My personal feeling is that opening theory made easy is about perfect for 8k. It'll be useful for a few more stones too. Fundamental principles will have some bits that are very useful for 8k too, but will have a lot more that's still useful at 2k - there's still stuff in there sequence wise that I'd get wrong if asked, so it's a while before it's value runs out.

Frankly, get both, they're both excellent, just buy OTME first if you can only afford one right now.

They are both excellent books, with Opening Theory Made Easy towards the easy end for you (and cheaper) and Fundamental Principles of Go on the harder side.

P.S. Lamp, how about posting your most recent game and let's see if you followed all Otake's "15-25k" advice. My bet is no.

No.

1) The OP has asked for opening theory for KGS 8k. First Fundamentals explains it better for that readership than Fundamental Principles and Opening Theory Made Easy.

Better than Fundamental Principles because Fundamental Principles explains opening aspects not essential for KGS 8k level (ch. 1.I, ch. 3; for the same reason, I have not mentioned Joseki 1 Fundamentals), explains dubious theory (ch. 1.II), explains similar theory (I assume, do not recall for sure, ch. 1.III) to First Fundamentals (ch. 7 beginning) and, IIRC, does not explain some essential theory found in First Fundamentals (ch. 1).

Better than Opening Theory Made Easy because Opening Theory Made Easy explains some theory explained also by First Fundamentals (do not help opponent aka family feud, avoid empty triangle, avoid pushing from behind; if we call that opening theory:) ), explains opening aspects not essential for KGS 8k level (special properties of 4-4 and 4-5), explains some dubious theory (The 4th line is the line of development, the *3rd line is the line of completion), seems to explain less about thick shapes (but this is only a wild guess from the headings) and does not explain (please correct me if I remember incorrectly) some essential theory found in First Fundamentals (ch. 1).

2) Fundamental Principles and Opening Theory Made Easy are good books worth reading for other reasons. (Depending on the reasons, there can be better alternatives though. E.g., for approach moves and pincers, the principles in Joseki 1 Fundamentals are more detailed. But again, this is not essential for KGS 8k yet.)

3) A KGS 8k wishing to improve quickly should first read the books that - besides offering some desired information on opening theory - offer him the most extra food. Fundamentals Principles ch. 2 is useful for that purpose, ch. 4 is, IMO, too advanced. Opening Theory Made Easy offers various advice but mostly more suitable for real world SDK than real world DDK (such as probably KGS 8k). First Fundamentals offers DDK advice in all its chapters.

Thus my advice: Read all three books, read Lessons in the Fundamentals, read Graded Go Problems 1 + 2, but... do not make the mistake to miss any of the books at KGS 8k level! Be prepared that especially Fundamental Principles and Opening Theory Made Easy contain also a significant percentage of SDK material to be considered possibly only later.

Hah. I'll actually take you up on that, perhaps tomorrow, although I fully expect to be shown wrong.

The thing is though, and maybe it's just me, that reading that I'm supposed to do X, Y, and Z is only useful to me until the idea that I need to do X, Y, and Z sinks in. But just because the idea has sunk in doesn't mean I do it execute the ideas perfectly every time, it just means I start consciously taking them into consideration when I choose moves. The failures then come in weighing priorities, or perhaps not correctly judging how the board would develop if I play a certain way.

So I can read OTME, and see things like "build box-like moyos" or "don't play near thickness". I already consciously think about those and almost all of the other 18 principles in OTME during every game. Which will help me do it more effectively? Reading the book again, or simply playing games and getting reviews and having people point out where I failed to follow the principles?

In the book, almost none of the diagrams (if any at all) are full board positions. So you're looking at probably one corner of the board, when you already know what the definining theme of this principle is. It's much easier than when you have roughly 4x as much board space to consider and you don't know which principle applies. And that's the area that I'm not sure the book necessarily helps with.

So in summary, I think that books like OTME or ItB are useful to teach you that you need to do certain things or consider certain things. But when it comes to application in real games, you need whole board problems, or game reviews of your own games.

Personally, my recommendations for fuseki are:

20k - 15k: In the Beginning
17k - 12k: Opening Theory Made Easy
10k - 1k: 501 Opening Problems
6k - 1k: Get Strong at the Opening
8k - ?d: Way of Play for the 21st Century

I've read the first 2. Working through the 501OP. Tried GSatO and put it down because it was harder than 501OP. Also slowly working through Way of Play.

I also agree that Fundamental Principles of Go is maybe a little hard. It's a good book with useful ideas, but I had to put it down because I wasn't getting much out of it. I would read the sections, and almost always fail to solve most of the problems at the end of each chapter. Maybe again when I'm 5k.



All that aside, it's a light read, so maybe I'll pick it up again one day and go through the first 5 principles again just to see how I feel coming back to it after a few months. It probably wouldn't take more than 5-10 hours to go through the whole book, so it's not a huge time commitment.

8k? IMO that's a pretty hard book. I tried some of the ideas from it that I didn't really understand on OGS and I lost for the first time against a player (davos) I had previously beaten 4 times.

I've only gone through probably 30 pages, but I found the depth of coverage and examination of different variations of opposing star point fuseki pretty enlightening and easy to follow. It's possible it gets more difficult later, but mostly I just appreciate that it treats fuseki in the whole board sense.

I probably won't be able to get the full benefit of it its contents until I'm much stronger, but already I learned some interesting things about timing and move order with regards to tenukiing during the middle of a joseki sequence.

Also, I think it's too easy to look at a rating and say "oh he's such and such kyu, probably not ready". But on a finer level, I think you could probably rank each of a person's individual skills (reading, tesuji, effective use of influence, attacking, joseki, etc) on their own individual kyu/dan scales, and then the person's "rating" is some average of the individual ratings.

At a tournament once I played against someone who was 15k (I was 10k) and she crushed me because she read like a 5k and I read like a 12-13k and we got into a fight, but I think in other areas I play more like a 5-6k. A friend of mine who I play in person often is about 5 stones stronger than me on KGS(9k vs 4k), but I can beat him with 2 stones with a fair amount of regularity. On the other hand, I've never beaten anyone stronger than 7k on KGS, and I don't think he's ever lost to anyone weaker than 6k on KGS.

So idk, I think a single rating doesn't really tell the entire story.