Profile

He is an author of many monographs and research articles devoted to the game of Go and also organized the International Go Symposium 2012 in the USA. Currently, he is working on a full-scale study of the Archaic Greek games of Polis and Pente Grammai. He plays Go with the strength of a USA 1-dan.

Publications

Highly praised introductory books devoted to game of Go:

• Go! More Than a Game. (2003, Revised 2011),
• Go Basics: Concepts & Strategies for New Players,
• Beginning Go,
• Winning Go: Successful Moves from the Opening to the Endgame.

He was the first to apply the methods of Structural Anthropology to the evolution and history of Go in China. Some of his results include:

• The first definitive dating of the earliest comments on the game and why Sun Tzu and the early Daoist School of Strategy never commented on it.
• The first accurate accounting of the Yao origin myths that lines them up with other literary changes the Han dynasty made for political purposes.
• The only full account of Go in Tibet along with a related topic involving the possible passage from ancient Greece and Rome via Bactria of a custodial capture game played on Go-like boards. (abstract online)
• The first study of how differences in language may be able to answer questions about why the East plays Go and the West plays Chess. A preliminary talk was given at the American Go Association Congress Symposium 2012 and the final version was presented at the 2014 Chinese Weiqi Association Go History Conference in Hangzhou, China.

These and his many other articles are available in the Culture Section of the e-Library of the American Go Association and in “Go! More Than a Game.”