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Today We Have
A Splendid Feast

要津定規

by Inoue Inseki Meijin

井上因碩名人

Edited by John Fairbairn

From the GoGoD Archives
(GoGoD site).

Buy the full book at gobooks.com

Description

The great Inoue Inseki Meijin, the 17th century author of the famously hard-to-impossible problems of the Igo Hatsuyoron, produced other, easier tsume-go works. One was the Yoshin Teiki, most of which is now lost. But the portion that survives gives a fascinating insight into how he worked on his problems and (presumably) taught his pupils. The surviving sections, given here in full, are eminently suitable for beginners, but even strong players can learn amply from the way the Meijin used his mind, and be severely challenged by the hardest problems.

About the Author

Inoue III Dosetsu Inseki (1646 ~ 1719) was a pupil of Honinbo Dosaku, who transferred him to the Inoue family when he made Ogawa Doteki his heir. Dosetsu became the third head of the Inoue family in 1697.

He reached 8-dan in 1702 but promised Dosaku not to seek the post of Meijin-Godokoro (i.e. 9-dan) himself but to act as guardian to the new Honinbo heir, and thus Meijin-designate, Dochi, Ogawa Doteki having died young in 1690.

But Dosetsu did became Meijin in 1710 to overcome the protocol problem of awarding diplomas on behalf of the Court to visiting Ryukyuans, though he desisted from taking office as Godokoro in deference to Dosaku’s wishes. Once installed as Meijin, he refused to give it up, which led to some animosity with the Honinbo family, though he did remain as Dochi’s guardian till 1708, and Dochi did become the youngest ever Meijin-Godokoro in 1721 (after Dosetsu’s death), still aged only 31, so it is generally accepted that Dosetsu effectively kept his promise after all.

He is usually referred to as the Meijin Inseki, being the only Inoue to become Meijin. He was the author of the Igo Hatsuyoron (On the Development of Yang [=Tactics] in Go), from which he omitted the answers (possibly as a form of copyright protection), and even modern pros have struggled to solve several of the problems.

About the Editor

Writer and translator John Fairbairn is one of the partnership with T Mark Hall that jointly produced the GoGoD (Games of Go on Disc) database and go encyclopaedia, now continued as Games of Go on Download (database only).

He has written or translated many go books, especially on historical aspects. He lives in London and has played go for fifty years.

Text (c) by John Fairbairn

Cover design (c) by Alison Fairbairn

All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited.

Contents

Items not highlighted in the Contents page are available in the full version.

Introduction

Nakade Problems

Problems 1 ~ 10

Problems 11 ~ 20

Problems 21 ~ 30

Problems 31 ~ 40

Problems 41 ~ 50

Problems 51 ~ 60

Problems 61 ~ 70

Problems 71 ~ 80

Problems 81 ~ 90

Problems 91 ~ 100

Problems 101 ~ 107

Seki Problems

Problems 108 ~ 120

Problems 121 ~ 130

Problems 131 ~ 135

Appendix: Books by John Fairbairn

Cover

Book description

About the author

Buy This Book

About SmartGo Books

Introduction

Inoue Dosetsu Inseki (1646 ~ 1719) was known as the Meijin Inseki because he was the only member of the Inoue Inseki line to be Meijin.

In fact, the Inoue house had already had a Meijin in the shape of Nakamura Doseki, but being a Meijin if you were outside the Honinbo family was very rare, and worth stressing. The Yasui house provided the only other case – Yasui II Sanchi, but even he took over only in murky circumstances and was forced soon to resign.

Nevertheless, the Meijin Inseki’s fame does not really rest on his title. Rather it is due to a collection of problems (without solutions) hard enough to tax, and defeat, even the best of modern professionals. This is the Igo Hatsuyoron.

What you now have before you – a veritable feast – is an even better collection of problems by the Meijin Inseki. The Yoshin Teiki (or more precisely Yōshin Teiki). Better and even rarer – so far unpublished anywhere, I think, as a book since its now lost original edition. And even though what we have is just a small relic of the original.

