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In the Beginning
    Keywords: Book

This book about openings (fuseki), In The Beginning, is the first volume in the Elementary Go Series, published originally by Ishi Press and later republished by Kiseido. The author is Ishigure Ikuro.


Here's the table of contents:

  • Introduction
  • Chapter 3: Ten Problems

Comments by readers

Jan: This was the first Go book I read after Go for Beginners. I liked it a lot then, because I was hopelessly confused by the sheer size of a 19x19 goban, especially in the opening - any help was welcome!

As I write this (18 months later) I've finally bought it and I don't really like it anymore. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons. First of all, the subject matter is not difficult for me now but I think the treatment is going to leave a beginner confused due to lack of examples. The explanation of the various points in the corner only talks a bit about claiming territory versus taking influence - I like the approach in The Second Book of Go a lot more where actual sequences are shown which makes the discussion more concrete.

The 'nine concepts' in the second chapter are covered, clearer or more extensively, by a lot of other sources, such as The Second Book of Go, Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, Attack and Defense and of course Sensei's Library. This actually goes for a lot of material in the first chapter as well.[1]

Finally, I think the ten whole board problems at the end are not enough: they should have been covered more thoroughly (since they are quite hard if you've only read this book). If problems are what you want, read Get Strong at the Opening instead.

All in all, I don't think this is a really bad book but if you read some more about the subject, this book will probably end up redundant.

[1]: To illustrate my point, I've linked up the table of contents with the Library :-)


If you want other opinions on this book, read [ext] the review at David Carlton's site.



This is a copy of the living page "In the Beginning" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.