Life In 19x19

Just bought these from yellow mountain. I'm hoping they are as good as I expect; Lee Chang Ho is my favorite player and I do not wish to be disappointed. Has anyone tried these books? if so please tell me what I am to expect. I expect hard problems that make me think and improve my game. I don't expect a bunch of easy problems not put together well.

They range in difficulty pretty widely (and note that they don't progress from easy to hard the way that the Life and Death books do). There are certainly many problems that you will be able to solve in 5 seconds as a 7k, and many that you won't be able to solve at all. It's a good selection, though.

One thing about them that I dislike is that the problems are grouped together, so once you solve a couple of problems in a chapter and realize it's a eg throw in solution the rest of the problems are much easier.
Also, if you have the Chinese edition the paper is quite thin so the solution is kind of visible through the paper... I believe that the original, Korean, edition was made with thicker paper.
All that said, I think the series, and also the tsumego series are excellent and these are the only Chinese books that I try to more or less always have in stock.

/Mats

They're excellent. As is his life and death series, also 6 volumes. Typically, volumes 1 and 2 are easy enough for an sdk, but they start getting a lot harder from vol 3. The chinese editions are printed on rather low quality paper, but on the other hand, are really cheap.

Thankyou guys I'm excited to start working in these books one book at a time.

I hear they are very good, but Lee Chango didnt really write these books.

LovroKlc wrote:I hear they are very good, but Lee Chango didnt really write these books.

What was his involvement with these two six volume series then?

He probably agreed to lend his name for a price.

tchan001 wrote:He probably agreed to lend his name for a price.

Wonder if its really possible that this could be the extent of it? I mean, you'd think a man of his status would want to at least look over and personally approve something that is going to have his name on it. Eh, people seem to really like both series and they are quite inexpensive. Shrug.

What would be the value of Mr Lee personally writing a bunch of kyu tsumegos? He probably can't even judge their difficulty, he just sees the solution right away.

Helel wrote:

tenuji wrote:

tchan001 wrote:He probably agreed to lend his name for a price.

Wonder if its really possible that this could be the extent of it?

I assume it is like appearing in commercials. Some people care about what they promote, others do not.

"Well it's not as if Lee Chang Ho is promoting a beer or a pair of training shoes. He is promoting a go book."

Has anyone a idea how / where to get them?
I checked all the go webshops i know, amazon, ebay... no way.

Use bhiner or some service to order from taobao. You can get all 12 books (including the life and death series) for relatively cheap, though shipping is a bit expensive. Still, ordering it via bhiner will be cheaper than amazon or the like (since that's essentially what they do).

I'd recommend finding a few other books you want as well, such as 1000 Weiqi Problems, Weiqi Life and Death Drills, and Gokyo Shumyo (if you prefer print to PDF). Again, books are super cheap, but shipping is a bit expensive.

Thank you, i did not knew about bhiner... very nice. i ordered lee Changho Tesuji and L&D ... as well as Weiqi Life and Death Drills, all 3 L&D Drills volumes are quite cheap so i picked the bundle even though i know the third volume is soo hard.
Thanks for the hint!

So, i used "Behiner" to buy them, yesterday package arrived.
Someone was offering all together:
6x lee changho tesuji and 5x (2-6) lee changho tsumego and all 3 "weqi life and death drills" http://senseis.xmp.net/?WeiqiLifeAndDeathDrills ...

The original price was very very low, but all together, with behiner fews and customs ... i think it was around 130 euro (to Germany).
Anyway, i'm happy to be able to study them now