Tesuji and Anti-Suji of Go, by Sakata Eio. Yutopian Y6; 1995.

This book mostly consists of 61 tesuji patterns. Each section presents one pattern of stones on the board, how it arose, what the tesuji is, how people often play incorrectly, and some other situations with more or less the same tesuji.

I really like this book. There are lots of patterns in there, the discussions of how the pattern arose and how you could screw it up are useful, and there are some brief essays scattered through the book to lighten things up. There aren't any problems, but I don't mind that; you can treat each tesuji pattern as a problem, if you wish.

Click here to see Yutopian's blurb about the book.

Dan Schmidt (NNGS 5k*) says:

Another contender for my favorite go book. There's a lot of stuff in here that I would see in higher-ranked players' games, but couldn't find in any other book. The patterns are more strategic and less tactical than in the Davies Tesuji book; they concentrate more on things like making good shape and less on killing. It's written in an extremely clear style, with lots of diagrams and explanations of why the bad moves don't work.

cover pic


david carlton <carlton@bactrian.org>

Last modified: Sun Aug 10 21:00:29 PDT 2003