Green Oasis

The Second Book of Go by Richard Bozulich provides a comprehensive survey of the basic concepts of go for the advanced beginner: openings, handicap strategy, josekis, attacking, tesuji, life and death, capturing races, good shape, endgame, and ko fighting. The book covered these topics in greatly varying lengths. It treats capturing races in two chapters—probably exhausting the subject—while ko fighting only gets five pages. I had trouble following some of the examples; I think the author expected more expertise from the reader and therefore left much unsaid. I enjoyed that many of the chapters suggest books for further study, a welcome guide to the bewildering number of available go books.

Despite its title, I found it an excellent third book, and it definitely required more than a simple knowledge of the rules, despite its subtitle. I’ll be digesting the contents of this book for quite a while.