This year a large theoretical manual was published, which summed up the long-term studies of the opening regulations of the Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi is widely criticized for its sufficient research and practical impossibility to shy away from the well-known no-brainer options. Finally, this year, the wishes of the international renju community were heard (the main conservatives and opponents of changing the main debut regulations – the old Japanese, who were accustomed to playing by the old rules and didn’t want to change for a long time, suddenly turned back) and the general assembly of the international renju federation A decision was made to change the main regulations in favor of a more progressive co-operation of the 8. Thus, “Tiger in a cage” became the symbol of the sunset of the era of the debut Yamaguchi regulations, which began in 2009, and another link in the chain of theoretical publications. Today we go to the past and remember his predecessors.

The first major theoretical publication in the 80s was the so-called “Sagara”.

The book was an analysis of the strongest fifth alternative moves and covered all debuts. It is based on a series of 25 articles published at various times in the Japanese journal Renju Sekai. It is noteworthy that Sagara had no analogues in Japan or anywhere else; these articles were never again combined into one book (in Japan, they remained a series of articles in various editions of Renju Sekai magazine). It has long become the main reference book of domestic players in Renju, many still have a printed edition. Now you can find an electronic version of this manual.

Another interesting work was another brainchild of the national copy-paste: a collection of articles by the legendary Goro Sakata.

Goro Sakata is probably Renju’s biggest popularizer. As chief editor of Renju Sekai from 1960 to 1970, he wrote many articles, brochures and books, including the first book on Renju in English (co-authored with Wataru Ikawa), published in 1981.
The original edition of 1981 (left) and the 2010 reprint with a preface by Sam Sloan.

This collection of Sakata’s articles was devoted to the main (the main one is called the strongest, usually with a win) to the fifth move and also covered all debuts. Since, in practice, the main fifths, because of the advantages of blacks, were practically not met, this manual was much less in demand than Sagar, but it was still of great interest for several reasons. Firstly, it is not so easy for beginners to realize an advantage in the fifth, where there is a gain, and secondly, many of the attack methods presented in the articles, now perceived as canonical and typical, were still a wonder.

The most complete and major theoretical collection until now was Mikhail Kozhin’s “Ring of Stones” and Alexander Nosovsky.

This book was published in 1997 and at that time was a really serious theoretical tool. Mikhail Kozhin, the then editor-in-chief of Informator Renju, where tournament games were published, based on his editorial, as well as gaming experience, compiled a collection of debuts, which became for many years the reference book of any renjista, pore called “game Kozhin.” If the Sagar had a detailed disassembly of mainly 1D and 5D debuts (it was published during the debut of the rules with the choice of color, where these debuts were the most popular), then Ping covered all the debuts with in-depth analysis and detailed analysis. Nowadays “Ringing of stones” is very outdated. First of all, it is relevant mainly for the RIF debut regulations (with two alternatives), because many five-way approaches that can be found in the Yamaguchi regulations are not disassembled there. Secondly, the book is replete with errors. The quintessence of erroneousness was the main fifth move in the 10 diagonal opening, where there are about 5 winning continuations, but the development indicated in the ringing is incorrect and does not lead to Black’s victory. Thirdly, since ’97, the theory has leaped forward in a number of debuts that are even relevant to RIF (for example, in 3B or 11B).

18 years have passed since the publication of Ping and only now has a collection of current theory been released. Inaccuracies have already been found in Tigre and will probably still find quite a few errors due to insufficient theoretical knowledge. However, this only means that we are waiting for new work ahead of us with corrected errors and deeper analyzes, which have already been adapted, probably under co-management 8.