Hi everybody,

if you have some advice to give for a go player about books, could you tell us 5 books to buy for :

- a newbie (30- 15 kyu).
- an amateur (14- 5 kyu).
- a good player ( 4 kyu and more) ?

Thank you and happy new year.

- First Fundamentals
- Lessons in the Fundamentals
- Tesuji (Davies)
- Since you restrict the number of books to 5, choose 2 more of Fighting Fundamentals, Life and Death Problems 1, Endgame 1, Easy Learning: Joseki, Opening Theory Made Easy, Graded Go Problems for Beginners 2.



Besides reading all books from above you have not read thus far, also read:

- Kansufu (a reasonably complete edition)
- Fuseki Dictionary (Rin Kaiho, some Asian 2 volumes edition)
- Joseki 2 Strategy and Strategic Concepts of Go
- Since you restrict the number of books to 5, possibly choose more of All About Life and Death 1 + 2 (out of print), Positional Judgement 1, Joseki 3 Dictionary, Attack and Defense (read both this and Fighting Fundamentals)

With only 5 books, you cannot cover all necessary topics for a "good" player.

The Second Book of Go
1001 L&D problems
Opening Theory Made Easy
Tesuji (to just read over, problems are quite better at the next step, but of course, try)
Lessons in the fundamentals of go

Edit: these, except Second Book of Go and LITFG are probably more suited for the next step. They are more of a bridge: start them all as early as possible and keep working on them as you improve. After all, 30k-15k is usually a pretty fast spot, if you start with good reading material you'll kick-start better.




Attack and Defense
Fighting Fundamentals
Lee Chang'Ho Tesuji 4 & 1
Lee Chang'Ho Tsumego 1


Whoah, "good player." I just had a (KGS-induced) ego bump

Segoe-Seigen tesuji (3 volumes... Let's assume it's just one volume ok?)
Lee Chang'Ho, the remaining volumes (again, assume it's just 1)
The Direction of Play
The Style of Go Seigen (could be read in the previous step, and I wanted to add some game review book)
Fairbairn's edition of Gateway to All Marvels, or the Korean re-edition, whatever you fancy

Edit: I'm probably not a good example of restricting my go book purchases. I have more than 100 books, probably around 120 counting PDFs (legal ones, Jonathan Hop sells SYWTPG as a PDF bundle) and SmartGo books.

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net