Jujube wrote:
I'm around 5k EGF. What's your impression of Direction of Play and Positional Judgement High Speed Game Analysis, what were your thoughts, are they still relevant in the AI era, what do you think of them for my level?
Direction of Play:
It gives a useful idea, but go theory is richer than the book might make you believe: there is more than one concept of direction of play: in which part of the board to play next (IIRC, this is the kind explained in this book); in which directions to develop stones and prevent development of opposing stones; how stones at different places work together (haengma). Then, there is the fighting Korean's view that tactical reading dominates "old-fashioned" directions. Furthermore, one can evaluate moves and thereby determine important places. So learn from the book but open your mind very much more broadly than the book reveals, i.e., also look beyond the book.
Positional Judgement High Speed Game Analysis (Cho Chikun):
It is useful but only scratches the topic. Remove the advertisement tag High Speed Game Analysis from the title for the same reason. If you want a much more detailed discussion of territorial positional judgement (the book's topic), read Positional Judgement 1 - Territory. (Afterwards, you might consider volume 2 to also evaluate influence, options, aji and fights.) Furthermore, there is the Japanese tewari kind of positional judgement and absence / balance of positional inconsistencies (such as "one inefficient stone here is balanced by one such opposing stone there"), which is not discussed in the aforementioned books but which you might learn about from other sources. Positional judgement is one of the central go skills so it is good that you start studying it.
AI programs have their own kind of positional judgement: estimated winning probabilities. Except for wild approximative guesses, such is impossible for human players. We do need positional judgement in terms of strategic concepts. Our judgement may not be useful for AI programs, but I have found it very useful also for judging about AI-created positions.
Level:
5k is good for reading all mentioned books, but for PJ2 this is the lower rank.