I was wondering if anyone had read this book and how they felt about it. I'm a natural book collector in addition to everything else, so I tend to pick up new Go books when they're available (since they go out of print so quickly), even ones for elementary players (I figure reviewing the basics again can't hurt me).

I suppose I'm wondering if this book would offer anything at all to someone who already owns the Janice Kim series and a couple of other similar level books. The thing that most caught my eye about this one is that they focus on 9x9 which is one of my weak points. I don't just mean the board size. I mean the close contact/fighting aspect of it.

Anyway...opinions? Has anyone taken a look at it?

At 29k all you need to do is play, play and play some more. Reading books is time wasted not playing.

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FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

Yes, I understand that this is the prevailing opinion, but I'm afraid it doesn't work like that for me. And, in any case, to play I have to be at home. But I can't be home all of the time. I have work, class, and other things to do that often leave me with wait periods or random free time. I'd much rather spend that time reading a book about Go than staring off into space.

In that case, if you already have Kim's books (at least the first two volumes), then you dont' need another introductory book. I absolutely recommend a problem book or two (or three...). Graded Go Problems for Beginners volumes 1 & 2 are probably perfect for you. I promise that this will help you improve much more than reading another introductory book.

Yes, I've been working out of the first book for the last week. I've reached the third section in it, and the problems are becoming noticeably more difficult, so I've been reviewing those.

Yes, I totally understand your situation of "I know I don't need books, but I like them!"

The previously-recommended Graded Go Problems for Beginners that Like Books with Long Names and Janice Kim's books are both great. Jonathan Hop has a book for DDK in his 'So you want to play Go' series. I have only read the top book in the series, but I really enjoyed it, and am sure the DDK book is of similar quality. Additionally, books that have reviewed games of amateurs may be good for you. For those, consider the third Janice Kim book, How Not to Play Go, and Freegame's book, which I have not read but know includes lots of reviewed novice games. Beyond these and a few other problem books... I believe that In the Beginning was my first introduction to a lot of large-scale strategic thinking, and it's more readable than most books, even the others from the same series.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

I bet it does, to be honest. It's fine to have books and enjoy reading them, but it's highly unlikely that playing games instead wouldn't help your Go more.

Reading go books in random free time is obviously a great idea, if you enjoy it.

Alright then, if playing is out of the question for most of the day, the answer is tsumego, tsumego and more tsumego.

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FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

I guess you don't have a laptop or smartphone? At your level, you can learn quite a bit from just playing against the computer. There will be time to worry about accumulating bad habits later.

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Occupy Babel!

This is why I don't post my Go rank... when I ask for a book review (in the book forum, no less), I don't want to be lectured about I should be playing more Go instead of reading books.

zarzamora, I have the book on my shelf, but I must admit, I haven't read it yet, so I can't offer any advice.

have you seen these reviews? http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoBasicsConcept ... NewPlayers

I'd recommend getting a game collection book to read if you have problem books you're already happy with and want some variety.

1971 Honinbo Tournament from Kiseido
Kamakura or Final Summit from Slate and Shell

Game collections of professionals make sense at 9k and stronger, but not at 29k.

If you want to look at commented games, go and browse through the Go Teaching Ladder. You're better off with that, and it's free of charge.

Besides, I second Carl Jung: If you cannot play games, do tsumego.

I would say: Do problems. It does not necessarily have to be tsumego - everything that trains your reading is fine.

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Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)

I would say: Do what you enjoy!

If you enjoy reading Invincible, read it.
If you enjoy life & death problems, do tsumego.
If you enjoy playing, play games.
etc...

But be aware that some paths will help you develop faster.
For most people playing games and doing tsumego is best as for getting stronger, but if you don't enjoy it I doubt it will do you any good in the long run.

/Mats

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mohsart - games & books
http://spel.mohsart.se/

I picked it up off my bookshelf and skimmed through it on the bus this morning.

I had forgotten that the primary reason I bought it was to get the CD, because one of the things it included was software for running tournaments, WinTD -- that I was so far unable to get from any other source (including from other people I knew, who had it). The same CD had been offered a couple of times in membership drives and such, and yet I was still unable to get a copy.

The book, I think, is better than the Sensei's reviews. Some people think that 9x9 isn't Go and shouldn't be used for teaching (and say even worse things about Capture Go). I think both can be a very effective tool in learning many basic concepts that translate very well to the larger board.

Capture Go only get a mention in the book. The 9x9 games used are played by unnamed professionals in attempt to not teach bad habits from the start.

There were other books -- aimed at beginners -- that I read as a beginner that I thought were too hard. I'm no longer a beginner, so its difficult to judge how useful this book might be, but at first glance, its easy to read and understand, and I think can be useful for beginners.

Most basic concepts seem to be covered, using examples from the 9x9 professional games. And at the end is a chapter dedicated to beating igowin

The CD contains a lot of other useful resources, a few of which are now dated and obsolete (some internet links, etc.). It includes the popular igowin program, as well as other shareware versions of GoWrite and SmartGo for viewing sgf files.

It include a small collection of Shusaku games as well as some Go Seigen games.

It also includes the popular online tutorial The Interactive Way To Go. A video tutorial, Complete copies of past member's yearbook CDs (which include member's EJournal content for those years), and lots of other resources, most of which are already available on the AGA website, if you know where to find them.

In my opinion, the CD alone is worth the price of the book (even though the AGA usually gives this same CD away for free, except I've never been able to get a copy)

One reader wrote “. . . have you seen these reviews? http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoBasicsConcept ... NewPlayers”

In response to these comments in Sensei’s Library on my book, the problem with critical reviews by beginners is that they often misinterpret things that they do not understand.

A completed game is demonstrated in the introduction of “Go Basics” and there are only two substantial rules in go that need to be known. The first, the rule of capture, is clearly explained in Chapter One and the second—that no position can be repeated (ko)—is explained later on, when the reader is able to fully understand it. The rest of the book deals not with rules but with go knowledge that is essential for a player’s improvement for playing on any size board.

I am a bit suspicious of the second review since, from what I have been able to determine, he wrote it after playing go for about a month. In the one concrete example he cites, he missed that the explanatory text starts out not once, but twice with the word “If.” Nor did he seem to know that commentaries on variations from the game always start out with 1 in order not to confuse the reader about what really happened. Then the diagrams and text go back to the actual game. All this is on page 109.

Following this logic, I suspect that the “four times” players got “two moves” were demonstrations that a group was dead and one side did not have to reply to any moves that were made by the other side to save them. Also, if he reads this, could he please be explicit about where the marked stones-text “problems” are? No one else has complained about any of this in the four years it has been out. However, maybe there are some mistakes—a go book is rarely written without a few and we writers would always like know about them in order to correct them in later editions! This was done, for example, in the second printing of my first book, “Go! More Than a Game,” where a mistake in the first printing about the final score of a game was a left-over from a deleted game that slipped by me and quite a few editors.

Peter Shotwell
pshotwell at gmail

I still remember being confused about these types of diagrams in other books when I was a beginner, but I thought your text in this book described these "extra moves" diagrams fairly well.

But then again, it could be that I better understand what I'm reading now



Yeah, I posted the link without reading the actual reviews first. Had I realized that they were only negative reviews, I might not have posted it.

That's why I've picked the book up off my shelf and am reading it on my daily commute this week.

I like what I'm reading so far. It seems a good, and easy to understand introduction for beginners.

Hmm... Seems like some people might need some extra help when they're starting out. So, who wants to write the book about how to read books?