Life In 19x19

I've been thinking about this, so went looking in the archives of this board and found this thread:

http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8910

where someone asked about the best classical games for a beginner to study. Some people said there is no such thing, and I don't think the OP got a real answer. I can't help still wondering about it, though. Maybe talking about beginners was a bit of a red herring.

I mean, certain games of chess have been anthologized dozens of times because they are such vivid examples of this or that strategic idea well executed. They are worth studying because of that. They aren't necessarily famous games, but the most instructive ones. Nevermind if beginner or not, anyone learning the game can benefit from them. Are there no professional go games like that? After a lot of googling, I haven't managed to find any book of them, for sure. Maybe go just doesn't work that way?

On the one hand, I can see how there are too many things going on in a game of go, for it to be a vivid example of any one idea. But on the other hand.. to my mind untutored in go but well based in chess, it's hard for me to imagine that there is no such thing as instructive games that are more worth studying than others.

Thoughts... recommendations... ideas, anyone?

I don't think there's any specific best book to start looking at if you want to see Classic Games.

You can look at Invincible, 1971 Honinbo Tournament, Kamakura, Lee Sedol's Commented Games...

There are so many that I don't think it really matters at all which you should get.

I think you hit is on the head when you say there is too much going on. I, also, have never seen such a list. I think it would make more sense to try to create such list which where limits to certain aspects of the game. But then, I don't think I have seen these either.

Go books focusing on specific topics will often reference positions from pro games. A book on moyos will choose positions of interest from selected pro games to prove a point. But it is usually only a few moves in a given game that are necessary to illustrate the point, even though they may offer commentary on other parts of the game.

The GoBase.org game gallery does have some games categorized by something that is interesting about them.

There has been some discussion about something missing in the go literature; namely, a corpus of games that could be studied that will cover a good set of expert knowledge. (See this thread.) But even then, the student would need a teacher or some appropriate commentary, and it's difficult to write commentary for broad levels of skill.