meditation. Amongst other distinctly Western perceptions of "oriental culture", like Buddhism, bonsai plants and sushi, Go was just another weakly and commercially interpreted curiosity of a far away land that was both too strange and too complicated for Americans to bother with. Yoga parlors and robust video game consoles would be more than enough to satisfy that strange American craven curiosity, to which I unconciously subscribed.The tome that dispelled the tired malaise lingering about this droll board was the eminent Cho Chikun's A Complete Introduction to the Game. I think it is more than fair to say that it is very dense - a delicious cheese cake served to the lactose intolerant. The untested beginner will find the pages to be comprehensive, though not exhaustive, at times challenging, but fairly academic. By reading this book the novice signs an implicit agreement that the work heretofore shall be theirs to bear, and at no time is Cho to be held responsible. The penalty of sloth falls entirely on the reader. Scrutiny and a well placed approach to the concepts and diagrams will reward the reader with a strong elementary grasp of such things as snapbacks, stone placement, capturing and life and death, to say nothing of the most basic rules.
Why opt for the austere and ardent Cho over a a more simple and relaxed book? The first objection is whether or not there is something more relaxed - and there is not. Janice Kim's series Learn to Play Go has a few qualities that make it more approachable. The text and diagrams are surrounded by generous pads of white space, the non-sensical sketches are whimsical in their arbitrariness, and while the text is more terse it is simpler and less evaluative. "A Complete Introduction to the Game" allows the reader to guess the outcome of the next example, but if he or she can't extrude the answer, the book will do it for them with all the long-windedness of an English barrister. To that end it was an appropriate book for me, and in my opinion, for any beginner. Many tsumego never really finish the answer. Most bring the solution to a point where all problem solvers, beginners or professionals, are assumed to understand that the answer may still be one or two moves away, but that it should be obvious to anybody with decent eyesight how things should finish. A fetal Go player is still working out the neurons that comprehend Go as a two player game with pieces played on a grid. These early example problems are by no means self-explanatory. Experienced players will see them as self-evident epigrams, their meaning nicely tucked away in the stone configuration. Newbies will see designs in the pieces as if they wre migrating clouds. Here a smiley face, and a few moves later a duck. Running the problem to the very end, and even stepping on its exhausted and beaten body for good measure, do the virginally chaste player a great deal of good.
If there is any complaint to Cho Chikun's introductory canon, it is his temptation to drag the reader into a needlessly complicated analysis of one and two jump stone placement, and why neighboring stones cannot be forcefully pried open if they are located on the 4th and 3rd lines or below, respectively. It is useful to know, but so are factoids about whales and lost Dutch dynasties. At this level of experience it is nothing more than a parlor trick - something to boast about when the player next shows up at the Beginner's Circle for a rousing 9x9 game.
It is my first Go book and I'm glad to have read it. Other Go introductory materials have found their way onto my library account and have been read with a finer appreciation since I got past the most remedial stages of learning, but Cho's book remains on the top of my list for its dogged pursuit of the problem and challenging forays into position prediction.
