I am about 1D or 2D now on KGS.

I have read books like attack and defense, tesuji (elementary go series), suji and anti-suji of go, killer of go, direction of play, but the only book I was really able to read through every single page in the book and not stop after reading 30 pages was Lessons in the fundamentals. The commentary is great and the tips/conversations boost the knowledge within and really make it the best go book I can think of. Tesuji was also great, and I read 50+ pages of it, but I knew most the tesuji by the time I read it.

What I want out of a book is something that will be complimentary to Lessons in the fundmentals, or cover the things that are not covered in Lessons. I do not agree with doing Life and death problems, because in a real game reading is a lot different and I can read alot more in real games, so do not suggest a L&D book.

I am considering "Fundamental Principles of Go" by Yilun Yang, "Way of play for the 21st century" by Go seigen, "Positional Judgment" by Cho Chikun, "Catching Scent of Victory" by O Rissi, and "Otake's Secrets of Strategy" by Otake Hideo.

The bold ones are the ones I am more interested in right now.


Also was interested in but not sure about: "Vital Points and Skillful Finesse for Sabaki" by Yoda Norimoto

I will also be getting "Improve your intuition volume 1" because I have volumes 2 and 3, and they are great. As good as lessons in the fundamentals.



I like Fundamental Principles of Go because I think it might build on "Lessons in the Fundamentals" and expand the horizon. However, Catching the Scent of Victory sounds interesting because I hear it teaches you how to sense a "game changing move" is going to happen, which might be true.

Anyone who has read these can please give me their opinion, and if possible which one would work the best with someone who faithfully follows "lessons in the fundamentals"?

Other suggestions are accepted.

Positional Judgement by Cho Chikun, with the caveat that a bit of the introductory material will be beneath you. Counting is a fundamental skill of go.

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I fully agree.

I just picked up this one:



Here's David Carlton's review:



Personally I can say that I enjoy reading it a lot. It is typical Kage's writing style and I think it has lot's of takeaways also for your non-handicap games. Plus, the book is relatively cheap which makes this buy a no-brainer.

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By the sounds of it, you'd like Yilun Yang's books. He's a great teacher (I used to have lessons with him) and his books are also really good.

It's different to Kageyama's book, Yang focuses more on general principles and how you can apply them to make decisions in your game with minimal reading. It will help you develop your feeling for the game. People who know me will know that I'd usually recommend life and death problems, but if that's not for you, go with Fundamental Principles.

My 2c

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Go Game Guru: Learn Go | How to Get Better at Go | Go Game Shop | Go Boards | Baduk TV

I dont play handicap games though :O

Both of your candidate books are quite a bit different from Kageyama's book, and I'm not sure that either of them meet your expectation of being a follow-up to Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go.

Catching Scent of Victory is a great read, offering an inside look at how a professional thinks about a game as it progresses - but instead of teaching you to find the game changing move yourself, it describes how O Rissei sensed his chances. Although it focuses on the critical junctures, we get to follow his thought process from start to finish in each of about 20 games.

Yang's The Fundamental Principles of Go, unlike Kageyama's or O Rissei's books, makes little attempt to entertain, and offers a much more practical approach, formulating principles to be aware of in a variety of situations and offering some problems to test if the principles have sunk in. While it goes into more depth than Kageyama's book, it seems more concerned with principles than fundamentals.

I found both books to be insightful and worthwhile, but if you're looking for Kagemaya's way of telling anecdotes while teaching, these aren't quite it.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I see. Is catching the scent of victory still good for study though? I dont think I will get it.

The principles seems interesting, but I dont want rules for just certain situations, but rather broader ideas and explanations for conceptual ideas.

What other books would I look into?

Your aims are contradictory. You need to make compromises and accept that not each book is like Lessons in the Fundamentals. (It does not help you at 1d/2d either that I am writing a similar book for DDKs.)

You have a good idea to study more fundamentals but at the same time you say that you have not read some other theory books from their first to last page. You need to overcome that and read books completely and thoroughly. Otherwise whichever books are recommended to you will be too tough for your taste. So in the following I assume you to do that.

What do you mean by "complementary"? Filling the topics with detailed knowledge? Other topics? Other teaching style? Other learning style? Since you mention a desire to learn more fundamentals, below I assume that you mean studying fundamentals in much greater detail.

The books you mention don't hurt but they do not really offer what you seem to be looking for: fundamentals in much greater detail and suitable to make a low dan stronger. Of the books you mention, Fundamental Principles has, for five topics, more details than Lessons in the Fundamentals but by far fewer than many. It is more suitable for kyu than for dan players (as is Joseki vol. 1).

Read my three Joseki volumes. They offer fundamentals in much (factor 10~20) greater detail, with generally applicable principles, methods and judgement (many more aspects than Cho's book). This is so even if you remove the joseki topic from these books. However, you will need to learn. If already Attack & Defense was too tough for you, then my books will be tougher. IMO, that is good because it forces you to learn and, to surpass your current rank, you need to force yourself to learn more.

You will need to read also other books simply because there are more topics to be studied, but do not expect other books to complete your fundamentals knowledge. Literature is still pretty incomplete. So you must also constantly look for further fundamentals everywhere in your games etc.

There are no other specific books to be recommended for you (except that you can also read every specialised book, especially the factually best ones for their topics), which would be more urgent for you than studying life+death, tsumego, pro games, openings. You sound like such is not your taste but... believe me... you have to study also that.

