Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game (Volume I)

Review – Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game” This book is the first volume to a 5 volume set by Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-hyun, both masters of the game. It is written as an introduction to the game and is intended to enable a player to play at the most basic levels of the game Go. It succeeds very well. I do not feel ready to go out and play tournaments, but I could play simple games. The Game of Go has very simple rules. But the strategy and tactics are extremely complicated. While computers can beat the world champion chess players, they can only play the very elementary levels of Go. The book has been carefully formatted with very many board examples of the game. The writing is clear and easy to understand. The levels of complexity have been kept to a minimum, with more to come in the remaining four volumes of the series. And while deep study is needed to master the game, this book enables the English speaking American to at least start to play. After reviewing several other books on Go, I decided to try this series by Janice Kim. I am glad I chose Kim's books. This is an excellent introduction to the Game of Go. I look forward to reading and working my way through the rest of the series.

The information therein is solid and I recommend this to anybody considering the great game of Go for the first time.

There are several beginner books out there, this one fits well those people that pretty much have never played a game and need to learn about the objective and rules of the game. People that are beginners but have already played a few games, understand about captures and basic life and death will probably be better served by going straight to Volume 2 of this series or look for a different beginner book, such as Go for Beginners . The book consists of two parts, with the first one focusing on Fundamentals and the second one on Basic Techniques. In the Fundamentals, the authors do a very nice job in explaining the basics of the game. This is why I am recommending this for people that don't even know about the rules, since here they will get a step by step explanation on the objective of the game, how play works, capturing, illegal moves, the rule about ko and counting territory at the end of a game. They use diagrams generously and even beginners won't need to grab a board in order to follow the explanations. They also do a very good job with terminology, which can be overwhelming. Thus, they use the English name for many of the terms and only in important cases revert back to the Korean or Japanese names, with a clear explanation of what they mean of course. Compared to the book by Iwamoto mentioned above, the examples here are much simpler. When explaining connecting and cutting the authors focus on the basics and stop there. At least in the Fundamentals part, when they move over to Basic Techniques there is a little deeper examination of capturing (ladders, snapbacks, throw-ins, etc.), connecting, life and death, capturing races, ko fights, and endgame. In the book by Iwamoto, the examples are much deeper and require the reader to have some experience with reading (being able to mentally calculate a sequence of moves) in order to understand some of these. I particularly liked the test questions at the end of each chapter, since these allow the reader to check and see if she understood properly the concepts that were presented. There are special sections throughout the book with additional information, such as where to play on the internet, how go rankings are defined, and many others. Those people that are brand new to the game can seriously benefit from reading this book, but those that have already some experienced will likely find it too basic and will be better served to look at the options mentioned above.

I am pleased with the introduction to the game of go that this first book in the seres gives. It is very thorough and explains in more detail than any thing i have been able to find on line including [...] and their video , interactive lessons and The Way to Go which i downloaded in pdf form from their website . I am through the first section in Learn to play go. (their are 2 sections to this book.) So far the book has taught me everything i need to know to play go as well as for giving a notated game to follow along with. Rules such as for ko (the author explained an example that looked like a ko but was not) and also scoring have been cleared up for me The second section as far as i have gotten into is geared towards teaching techniques for capturing and then connecting techniques and life and death techniques. there is a chapter on capturing races, ko fighting and ending and counting. Although these subjects were touched on in the first section they are explained in good detail and have variations . All in all, if you have been playing go on the web and just cant seem to get a win in the beginners class, I highly recommend this book. this book is meant for beginner players up to a certain strength and the next book is to start from there to a better level of playing . I recommend this book to any who would like to learn the game . There are very many examples , not a lot (but enough) of words , do it yourself puzzles at the end of each chapter. As well as pages on history , etiquette , various names etc.

This is it, the best learner's guide to Go I've read. The explanations are clear and concise and the problems are on point and very helpful. They say that you can learn Go in 5 minutes but it takes a lifetime to master it. This book will get you started no matter how far you want to take it.

