The End Game: Elementary Go Series, Volume 6, Ogawa Tomoko 4-dan and James Davies

The basic skills and strategies of the endgame, using problems, examples, explanatory sections, and actual games.

Comments & Reviews

There’s only a few books who actually can guarantee improvement.

This book does not concentrate on teaching strategies/shapes/moves or concepts (like other books generally do).

This book however especially concentrates on learning HOW to calculate (in a formal way) the value of moves.

It is very simular to the book “Positional Judgement”. The differences are that PositionalJudgement concentrates on the counting of score of a position, while this book concentrates on the calculation of value of moves.

After reading this book I’m sure it gained me about 15 points in every game I played.

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I’d definitely recommend this book for anybody that wants to know more about the endgame, it was great around my level of 4k and im sure it will be good for at least people a few stones lower and higher.

There is a big section on one of the authors game and she makes you think about how a pro thinks about there moves and how to see what has value, i.e. will playing this move gain me point but make another position weak etc and also how to think about how much each move is worth and to think is it sente etc.

There is also a section with problems to work through and you are awarded a rating depending on what answer you chose which then you add your score up and it give’s you your rating which it was pretty accurate in my case.

Overall a very nice book should be in everybody’s go library.

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This book does an excellent job of showing how to think during the endgame. The book is not just a series of problems, but rather uses a variety of methods to drive home its points. I strongly recommend reading this book.

As mentioned in the previous review, some parts are more “elementary” than others, but there is nothing wrong with learning the principles and then returning for more detailed explanations and analysis. Like the other great books in this series (Tesuji, Life & Death, and Attack and Defense) the book is worth reading and rereading.

This is the only book I have studied on the endgame, but it has helped me. I read this book back when I was about AGA 2-3k (I am now about 2d). Watching club games I now see how dan players quietly steal points from 1k-5k players during this stage of the game. At the last US Go Congress I beat several 1d players in the early-mid endgame after being somewhat behind during the fighting. Playing a good endgame is not as thrilling as killing a large group, but winning a close game is definitely satisfying.

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The endgame is traditionally a subject which tends to be skipped over. This book is still pretty much unique in English, as the only book to explain in detail how to do endgame calculations.

The problem is that endgame counting is a hard subject, and any book which does justice to it (as this one does) is going to be a bit overwhelming for kyu players (and a lot of dan players as well). Ogawa’s analysis of the endgame of one of her professional games (in Chapter 1) is sufficiently mind-blowing that I can imagine many kyu players being discouraged. Why the book starts with this is a mystery.

Thankfully, the rest of the book is easier, and it’s not all calculation – there is a chapter on endgame tesuji which is very similar in style to James Davies’ “Tesuji”, for instance. On balance, this is a good book but feels out of place in the Elementary Go Series.

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