The booklet contains the 1996 version of the Ing Rules, a few short opinion articles, a glossary, examples, a few tables, and pictures of Ing equipment. The rules cannot be understood by simply reading them or looking at the examples; the rules are as hard to understand as those of 1991; essentially only their wording has been altered.
The booklet might have been published to honour Ing Chang-Ki shortly before his death, however, the booklet rather achieves the opposite since apparently the editing failed to use any proofreading. As a consequence, there are many typos. Even worse, there are severe factual mistakes. E.g., the cover claims that the rules were adopted by the EGF in 1996. It was 1993, and maybe the 1994 European Go Championship was the first EGF tournament that was said to use Ing rules. If it is said that the EGF adopted the rules, fine - but the cover might also state that nobody ever really understood the rules and that almost all European players disliked them. E.g., the number of possible variations is stated as 1040 for Chess and as 10400 for Go. It must be "10 to the power 40 or 400, respectively". As it is well known, these figures are meaningless because they make arbitrary, wrong assumptions of 10 interesting moves per turn and 400 turns per game. E.g., in an opinion article it is stated that the Ing Rules were precise. It is hard to imagine anything farther from the truth.
Is it a coincidence that this review's author tried to get the booklet in 1996 but has not known about its actual existence until 2005? Now, Kaise Takaaki and James Davies are mentioned as inventors of some example positions. Shall the review's author be happy that his name does not appear in the doubtful booklet at the "infamous ko" example, which he found? Judging from the rules' wording, only the translator Sidney Yuan has done a fair job.
Date: 07 Sep 2008