On your way to mid dan level, you will experience several times the feeling "understand all", then "understand nothing", then vice versa:)

Please give an example! Some years ago I looked into Understanding How to Play Go for about half an hour, but did not get this impression. Is that because he writes so much for kyus that dans can be disappointed?

When I was in the SDK range in 1993, the common advice was: "Wait until about 3 kyu before you start studying pro games!" Well, I started as 5 kyu with the books existing then: Invincible, 1971 Honinbo, Appreciating Famous Games, a bit later 1992 Tournament Go. The comments were easy enough, but I did not learn much from such books; they are much stronger at entertainment. Now I wonder: How do you compare Yuan's comments to such books? Do they make appreciating pro games feasible for players from, say, (also) 10 to 5 kyu?



If you want to learn something, read go theory books.

I agree with Robert, i don't think one can improve much from reading commentaries of pro games. But i still like reading such books, because they are interesting, one can at least get a slight idea about how professionals think, and thus, understand pro games better.
I read Yuan Zhou's books on playing styles, i liked them, but i like Fairbairn's books better, because you'll also learn something about history, and, more importantly, commentaries are very thorough (more detailed than Yuan's).

Actually I think that in principle improving significantly from commentaries on pro games is possible but requires a considerably greater detail than seen in books so far plus at least sketches of generalised go theory. Something like providing a thorough prositional analysis every fifth move etc. So in practice we (occasionally) see the inverse approach: go theory books with some pro game move examples in them.