Edward Lasker. Go and Go-Moku: The Oriental Board Games

Second revised edition — New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960. — 215 p. — ISBN 10: 0486206130. — ISBN 13: 9780486206134.This is a completely revised enlarged edition, with a new preface by the author.Best introduction in English to a great Japanese game. Detailed instructions provide valuable information on basic patterns, strategy, tactics, analyzed games. Used as text by generations of Americans, Japanese. 72 diagrams."...clearly written diagrammed primer..." — New Yorker.A fascinating Oriental game has lately been finding devotees in the Western world in ever greater numbers. Although its rules are so simple that you can learn them in a few minutes, its amazing wealth of combinations is almost infinite. It has replaced chess as the favorite game of many people with intellectual learning and has become especially popular among mathematicians, physicists, and other scientific workers. Even a former World’s Chess Champion considered it more profound than chess, despite its extremely simple structure.The game is called by its Japanese name GO because it came to the West from Japan where it is the national game, played by young and old. Actually, it was invented in China, fully two millennia before Japan adopted it. It has never ceased to mystify and enthuse its followers with its opportunities for imaginative play, so that its original form has remained unchanged until this day.The author, famed chess master Edward Lasker who also holds the Go master title, discovered a description of the game as a young student and readily found others who shared his growing enthusiasm for it, in Europe as well as in this country. In this book, a completely revised edition of one he wrote in 1934, he first presents a clear, step by step explanation of fundamentals and elementary tactics with illustrations from actual play, and then discusses basic and advanced strategic maneuvers. Rather than asking the reader to memorize moves or positions, he stresses general principles of play which help the student find a promising continuation in any situation confronting him on the board, and he does this with the same lucidity which has made his books on chess among the most valuable in the literature of the game.If you enjoy problems testing your powers of logic and imagination, you will want to try the game of Go for the excitement and the intellectual satisfaction it provides. For those who enjoy a lighter form of contest, the author has included a section explaining Go-Moku, a very easy sister-game of Go.Introduction: The History of the Game
Fundamentals
Elementary tactics
Basic strategy
Advanced strategy
The game of Go-moku
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