American Go E-Journal

Dazed and exhausted, I rose from my three-hour slugfest in Round 5 of the US Open Friday with an opponent who had traveled all the way from Japan to torment me with moves I had never seen before. As I left the playing area, I knew what I needed – more go books! Luckily, the annual Go Congress features a roomful of go books, equipment and more. The trick is know where it is. As I left the playing area, I happened to look up, and caught a glimpse of a sign in a second floor window – “vendors here.” Twenty-three steps up and two rights later, voila – the promised land. Near the door, T. Mark Hall (right) was camped out with his perennial GoGod stall. The ultimate compendium of games, articles and miscellany continues to grow; it’s hard to believe it still fits on one disc. Further inside, I found Bill Cobb (bottom) and Sidney and Katherine Yuan (left), offering tables full of wares from Slate and Shell and Yutopian – which generously donated the board for the NAMT top-board final — respectively. This year’s crop of new titles is fewer in quantity than last year, but very nice indeed in quality, and I left with four more books to begin improving my game for next year’s Congress in North Carolina – two Fairbairns, a super-sized Yuan Zhou survey of top player styles, and the seventh volume in Kiseido’s Mastering the Basics series, Invading and Reducing Moyos. I also skipped a few titles, finally abandoning my effort to maintain a complete collection of all non-beginner titles in English. I’ll tell you why in my next report.
– Roy Laird; photos by Steve Colburn, collage by Chris Garlock