stone is treated lightly, as he has got in a forcing move because of it”. If your Japanese exists but is limited, this book is good news, because (unlike, say, O Meien) Takagi does not go in for stylistic flourishes or discursive text. Apart, oddly, from a little bungo at the end, this is as near plain vanilla go text as you will ever get.

This format makes it seem like an ideal companion if you have read “Invincible”. The positions given can be used as problems to test you on your depth of study, right? Fortunately, not – or unfortunately not, as already mentioned. Of the 30 games used in the selections, only five are treated in “Invincible”, and even in those cases the “Invincible” treatment of the relevant move is either absent or nugatory. Personally, I welcome that. You may not. (Given that we now have 475 Shusaku games in the GoGoD database, the lack of overlap is not really surprising.)

Takagi’s deep but patient treatment of each move, even though he eschews long variations, means that every example is useful for dan players but still accessible for weaker kyu players. This tallies with the fact that book is a distillation of a 52-week series for Go Weekly in 2008-09, that newspaper naturally being aimed at a wide spectrum of players. Of course, if you are unable to read the Japanese text you will get much more out of the book if you are strong enough to make at least some of the right inferences from the diagrams.

One specific comment (a heading, really) I liked was “depth of reading = power + technique”. Not earth shattering, but I thought it was useful to see a go pro espouse the view that you can get deeper into analysis if you specifically target forcing moves (i.e. power), a concept I have seen in chess books for developing calculation skill.

The book is split into eras and is interspersed with very brief biographies of both Shusaku and his opponents. This book is also available in an ordinary paper edition, and is presented like that even in the i-version. Marvellous! Because Japanese publishers have been at it far longer than anyone else, they have got presentation of go books down to a fine art (and are far ahead of Korean or Chinese publishers). Their refusal to mess around too much with perfection for the sake of an electronic toy is commendable. But the toys do have their uses, and the i-version does have one helpful addition: although the diagrams in the main body of the book are static, in the i-version the full records of all the 30 games that are given as an appendix can be played over robotically on a very nice board. The total result, because of the nice design of the book overall, is much, much superior to SmartGo Kifu or the Kindle. Whether it’s superior to the pure paper version is a matter of personal preference, but one attractive feature of the electronic version is that you get the 258 pages for just 700 yen, which is noticeably cheaper than the 1365 yen quoted by Amazon for the paper version.

On Amazon, the book rates 4.5 stars, though most of the reviewers’ comments are couched as praise for Shusaku rather than Takagi, though the aspects mentioned by Takagi (such as plain moves that turn out to be beautiful and deep are picked up), but one line that I remember was something like, “What’s not to like. I love go I love old go. I love Takagi’s commentaries.”

I used my wife’s iPad. I am unable to say whether the book is available for other devices.

[oren]

I used my wife’s iPad. I am unable to say whether the book is available for other devices.

It's not. The Nihon Kiin has been slow to adopt Android.

It's been available in paper format for a while and has been hanging out on my wishlist on amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E7%A7%80%E7%AD ... 489&sr=8-1

Nihon Kiin's response on Android is under investigation... which it has stayed for a long time.

また、アンドロイドでのi碁BOOKSのサービスは検討中で、
公開は未定でとなります。
なにとぞよろしくお願いいたします。

[Soverain]

Whether it’s superior to the pure paper version is a matter of personal preference, but one attractive feature of the electronic version is that you get the 258 pages for just 700 yen, which is noticeably cheaper than the 1365 yen quoted by Amazon for the paper version.

Not to mention the shipping costs plus possible customs duty.

Thank you for the review!

The only problem I have with iGoBooks (and SmartGo Books) is that it's not an open format (like PDF) - if the app is no longer maintained, as it surely will be one day, all your purchases will be for nothing.

Not for nothing, as you will probably have learnt from them. :p The lower price makes this problem bearable for me, and I still purchase most of my books as paper (and some on SmartGo Books).

[lobotommy]

@Marcel - if you have this app, and you bought any book there then it's no more important if they will go bankrupt, or just stop paying their yearly fee to apple for dev's account. All you bought is on your device, in your backups, and in your history of purchases and no one ever will take it from you or delete it.

