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This book has been widely acclaimed as a masterpiece on one of the greatest go players who ever lived. Click here to learn more about this work.

This is Go the Natural Way! are the watchwords that the author takes as his philosophy of play in this unique volume, but the book could also be viewed as The Best Games of Takemiya Masaki. When he published the material that has been translated here, Takemiya was Honinbo and at the top of his form. Few professional go players were serious rivals for him. And the ones who were are today considered as great players in the same way as he is, such as Cho Chikun, Kato Masao or Sakata Eio. All of these players and many more make appearances in this volume.

This book concerns common joseki mistakes, why they are bad, and how to take advantage of them. Each mistake originates in a real game where an amateur made a real mistake. Joseki books typically concentrate solely on the correct line of play, with perhaps lip service paid to mistakes whose subtlety eludes all but the most advanced of go players. The faulty lines are dreamed up by the author, a professional go player, and do not reflect the mistakes of astounding simplicity that amateurs routinely commit. Showing only the mistake is insufficient: an opponent of equal skill will often fail to take advantage of these mistakes. Therefore, a thorough discussion of the mistake is necessary to truly learn its nature.

We have chosen games reflecting many of the most common joseki mistakes committed by amateur players, most of whom fall between 3 kyu and 4 dan. Although some of the specific mistakes contained in this book are unlikely to be precisely duplicated in the reader’s games, the concepts behind them will prove an informative study for players of many levels. Consider this a practical guide to learning joseki sequences and the ideas that govern them.

This book provides a large variety of tesuji problems. Tesuji are skillful moves that accomplish some clear tactical objective, such as capturing stones or a group, rescuing one of your own groups, linking up your stones, separating your opponent's stones, making good shape, etc. There are about 45 different kinds of moves that make up tesujis. Some of these tesujis occur quite frequently in games, while others are seldom seen.

This book presents examples of every kind of tesuji. The more common ones occur in numerous problems, but even the less common ones will be represented a number of times. All of these different tesujis are scattered throughout the book. Just as in a game, one never knows what kind of tesuji will appear. It may be easy to find it, but often it is hard; it might be a quite common tesuji, but it could be one of those that rarely occur. Going through the 501 tesujis in this book will be like getting a tesuji experience in 501 games. However, in a game, many tesujis will go by unnoticed; in this book, each problem will be a learning experience.

Yilun Yang is justly famous among his many devoted students for his remarkable guidelines about how to play go. These basic principles cover virtually every situation and enable a player to find the best play with a minimum of reading. Now, for the first time, he has consented to allow the publication of a book containing a broad selection of these principles, focusing especially on the opening and the early middle game.

This is Slate & Shell's most popular book. Buy the printed book.