The most packed go book in English is now available on Amazon.
Celebrating the Meijin of Meijins, Honinbo Shuei (1852~1907),
The Games of Shuei contains 133 games with commentaries based on those by a wealth of pros, past and present, all in Go Wisdom format.
Apart from normal commentary, there is a special emphasis on the evolution Shuei's style, famouslt admired and copied by the likes of Go Seigen and Takagawa Kaku. The book covers topics such as miai, his central carpenter's squares and his unique way of beating his opponent to the centre. You can also examine how he became so strong late in life despite many very long absences from go.
You can gauge how much in this this book from the fact that it took Tom Koranda three intensive months just to proof-read it. It my be expensive but it's big - 538 pages - and it will keep you out of mischief for months and months. As well as improving your go immeasurably, of course
I say that on the basis of the book's Go Wisdom format. This is my second book in that format, following
Genjo-Chitoku. GW format means the commentaries are designed both to encourage you and to enable you to indulge in "effortful practice", in line with the latest theories for optimal learning. Specifically this means use of colour and symbols and convenient layout on the one hand, and dispensing with variation diagrams on the other. This does
not mean dispensing with variations. They are given, but are embodied within the text. This is where the use of colour comes in very handy. This is part of what is meant by the "effortful practice" required of you. My favourite comment from Tom was this: "It seems that replaying the variations in my head is doing positive things to my brain - now I can even remember" where I left my glasses or phone."
But there is a further aspect to effortful practice offered by the GW format. The book has an unparalleled appendix - some 40 pages - of go wisdom in the form of technical topics such as thickness, momentum, miai, probes, psychology and so on, each discussed and larded with proverbs and other advice from pros. The idea is that, as you are studying a game, you may think of something that is not explained in the commentary, or that is explained but is not quite clear to you. You can then turn to the GW appendix and find ample help. It will also prompt you with many concepts that you may have overlooked. Furthermore, all the entries for each concept are indexed to the occurrences in the actual commentaries, so that you can examine a raft of real-world examples and so real get to know a topic in depth. Since the GW appendix is backwards compatible (as it will be in future books, too) you can also study examples by referring to
Genjo-Chitoku.
One interesting aspect of using the GW format is that you get to see the frequency with which pros talk about each concept. It may surprise many amateurs that pros talk a lot about probes and checks and momentum, but not very much about invasions, for example. And where they do talk about things amateurs talk about, they talk about them often in very different ways.
That's what the book is. As to what it is
not, it is not and will not be in electronic format. There is an earlier e-version available in SmartGo format, but this paper version contains many new games, and I have now been able to add to many of the e-commentaries, so that the commentaries portion of around 50% bigger. Of course, the huge Go Wisdom appendix is also new.
This book is also not a biography of Shuei. It does naturally contain much historical context, but for the life and times of Shuei I refer you to the book
Meijin of Meijins, which is also available on Amazon. (However, you may wish to note that I plan to re-issue that in the same size as
Games of Shuei. This is mainly so that I can have a matching pair on my bookshelf, but the new version will contain some new information and photos.
Games of Shuei is available on several Amazon platforms. The US version is at
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1711980242?re ... _397514860. The price there is $85. Not cheap, I admit, but is in line with computer manuals and similar huge books. As with Genjo-Chitoku, the quality of the Amazon production has astounded me. In particular, the binding has withstood a rigorous proof-read, and the book is easy to keep open. However, you will get rather more than the wonky finger Go Seigen got from holding go manuals open as he sat at the board. This is more of a table-top book, but may double up as a door-step.
Samples of commentary and GW:
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John Fairbairn
