Dictionary of Basic Joseki Vol.2: The 3-4 Point (cont.) & The 5-3 Point, Yoshio Ishida and John Power (translator)

This brilliant and original 3 volume survey of joseki, written by a leading Japanese professional, is not only a practical, well-organized reference to help you chart your course through the myriad complications of standard joseki, but also an illuminating analysis of vital components such as tesuji and shape. It covers all important joseki, as well as joseki mistakes and alternatives. It is equally valuable as a reference work and as a primer in the fundamentals of Go theory which underlie joseki.

Comments & Reviews

My personal favourit.

There must be a 1000 books about joseki. But this series of books just beats them all. Nothing can compete to this.

It’s always right to the point. It shows really ALL possible variations you can think of, overplays, trickplays, mistakes, evolutions of joseki, and a lot of comments!

I can’t imagine studying joseki anymore without having these books.

(And to be honest, I strongly assume a lot of other dictionaries are based_on/copied_from the sequences and comments provided in this book)

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I did a first impressions review of this set on my blog back on January 10, 2006. Suffice to say, my impression hasn’t changed. It’s an excellent set with which to study joseki.

Ishida explains with great detail:

• What variations can arise
• How some variations may be used from a whole-board perspective
• Why one variation may be preferred over the other and why you may not want to play the variation or the joseki
• Whether one may lose sente by following a variation and, in some cases, how to retain sente
• Which variations are slack or aggressive
• Why the stones must be played
• What critical points for either color arise as the shapes evolve
• What weaknesses exist that can be exploited
• What countermeasures and tesuji can be applied to the shapes

This set is borderline core-library material. I really like it because I can easily research any particular branch of a joseki after I’ve encountered it; this helps me understand what went wrong and what to consider when it appears again in future games.

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