The books in this series are always sold out and I can't imagine why. Not many people play Go, so who's buying them? For those who do play Go, or want to start, this is where you start. Even if you're like 12th Kyu or 8th Kyu on PandaNet, start here. This book parses fast, so you'll spend an hour or three on it; review material maybe, but it gave me a lot of insight and I've played Go against GnuGo long enough to beat it on occasion. Learn to Play Go is a very, very shallow book. It enters each topic and explains it in minimal detail. It throws random facts at you, leading you along to very simple conclusions. It's enough for you to sit down with a friend, both read it, and then play interesting games for a couple weeks. That's exactly what you should do: read this book; get some basic understanding of Go concepts, shapes, and minimal tactics; and play for a few weeks to solidify that base. After that, The Way of the Moving Horse opens up your game a little more by expanding on these base concepts, building strategies on top of them. Each book in this series works the same way, polishing up your foundation on all sides so that you continue to gain a larger, more complete self-supporting structure rather than winding up with two walls and a roof that wants to topple over before you get a third wall up. This book was written by a Korean. I dislike the Korean terminology and prefer Japanese terminology; however, the author favors Korean terminology because, again, she is Korean. She does cover the Japanese terminology though.

This book is thorough and well written. The authors start from the beginning and take you gradually to a higher level. The explanations are succinct. The problems are relevant to the material I had just read. The answers are complete. The diagrams are clear and easily understood. I intend to purchase all of the volumes in this series. I am very happy with this purchase!

New to the game. Want rules and basic strategy? This is the book. I've owned maybe 4 other beginner books in Go, but this is the clearest. Examples are simple but drive home the point. No need a board, just read the book and do the examples, you'll be playing Go. Sorry, many other books written by Asians and hard to read; Janice Kim is a bonafide American, schooled in the same system that brought us Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trimp. So, you know it's quality stuff.

A comprehensive and easy to understand introduction to baduk (go), a game which lacks many other English language resources.

Ottimo libro! Mi sto interessando al gioco del GO ed ho iniziato a leggere qualche libro ed a giocare su internet. Leggere un libro non è mai come giocare ma questo libro aiuta molto ad affrontare le situazioni che si presentano in una partita di GO e l'ho trovato davvero ben fatto. Alla fine di ogni capitolo ci sono degli esercizi per ricapitolare quanto appena spiegato. In inglese come la maggior parte dei libri sull'argomento, un acquisto obbligato per che conosce la lingua e vuole iniziare a conoscere questo gioco semplice ma dalla strategia immensa. Io l'ho acquistato assieme agli altri 4 volumi della serie ed ho appena iniziato il secondo libro che sembra tanto promettente quanto il primo.

Go is a very easy game to learn to play. It is also probably the hardest game to learn to play well, especially against seasoned competition. I had never played Go before, but decided to learn it after the human-computer series that ended up with the computer winner: I wanted to understand why the game is so hard to be good at. So, I bought a decent Go set, plus a few books. This one, by Janice Kim, is the first of a series of five that teach you how to play, from start to expert level. The first book is all about learning the basics of the game, which is a great place to start! There's a lot of books that teach you the basic rules and elementary strategy, but Kim's book does it better. Not only are the explanations and illustrations helpful, they actually touch on a few of the more advances aspects of the game early, almost teasing you with the possibilities as you learn the game. The book is easy to read, and the many illustrations mean you can understand what the author is conveying quite easily. Keep in mind the tone of this book must by necessity be basic: this is a beginner's book. Later volumes in the series (see my reviews of them separately) build on the foundations this book instills. If you already know something about Go, you may find this volume too simplistic, but if you want to learn the game from scratch, this is the book I'd recommend.

I got a different book but with the right cover!!! How can you even do this???

Une excellente initiation au jeu de go. Les volumes de cette collection sont d’un format suffisamment grand pour que les schémas soient clairs et la police de caractère lisible. Le contenu est clair et explicite et les chapitres sont bien structurés. J’ai pour ma part privilégié les volumes 1, 2 et 4, les deux autres volumes apparaissant comme redondants dans les commentaires des joueurs anglo-saxons.