How strong was Go Seigen?: Matches between Go and high-dan rising stars 1949 ~ 1951

In 1949, go in Japan was recovering but the tournament scene was still nascent. At the highest level, Go Seigen still dominated through various matches organised specifically for him the Yomiuri newspaper. But he was running out of serious opponents.A decision was therefore made by the Yomiuri to pit ten different rising stars at 6- and 7-dan level (very high grades at the time) in a single match, even though this meant Go giving handicaps in every case - he was 8-dan at the time. These were the minute pro handicaps based on having Black more often than White, or always Black, under no-komi go.This match, continuing into 1951, resulted in an overwhelming victory for Go, and so a follow-up match in the same multi-player format was arranged, but with the grades of the opponents at 7- and 8-dan.The result was that Go was found to be REALLY strong!!This book covers both these matches in considerable detail, with all commentaries being based on many professional sources. But the opportunity has been taken to change the format of the author's previous books on Go's matches. In this case, a lot of text has been devoted to both extended biographies of all the players and anecdotes about them. In some ways the book often reads like "The Go Companion," a pleasant book to read in bed. The idea is to paint a detailed picture of the go scene and the various players during Go's hegemony. This should help mightily with those who study Go's games, especially as there is much detailed discussion of the players' styles.The games of an earlier match, Go against 5-dans, are also given, and the book has a general index and an index in the now usual Go Wisdom format, to help further with deep study of Go's corpus. Read more