Hello Is it worth buying invincible?

Absolutely! When I put all my books up for sale (I had over 200), that is one of only 3 I did not offer.

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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).

Damn what that was a fast reply lol.

But isnt it a whole kifu in one diagram? Thats the only thing that actually makes me unsure wether i should buy the book. And isnt that like annoying? lol

Don't know anything about kifu. But for the heavily annotated games there are several diagrams per game. For the games which are not heavily annotated there is only one diagram per page.

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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).

Oh i see. Then i think ill be buying the book today

got it as a present for christmas. Totally worth buying it!

If you've got an iPad you can also buy it in digital format
https://gobooks.com/books.html

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I am John. John-I-Am.

I own the book but I'm about to purchase the gobooks-version for the iPad. It's so much nicer to play move by move through the diagrams (and you can still use a wooden goban to replay certain moves)

Or a Mac, Go Books now has a working, nice, Mac version too

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

Needs Os x 9/10 to run the GoBooks app....something to remember after I upgrade my Snow Leopard....

Hi Skitarg,

Actually it's not such an easy question to answer,
despite the impressions so far presented.
( I have a hard cover copy of it. )

It depends a lot on what is meant by "worth it".

As a start, what's your approx. Go level ?

I would say it is if you're a SDK or stronger. I can't really say whether or not it is worth it if you're weaker. Maybe other could share their experience on that.

Even disregarding the benefit of going through the games of players of that calibre, there's many beautiful games in it (among those I've replayed, the twenty, ie the ninth of the Shuwa-Shusaku series, is my favourite. The flow of the game just feel so natural), so it's worth the cost if only for the artistic value. At my level, I certainly can't understand all the intricacy of the games, but at the very least (sometime thanks to the comment) I can see the talent of the players and appreciate the beauty of their go.

I think you can learn from these games just from seeing what good go looks like. Seeing many good shapes in games eventually will help you play those shapes too.

As far as appreciating the beauty of the games, the fine historical material in the book adds to that, too.

I bought it at 15k. I did not find it useful at that level, and have never re-opened it.

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

I probably also got it around 15k, but enjoyed it. Enough that when it came out on SmartGo Books I purchased it again.

Probably even a bigger question than your rank is whether or not you are the sort of person who enjoys professional game commentaries. So look at some free ones -- say at gogameguru -- and if you find them interesting, you will probably like Invincible, because the commentaries are even better. If not, well, buy a problem book instead or something.

I believe that for anyone below 1-dan - and probably even dan-level - Invincible is definitely worth buying. I have the book and it has expanded my knowledge of Go considerably.

Of course the style of Shûsaku Hon'inbô is somewhat outdated, but it still shows very good form, so IMO it is worth emulating. The difference in style between the Go of 1800s Japan and the Go of our times is not wildly different, even with the fuseki and joseki innovations of the past 150 years.

The kifu in Invincible are divided into several diagrams to make it easy for readers to follow the commentary. Most of them are 30 to 50 moves long. Some are only 20-30 moves long. Also, there are many uncommented games, showing only the relevant information and the kifu. If you want just to replay the games and skip the commentary, that's fine. For beginners it might be better simply to play through the games a few times before reading the commentary; it is easier to understand the commentary after having applied in one's own games some of the lessons exposed therein. Meanwhile you can expose your mind to what you see in Shûsaku's games and apply them when playing against your friends. It will take some time to master what is being applied, but this way you reinforce good playing habits and weed out bad ones. Which means that you will be able to make it to shodan slowly but surely. (18 months should be more than long enough to reach that goal, provided you play regularly.)

I wholeheartedly recommend buying the book and playing through all of the games therein. Of course, if you want to follow the games of current top pro Go players, it's better to replay games by players such as Yamashita Keigo, Park Yeong-hun, Chen Yaoye, or Gu Li. If you are a DDK or SDK and just want to get start getting good at Go, then Invincible is the book for you.

Does this book exist in electronic format for Kindle?
Can't find it on Amazon except for paperback version.
Recently bought series of ebooks about Honinbo Shuei there - very exciting reading!

It's available in the GoBooks app for iOS, but isn't available on Kindle.