What you will miss is entertainment. It is easy to fill a beginner's book like Lessons... with entertainment but if one does it with the same density in advance books, then the reader learns less contents. You can, however, take a break after every 4 serious books and read 1 fun book in between.

***

For the topics mentioned in Lessons in the Fundamentals, recently I have written in German which books to read for further learning:

http://www.dgob.de/yabbse/index.php?topic=4718.20
message #24

Its not that the books are too hard, but they are either too obvious or too specific usually. "Attack and Defense" covers really basic material that I feel shouldnt even need explaining, while "trick play" or "joseki" books are too focused and narrow. I like big conceptual ideas that are not obvious, like "stones go walking" or "good shape" which to me was like totally new.



Attack and defense was too easy- I didn't feel it was worth reading. I usually don't like joseki or opening books as the ideas in there usually dont fit with me and for one reason or another I dont like them. I might look into your books and see though.




You highly underestimate lessons, because those are things I most commonly see mistakes in from 7 kyu to 1Dan level games. I highly feel that it is the best go book that was ever written, because I have not read another go book that I feel actually helps accomplish anything.




With the books like "Fundamentals" by yang I was thinking of expanding lessons in the fundamentals and maybe finding conceptual ideas that were not covered. I think my go improves alot from "conceptual" ideas like not surrounding territory but instead attacking, and extending from thickness rather than joseki books or tsumego.

With "catching the scent of victory" I was thinking about picking up professional ideas and how they think, along with maybe seeing how to sense a game changing move incoming.



I have been able to read a not small amount of "All about thickness" but the idea is too easy I feel again. I think my problem with alot of conceptual books is there are some interesting points, but after 50 pages it just repeats itself and I already understand the content for the most part. Sure somewhere in there is a nugget of information I dont know, but most of it is repeating itself.

To make it more clear: What im looking for are not proverbs or principles, such as "hane at the head of two stones" nor is it "extend from a wall the same length as the wall but +1" kind of thing, but rather "Thickness is used to attack, not to surround points. (Examples of why this is why it is)".

I do not like "in this exact joseki position this is the joseki and the follow ups". The specific situation is something you can learn from a 5D for free in the KTL or if the opponent plays it, not that hard.

What I want are big conceptual ideas that you have to work you brain through, and can apply in a large sense. Such as Kageyama saying "Amateurs try to surround points, make bad shape, cannot judge situations, and cannot tell if a move is necessary."

That is something you need to understand what he is saying, process your own diagrams and figure out what he means, and then put it into context and you learn alot that way. But if you just show one specific trick play, for an exact position, it might help some, but not near as much.

And the problem with "attack and defense" is that A. the content is really basic and B. the content repeats itself too much. The problem with "direction of play" is that it uses all those little rules that help, but in the end it is really something you can learn on your own, again dont feel the book really helps.

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Go is such a beautiful game.

Ah, you read it too late? :)



Start with Vol. 2; it has the least chance of "being too easy".



Lessons, the book? No, certainly not.



Sorry, but I disagree. Very common mistakes in that range such as overconcentration are not studied enough (or at all?) in that book.



Oh, wow, what a strong statement! Read Joseki 2 and Capturing Races 1 and report whether they actually accomplish anything! :) If they do not, then your knowledge by far exceeds your rank.



You will think the same as about Attack & Defense: too easy. Even the - in comparison to "Fundamentals" with respect to josekis - much more detailed Joseki 1 might have the same danger or might tell you something new - I cannot know; it depends on your current level of knowing details of fundamentals. IOW, if you always choose the correct extension, approach move and pincer and know why, then you do not need Joseki 1 and Yang's book.



Read my books.



I like conceptual ideas or explanations of thinking probably even more than you do and the prospect of "learning them from professional books" has almost always greatly disappointed me (exceptions: Lessons..., Attack & Defense (read as 5k), Strategic Concepts (read as 5k), Myongyi research professors). The best dan level contents you can find from professionals in books is difficult problems, structured by type of problems, but for some strange reason you do not like problems. Ok, I understand: even structured problem books do not really provide conceptual ideas. Hence read books or webpages of those amateur authors liking to teach conceptual ideas: Bill Spight, Charles Matthews, I. There are some more but hard to find (such as a very few German articles on the endgame) or too scientific or too computer-go-orientated (e.g., Thomas Wolf).

Yes .



What I see most often is choosing to leave bad shape on one side to try and a group on the other. Like in a joseki, letting your self get surrounded and get weak so you can make a group next to their wall.






Anyway I am still looking around and reading all the book descriptions before I decide .

You may find the book reviews by crux interesting.

Interesting but too emphemistic:

Counting Liberties and Winning Capturing Races: "It classifies semeais [...] and works out the possible results for each type as well as the necessary conditions for them. Situations involving ko are included. " This sounds as if everything were worked out completely and correctly, but this is by far not so.

Whole Board Thinking in Joseki: "also give guidelines for how to select [the josekis] based on the whole board position". This gives a false impression because 1) the books have only a selection of example positions, 2) the example positions show mostly the early opening, so guidelines for the embedding during the middle game are missing, 3) the example strategic choices are not well enough embedded in a context of successive strategic choices to be made, 4) the selection of strategic choices is highly selective, 5) there are no systematically worked out general guidelines for types of similar josekis(!), 6) IIRC, the "guidelines" are often amidst the text. The books are really much more example-orientated than guideline-orientated.