Mathematical Go

Mathematical Go Chilling Gets the Last Point written by Elwyn Berlekamp and David Wolfe provides a one hundred page detailed analysis of the (very) late endgame from the point of view of combinatorial game theory. The second half of the book is a detailed sixth page treatise on the rules of go both from a top down perspective (Appendix A: Rules of Go -- A Top-down Overview) and and bottom up view (Appendix B: Foundations of the Rules of Go).

The book has been published in both hardback, Mathematical Go: Chilling Gets the Last Point A K Peters, now CRC Press ISBN: 1568810326 (now ISBN 9781568810324), and soft cover, Mathematical Go Endgames: Nightmares for the professional Go player Ishi Press, 2012 editions. Ishi press edition/printing has ISBN-10 : 0923891366/ ISBN-13 : 978-0923891367.

Also published in Japanese in 1994 as "囲碁の算法―ヨセの研究 数理科学シリーズ" ISBN-10: 4810189295; ISBN-13: 978-4810189292

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Official website

https://math.berkeley.edu/~berlek/cgt/gobook.html

Reviews

David Carlton's review

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
List of Figures
1: Introduction
2: An Overview
3: Mathematics of Games
4: Go Positions
5: Further Research
Rules of Go — A Top-down Overview
Foundations of the Rules of Go
Bibliography
Index

Sample Material

"A situation which will baffle professionals" is illustrated in this problem by David Wolfe that can be solved with the methods presented in the book. "A 9 dan professional from the Nihon Ki-in spent 4 hours trying to solve this problem and failed."^[1]

White to move and win.  

[1] Presented in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNvP6a8sTnI&list=PL329A9A14A4F7D8E7 at 5:30.