Guanzi Pu

    Keywords: Problem, Culture & History, Books & Publications

Chinese: 官子谱 (guānzǐpǔ)
Japanese: 官子譜 (kanzufu)
Korean: 관자보 (Gwan ja bo)

Guanzi Pu (官子谱 Hanyu Pinyin: guānzǐpǔ) is a large classic Chinese problem collection (1473 problems) in circulation from the sixteenth century onwards. First author/editor Guo Bailing. Published in 1660; again edited and published 1689 by Tao Shiyu.

The name implies endgame problems, and the collection has many examples of a relatively unusual type of question: not orthodox life and death, but ways to attack a group that can live with best play, but at the cost of points to the defender. The collection expanded to include many types of problems - effectively any way of exploiting bad shape.

There are numerous editions of this classic set of go problems. The complete set can be downloaded at Ulrich Goertz's [ext] Classical Go Problems


Weiqi Technique Encyclopedia (Guanzi Pu) or 围棋技巧大全 (官子谱) (wei2qi2 ji4qiao3 da4quan2 guan1zi pu3) is a new (March 1996) version of Guanzipu edited by Jiang Zhujiu and Jiang Mingjiu which contains around 850 problems published by Chengdu Shidai Publishing (成都时代出版社) with the ISBN 7-80548-477-5.

    • ISBN 978-7-80705-394-1 for 39,- Yuan is the improved version of GuanziPu from the 3-book-set. (tderz)

The March 1996 edition by Sichuan Go Art Publishing (蜀蓉棋艺出版社) is an older version of the one by Chengdu Shidai Publishing with a different cover.

Sichuan Go Art Publishing is the former name of Chengdu Shidai Publishing.

According to the preface many problems are taken out because they didn't actually work. Also many problems have been revised to correct earlier mistakes. Explanations of the solutions are also added.

Also according to the preface, Guanzi, in the title of the book, doesn't mean endgame in ancient Chinese, but rather technique in general. It is only in modern Chinese that Guanzi has come to mean endgame. In the edited version the whole book is seperated into 6 chapters:

  1. Attack/Defense - 78 problems
  2. Method or Technique (Shou3 duan4 手段) - 98 problems
  3. Tesuji - 86 problems
  4. Connection (between groups) - 18 problems
  5. Tsumego - 374 problems
  6. Yose - 184 problems

This edition of Weiqi Technique Encyclopedia (Guanzi Pu) is one book of a series of three entitled (World Weiqi Masterpieces of Life and Death)(世界围棋死活经典名着 Shi4 jie4 Wei2 qi2 Si3 huo2 Jing1 dian3 Ming2 zhu4 with the same page size and cover design and heavy advertisement in WeiQiTianDi) :

  • QiJingZhongMiao, (棋经众妙) ISBN7-80548-916-5/G.801, 20¥ yellowish-green [ext] cover, and the third book is
  • FaYangLun 《围棋发阳论》新解,程晓流解说 Weiqi FaYangLun, New Solutions/Interpretations(?), Cheng Xiaoliu (?). Light blue cover.

Purchasing information

Copies of the book may be purchased from Jiang Mingjiu directly. Please contact him at mingjiu7p@hotmail.com should you wish to purchase one or more copies of the March 1998 printing.


[ext] Cover of a Korean book with a small selection of all 官子谱 problems.


[ext] Current Amazon listing (Japanese)

Go Seigen provided the commentary for the (Japanese) four volume set. The Japanese four volume set commented by Go Seigen is the most complete set of Guanzipu and contains all the problems from Guanzi Pu.

Guanzi Pu online: [ext] http://www.scribd.com/doc/7235474/

Does anyone know if this ebook violates copyright?


This is a copy of the living page "Guanzi Pu" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2011 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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