Book Review: Basic Techniques of Go

After several years away from Go, I came back to the game in the summer of 2005 with the desire to relearn some kyu-level principles. One book to which I turned was Haruyama and Nagahara's Basic Techniques of Go, which was written for high kyu-level players and serves as a follow-up to beginner texts such as Cho Chikun's Go – A Complete Introduction to the Game, or Janice Kim's Learn to Play Go series. The authors recognize that kyu players will often find themselves playing black in handicap games and have steered their discussion accordingly.

Bozulich has rewritten the text of the third edition of Basic Techniques, reorganized the chapters, and, in a welcome move, reduced the number of Japanese terms in the hopes that this will make reading the book more accessible to beginners (it has). Finally, since this book was first published in 1969, an appendix has been added to incorporate some of the newer joseki that have appeared over the past few decades.

The book begins with an overview of even-game fuseki – highlighting corner joseki, approach moves, and extensions. The following three chapters are devoted exclusively to the principles of handicap go: 9-stone, 6-stone, and 4-stone games, respectively, with a discussion on star point joseki. Throughout, the emphasis is on simplicity. Chapter 5 introduces twenty types of tesuji, followed by fifty tesuji problems. Chapter 6 examines the endgame, with additional endgame problems.

What this slim book lacks in detail it compensates for in breadth. Notably missing from its contents, however, are a discussion of life and death and an analysis of the middle game. While readers new to go may find some of the discussions a bit superficial compared to newer go books that are in print, it's important to keep in mind that at the time this book was originally published, few go books had been translated into English, and so this book was one of the first to systematically approach many of these topics for a Western audience. In that sense, some may find the book to be a bit dated, and may chose to forego it in favor of more modern, detailed studies. Another disappointment is the three pages of typographical errors in Chapter 4, where the figure captions and text are not properly correlated, and other small printing errors are scattered throughout. While this might be forgivable in a 1st printing of a first edition, this book is currently in its tenth printing of its third edition.

After studying this text, readers will be ready for the more detailed coverage to be found in the seven-volume Elementary Go Series (also published by Kiseido), particularly Nagahara and Bozulich's contribution, volume 7, Handicap Go, in which many of the principles outlined in Basic Techniques receive further elaboration.