“Better” is just my subjective assessment, of course. Rarity plays some part in that, admittedly, but there are two main reasons why I prefer this book to the Igo Hatsuyoron.

One is stressed by the Meijin himself in his postscript: the items in the present collection (he alleges – I think we need to give him some leeway) were not artificially composed tsume-go problems but were positions based on real games, and so the techniques encapsulated there are genuinely useful.

The other reason is that we amateurs have some chance of solving many of the problems, hard as they are!

That last point is, however, largely due to the Meijin himself. The very many nakade problems here are presented in an ordered and graduated list, from rather simple to rather hard, which uniquely provides a complete course in solving problems of each type.

In his Afterword, Dosetsu explains as follows:

In the way of go, strategy and tactics are like yin and yang. Therefore these two things are not inherent in each other and it is difficult to become a good player.

When we compare these two things, although we can say that strategy belongs to the opening and there one can play however one likes, in the case of tactics people who are doltish will be at a disadvantage.

Although play in the opening does not allow us to discriminate, a person who can produce the right tactics will not often lose when taking three or four stones from a superior player.

Considered in this light, tactics are first in importance in go.

However, Dosetsu does go on to point out that once you become a professional player tactics are of less importance and strategy is more important.

He also points out the difficulty that “discrimination and judgement become difficult as tactical situations become complexly interlaced”, so that in the end tactics and strategy are of equal importance.

He then goes on to explain that he is here concentrating solely on tactics, and in each volume he will be presenting positions that deliberately range, in order, from the “easy or ordinary” up to mind-boggling (my word). This is because, he says, players need to be coaxed out of the habit of playing the easy or ordinary. His graduated course in doing this shows that the effort can actually be a sheer delight.

The seki problems are not ordered in quite such an obvious way as the nakade problems, but do provide examples of almost every type of seki you will ever see – some of which are very hard to see, and so make truly challenging problems even for dan players. And because it is Dosetsu who created them, there are beauty and even humour lurking everywhere.

As is clear from Dosetsu’s own words, he was into lists and so also aimed for completeness. That makes it all the more grievous that only a small portion of the book survives, apparently. According to Dosetsu himself, the original came in six volumes with a total of over 1,500 problems. We now have less than a tenth of that. Even that portion has struggled to find light of day.

…

The complete introduction is available in the full version.

John Fairbairn
London
February 2014

NAKADE PROBLEMS

Problem 27

Bent four in the corner
Black to play

Solution 27

Success

Note the order of moves. Kido originally transposed the 1–2 and 3–4 exchanges, but because of the liberty situation that would allow White to vary his fourth move and live:

Failure

Problem 28

7-point nakade
White to play

Perhaps around here we can say the entrées start.

Solution 28

Success…

Continuation

White 3 is a noteworthy move. It is called a guzumi, that is ‘deliberate bad shape’. Ordinarily, guzumis are empty triangles, but Dosetsu has an eye for the extraordinary. The most ordinary move here would lead to ko, as follows.

Wrong White 3…

Continuation – ko

Problem 29

7-point nakade
Black to play

Solution 29

Success…

Continuation

Note Black 5, which eliminates the possibility of an eye on the side and so forces White to capture at 6 to try for eyes. The Black 5 in the following diagram instead lets White live in seki in sente, which is a nice variation on the old joke “dies in gote”.

Variation for Black 5…
6: takes

Continuation

SEKI PROBLEMS

Problem 120

Seki
Black to play

Solution 120

Success

Note that throwing in at 2 with Black 1 fails in similar fashion.

An unsuccessful variation for Black 5:

Failure

Problem 121

Seki
Black to play

Solution 121

Success

This result is the famous hanezeki, a seki with a permanent hane. If Black fills in behind the hane (capturing three stones) he loses the capturing race by one liberty. If White captures the Black hane stone (Black then captures four and White re-takes), it is White who will lose the race by one.

Mistakenly starting as in the following diagram loses the capturing race for Black by one liberty.

Failure
4 at S6