I stumbled while reading this about Lee Changho. This is insane, 1000 + books is amazing. I want to see picture of his library Lol. Tchan001 might come close but I have to see the pics of the library to see how they store 1000 books.
And Lee Changho actually study all of them is also insane.

Stunning Master Cho Hoon-hyun, his teacher, through untiring practice

Master Cho Hoon-hyun (dan 9), his teacher, once called Lee an innate genius with a flash of lightning wit in his head. Though he was a genius, Lee Chang-ho never slackened his efforts.

He studied tirelessly under Cho Hoon-hyun, who kept a library of more than a thousand books on baduk. Lee Chang-ho used to study until 2 to 3 o'clock in the morning every day, reading those books one by one. Around 5:00 a.m. one day, Cho woke up and went to the bathroom. He found the light in Lee's room still on and was about turn it off when he was surprised by the sound of a baduk stone Lee had just put on the board.

It proves true that genius is 1 % inspiration and 99 % perspiration.

More than 1000 books doesn't seem like so many to me. I have more than 3000 books (of all kinds) in my house, including around 250 go books. I can believe 1000+ go books easily for someone of Cho's stature.

I easily have more than 1000+ go books. If you look at my GD book threads, just the Chinese books thread has over 900. Then there are my Japanese books, Korean books, and English books.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

I like this.

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"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

I have about the same number. I, too, am not surprised that a pro has that many books. I don't think it's anything special.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

There is an old saying: if you know how much money you have then you are not rich. Well, if you know how many books you have then you don't have enough. I don't have a clue how many be have in our house but several years ago I estimated it to be 6000+. About 250 were English-language go books.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I think the point of the story has been totalled missed. It's not about bragging rights. Until quite recently the number of go books in Korea was tiny.

The point being made (apart from the one about Stakhanovite Yi) is surely that Yi Ch'ang-ho was very lucky to have someone in Korea who had been in an almost unique position, as a player in Japan and in pre-Amazon days, to acquire so many books. Most of them would have been in Japanese, I imagine, but that's not much of a problem for well educated Koreans. Shades, also, of that other genius, Go Seigen, studying mostly Japanese books.

err, you mean 6000+ of all kind of books right? They aren't all Go books...



That's true.

I am just amazed by the number of books you guys have, and I thought I have a lot of go books, about 30+, and that number is amazingly huge.

In my casual searches for Chinese Go-related sites I have found hundreds and hundreds of Chinese Go books online (perhaps a thousand?). There are soooo many out there... I still remember the first time I walked into a large Beijing bookstore to find shelf after shelf of Go books.

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I am Tartuffe from GoDiscussions.com

YES



30 is not so many. I have about 40 left over that no one seemed to want when I sold the rest.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I get the point about the number of Korean baduk books years ago. Right now I'm interested in how many Chinese and Korean books are translations of Japanese books. Seems like every good Japanese book almost immediately appears in a Chinese translation. Is it too much to say that the Chinese and Korean weichi and baduk booms are partly due to Japanese books?

And if you don't have a lot of books that you haven't read, but that you "simply must get to one day," then you don't have enough either.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Well, I know I wanted a couple, but I sort of have a weird ethical thing about English language go books - since it's quite a niche market, I'd like to support the publishers who bring us these translations. Therefore if a book is currently in print (or there are rumors of a reprint) I won't buy a secondhand copy.

There may be others who feel the same way. It would be a small effect, but it's also a small market at the moment.

One thing to bear in mind: while professionals or students may do "easy" problems for practice, there's still probably a gap between the books we'd collect and the books they'd collect. No well worn copies of "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go"...

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Occupy Babel!

My head is about to explode. That's the best go book in the world! Flabbergasted is the word I am looking for in order to describe my shock at seeing such sacrilege!

Perhaps they are indeed more inclined to study very high-level tsumego collections then English-language books on go theory for (low-level) amateurs. But that's beside the point. All hail Kageyama.

I would think that pros would collect mostly Asian language go books of which I probably own quite a few they would contemplate collecting.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

I should have been more explicit and said "some of the books we collect".

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Occupy Babel!