The end game chapter 1, GO-books
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THE ENDGAME
by Tomoko Ogawa, 4 dan
and James Davies
THE ISHI PRESS, INC.
Tokyo
PREFACE
In this book we have tried to do two things: to cover the
basic moves and principles of the endgame; and to show how
they are applied in actual game situations. Go is an intellectual
pursuit, so we assume that you will want to try to think
through as much as you can on your own, and not just take
our word for it that such-and-such is a correct move. Accord-
ingly, more than half of the foflowing pages are given over to
problems. Working them out may require some patience, but
it should make you stronger in a very tangible way.
The primary responsibility for the five chapters is divided
as follows.
Chapter 1 Ogawa
Chapter 2 Davies
Chapter 3 Davies
Chapter 4 Ogawa
Chapter 5 Ogawa
We consulted, however, throughout the book. One of us
(Davies) drafted the entire text, and the other of us (Ogawa)
passed judgement on all the diagrams.
Our thanks go to the Nihon Kiin for the use of their facili-
ties while working on this book, and to James Kerwin, who
proofread the manuscript and suggested a number of modifi-
cations.
Tokyo, Japan Tomoko Ogawa
June, 1976 James Davies
Published by The Ishi Press, Inc.
CPO Box; 2126 Tokyo,Japan
© Copyright 1976 in Japan by the Ishi Press
All rights reserved according to international law.
CHAPTER 1
Introducing the Endgame
The endgame could be called the small-scale stage of the
game of go. During the opening and middle game the board is
open and the fighting tends to range afl up and down and
across it. By the endgame the board has been more or less di-
vided up into separate territories, and most of the fighting
tends to affect only two of them, occurring at a mutual bound-
ary. The opening and middle game are much like a single
large battle between two armies; the endgame is like a number
of smafler battles going on in different places simultaneously.
In a way this makes the endgame easier, because the local en-
gagements, being smaller, are easier to read out, but in a way
it makes it harder because one's attention must be focused on
several areas simultaneously.
Whether you find it easy or hard, one thing can be said
about the endgame: it is decisive because it comes last. True,
there is sometimes no endgame-one player loses a large group
of stones and resigns early-but in all other cases the endgame
determines the victor. Reversals of the lead are frequent.
Watch a professional game: you wifl see the players most
tense and serious during the endgame. The endgame may be
less exciting than the middle game, but there is a great amount
of satisfaction to be gotten from playing it well, no smafl part
of which comes from winning.
It is not surprising that strong professional players are
generally strong in the endgame. Sakata, 9-dan, is a brilliant
endgame player. Rin, 9-dan, is noted for his ability to squeeze
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the last drop of profit from an endgame situation. Ishida, 9-
dan, considers his greatest strength to lie in the endgame. It
would be hard to find any professional or strong amateur who
was really weak in the endgame.
What makes for strength in the endgame? One's reading
ability and one's eye for tesuji are important, just as they are in
the middle game. Another factor is one's ability to count and
determine the relative sizes of different moves. These tactical
matters, however, are not everything. More important than
counting to find the biggest move, for example, is finding
ways to make profit in sente, or to keep the enemy from doing
so. A player who could not count at all, but understood the
difference between sente and gote, would have the advantage
over an opponent suffering from the reverse affliction. Know-
ing whether you are ahead or behind in the game and varying
your strategy accordingly is also important. So is making sure
that you are always looking at the whole board, not focusing
your attention on one part of it and forgetting the rest, as so
many amateurs seem to do.
Perhaps the best way to explain the kind of thinking that
goes into the endgame is to take you through an actual game
and show you directly, and that is what this chapter will do.
The game is a professional one, so as we go through it you will
see how professionals count, and get lots of glimpses of pro-
fessional strategy, intuition, and reading in action. Unfortu-
nately, we cannot avoid exposing you to the difficulties and
messy details of the endgame, too, but perhaps that is just as
well. It is by mastering such difficulties and details that one
becomes stronger.
As you proceed through the chapter, you will find some
material set aside in boxes. Most of these boxes contain analy-
ses that support statements made in the text, and they can be
skipped over without breaking the continuity of the chapter.
We recommend that you do skip over them on your first read-
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ing and go back to them later, perhaps after finishing chapter
2. Several of the boxes show how the values of certain moves
can be counted, and this general method of counting will be
explained fully in chapter 2.
The game, which begins on the next page, was my
(Ogawa's) third game in the 1971 Oteai (the professional rank-
ing tournament). My opponent, who had the white stones,
was Haruo Kamimura, and at the time we were both shodan.
Both of us had our eyes on promotions that year, so as you
will see, we played very hard. The conditions were six hours
per player and no komi. Kamimura, who is now 5-dan, is quite
strong. I had a rematch against him recently and lost.
Figure 1 shows the first fifty moves, and as you can see,
my opponent concentrated on building up a large territorial
framework on the left side and in the center, giving me all four
corners. By the end of the figure, the weakness of the white
group on the lower side had become the important factor in
the game.
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