Go Seigen's Winning a Won Game: Go Seigen's Lecture Series Volume Two, Go Seigen, 9 dan

This book provides Three Golden Rules with examples of their application in actual games and seven Go Seigen games highlighting Seven Examples of Success. In addition Three Examples of Failure are provided in three other Go Seigen games.

Yesterday, a won game was lost; today, a clear lead was wasted. Is there any secret recipe to keep the lead to the end of the game? Actually, maintaining a lead is easy, if one can keep a cool head and make every play according to positional judgment. On the other hand, trying to claim a quick victory is not easy, even for professionals. In professional games, one often encounters situations where a game is lost after building up a commanding lead, or a game is won by turning the tables on the opponent.

The material presented in this book highlights such cases. Among the strongest players today, Cho Chikun and Kobayashi Koichi can be considered as the cream of the crop. Both Cho and Kobayashi disclosed that they benefited enormously from studying Go Seigen’s some 800 games. From a young age of 10 to 25 Cho replayed the entire collection of Go Seigen’s games three times and is currently on his fourth. Kobayashi also even now, is still inspired by replaying Go Seigen’s games after studying his games three times. Both of these top-notch players recommended that the best way to get strong is to study Go Seigen’s collected games.

Comments & Reviews

I half agree with the previous review (by gaius), though I think giving it one star is rather unfair. The problem is that pretty much all you can say about winning a won game is either completely general (avoid complications when you’re way ahead) or completely specific to a given game. Reading this book isn’t going to miraculously cause you to stop blundering when you’re ahead… but that should be obvious to anyone.

However, it’s still a decent book, if you accept it for what it is – a collection of Go Seigen’s games, with detailed analysis of a single critical move from each. The commentary is very minimal for the rest of the game, but that’s because the entire book would be spent on one game if every move was given equal attention.

As gaius says, though, it’s probably a good book to read when you’re dan level or close to it – you couldn’t really appreciate the brilliance of the moves in question if you can’t get the jist of what’s going on in a pro game without having it explained to you in detail.

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This book’s title is so attractive… Would there really be this book that would prevent me from blundering all those won games away? One readable book by the great master of go?

Well, if there exists any such book, it’s definitely not this one. It might be useful to high dan players, but if you’re not one of them, avoid it! It consists of a short intro with a few basic ideas, followed by 10 Go Seigen games commented in an “interview” format where Mr. X asks his questions about the game to Go Seigen. Each game starts with a position from the middle game, where Go supposedly has a won position (although to my point of view, it’s always close…). The problem is to find the move that “clinches the victory”. The moves leading to the problem diagram are then shown, with minimal commentary. The book ends with a short bio.

As said, possibly interesting for high dan players, but as an EGF 4k I couldn’t understand half the moves and commentary was waay to minimal.

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