All About Life and Death, by Cho Chikun. Two volumes. Ishi G42, G43; 1993.

This is a dictionary of life and death situations. It has more than 200 different patterns that are on the cusp of being alive or dead, and tells you when each is alive and when it is dead. It also has some sections on invading beneath the star point at the 3-3 point with various extensions from the star point present, and also some more invasions in different corner situations. It starts with very basic situations (e.g. five stones in a row in the corner are alive or dead depending on whose move it is), but also contains more complicated patterns.

I haven't studied this book, but it does seem good to me. It doesn't come with problems; on the other hand, you could treat each pattern as a problem if you wished. It's not as scary as the other go dictionaries are.

Dan Schmidt, (NNGS 5k*) says:

This book (both volumes) is really good. Don't be scared off by the fact that it's a dictionary. It's very readable, and because later results build on earlier ones, it's rewarding to read straight through. Also, because it is a dictionary, it's easy to look up positions from your games after the fact.
I had tried around five times to make it through the Davies Life and Death book; the way that I finally learned anything about life and death was to work all the way through Graded Go Problems 2 and 3, and read (partially) through this one.

david carlton <carlton@bactrian.org>

Last modified: Sun Aug 10 20:52:36 PDT 2003