The only downside of this app (for me) is... Japanese language. It's a barrier I can't breach.

[oren]

@Marcel - if you have this app, and you bought any book there then it's no more important if they will go bankrupt, or just stop paying their yearly fee to apple for dev's account. All you bought is on your device, in your backups, and in your history of purchaces and no one ever will take it from you or delete it.

Except eventually companies close up and electronic devices will fail. The advantage of paper books or open formats is the ability to have them forever.

[tj86430]

The advantage of paper books or open formats is the ability to have them forever.

While I don't disagree with what you are saying; I've heard (and also seen) that paper books don't last forever.

[Bantari]

@Marcel - if you have this app, and you bought any book there then it's no more important if they will go bankrupt, or just stop paying their yearly fee to apple for dev's account. All you bought is on your device, in your backups, and in your history of purchaces and no one ever will take it from you or delete it.

Except eventually companies close up and electronic devices will fail. The advantage of paper books or open formats is the ability to have them forever.

Except that at some point the Sun will explode out and paper books will all get burned.
And every storage where the copy of the book lives will melt.

Look at it realistically: you have a book and you have a device that reads this book. Unless you break the device - the company that made it can disappear, but you have what you have and you will be able to read the book. You might not be able to upgrade the device, but this is another story. So cheer up, dude.

Having said the above - I also prefere an open format.

I wonder if it is ethical to download a pirated/free/unprotected copy of a book once you actually bought the book legally. If this is ok, this should take care of many such potential problems and worries - although the exploding Sun might still be an issue...

[oren]

The advantage of paper books or open formats is the ability to have them forever.

While I don't disagree with what you are saying; I've heard (and also seen) that paper books don't last forever.

True, I'll limit it to the extent of a lifetime at least. I don't see many consumer electronic devices lasting that long.

[lobotommy]

Oren, what are you talking about, seriously. Is Apple doomed? Is Apple on the verge of bankruptcy? Is it like I will not be able to buy their hardware in next year or two or in five years from now? Hmm... Yeah, sure. They are doomed...

I know you would like to see NihonKi-in app or SmartGo Books on android OS but what can I say? These developers just don't want to go there. Even Tygem, Wbaduk, Pandanet - it took years for them to bring their clients to android. Face it - in the eyes of go developers android is a third world, or something like a necessary evil. I don't know why. And an open formats? Probably they think that it is just like asking for piracy.

At this moment if you want to have go books in e-formats you need to buy idevice. There is nothing else. End of story. It's not a conspiracy but developer's decisions to stick with apple.

[oren]

lobotommy, it has nothing to do with Apple or Android or Windows 8. It's just closed formats on devices I dislike and wish for more openness there.

In the long run, companies will come and go. That is just history.

[lobotommy]

I see, I can't argue with personal preferences. From my experience it is better to stop thinking about this "open/close" thing, and just start using what is available at this moment.

There are still peoples using atari XL, commodor64, amiga, atari st and other relicts of the past. Companies are dead but suprisingly their products aren't (as long as users want to use them). So no worry about finding yourself on a desert. Not in the next 10 years at least. There will always be some oasis

[tchan001]

With a physical go book collection, I can easily pass it on to future generations. With a software version tied to a user account...

[lobotommy]

With a physical go book collection, I can easily pass it on to future generations. With a software version tied to a user account...

Haha, you can always leave your login/password in your testament for your grandsons and granddaughters

[tchan001]

With a physical go book collection, I can easily pass it on to future generations. With a software version tied to a user account...

Haha, you can always leave your login/password in your testament for your grandsons and granddaughters

And you think the publishers would regard that as legal?

[lobotommy]

With a physical go book collection, I can easily pass it on to future generations. With a software version tied to a user account...

Haha, you can always leave your login/password in your testament for your grandsons and granddaughters

And you think the publishers would regard that as legal?

Let see. Imagine a chest. With books. And locker. I can give it to anybody. Right?
I see no difference.