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My name is Bernd Schmidt, I play as 2dan at the local club in Munich. I also play on the internet. I'm venkman on KGS, crux on IGS.

I thought I'd use this page to briefly review some of the Go books I've read, in the hope it'll be useful for other people trying to make up their minds which ones to buy. I have tried to describe what the book covers, whether it's any good, and what level you should be to read it.

There's a few more reviews to come soonish. If anyone wants to comment on the reviews, please make it clear who is saying what.

Book Reviews

Graded Go Problems for Beginners (Vol. 3 and 4)

A large collection of problems (mostly life and death, but a few opening and endgame problems as well); somewhat harder than it says on the cover. I'd recommend getting Vol. 3 at maybe 6-10 kyu, Vol.4 a bit after that, but it can't hurt to look at them earlier. I believe it's necessary to solve problems of this kind to become strong, hence these books are indispensable.

In the Beginning

Not a bad book on the opening, but maybe a little brief. It does introduce several basic principles, but it doesn't seem to cover the topic as exhaustively as e.g. Attack and Defense covers the middlegame. I was also disappointed to find only 10 problems in the end.

Tesuji

Pretty comprehensive selection of random tesuji. I can't think of a reason why a beginner wouldn't want to read this book fairly soon after making it past 20 kyu.

Life and Death

A collection of basic life and death situations. I feel this is somewhat harder than Tesuji, but also a good book for beginners. There's some overlap between this and the Graded Go Problems.

Attack and Defense

Calling this a book on middle game fighting doesn't do it justice. This contains everything a go player needs to know in one nice, convenient package. You will read this book over and over again. Essential for anyone 10kyu and above (it will be difficult reading at 10kyu, but since you're going to buy it anyway...).

Beyond Forcing Moves

A very interesting book on an important topic. Each chapter introduces a "theme diagram", which is a whole board position, and gradually works out the best way to play. You could see them as problems, but they tend to be quite difficult, and the real value of the book is in the explanations which are very helpful and teach you the right way to think about these positions. I have not seen another book that covers the same material (well, Attack and Defense contains a few pages with similar material, but in a much more condensed form - read Beyond Forcing Moves to understand what A&D has to say). I'm guessing this should be read by players stronger than 5 kyu.

Understanding How to Play Go

A commentary on some of the author's (a 7 dan amateur) games. I was disappointed with this book. The blurb on the back explains it was derived from videotaped presentations made at various Go clubs, and IMO the conversion into book form is not entirely successful. Most diagrams have very few moves, which is both a curse and a blessing - you don't have to play the games out on a board, but the diagrams do take up a lot of space which could have been better used for extra text. Worse, a lot of the text that it does give is uninspired; e.g. there are several cases where a ko fight is covered with a great many diagrams and comments of the kind "It is now Black's turn to find a ko threat". On the other hand it feels like most of the subtleties are glossed over.

Get Strong at the Endgame

A collection of endgame problems (counting and tesuji). This is the one book that actually made basic endgame technique comprehensible to me. Well worth the money; I imagine it can be read by anyone who has passed 10 kyu (but I didn't get a clue about the endgame until I read it much later).

The 1971 Honinbo Tournament

A collection of commented professional games, all of them involving Ishida Yoshio who won the tournament. This is advanced material; certainly a good book but I find it difficult to learn much from this kind of book. As far as professional games go I get more out of them using a database like GoGoD.

Whole Board Thinking in Joseki (Vol. 1 & 2)

These are wonderful books which do not only introduce many 3-4 point joseki to the reader, but also give guidelines for how to select them based on the whole board position. The material is arranged as a collection of problems and presented very clearly; the books themselves are nicely designed. Skip these (or any other joseki book) until you're maybe 4 kyu - 1 dan, but after that I can't recommend them enough.

The Art of Connecting Stones

This book is a problem collection that covers all the non-obvious ways of connecting groups of stones. As a 1 dan, I find most of these problems quite hard; the material here is certainly valuable. Unfortunately the book is not as well made as it could be. My copy of the book has several duplicated pages, which is probably nothing more than a one-off misprint. However, there also seem to be errors in a few diagrams as well. Some people might also be put off by the fact that the diagrams look like they came out of an early '80s dot matrix printer.

The Direction of Play

As the name implies, this book intends to deal with issues of direction. It contains several commented amateur and professional games, and while there is much that is enlightening, it also cannot be denied that at times the author gets sidetracked a bit. The writing style is at times needlessly pompous. Players trying to learn about direction might first want to give Whole Board Thinking in Joseki a try - a problem book seems a more appropriate way of teaching these concepts. Still, players above 5 kyu will probably get something out of this book.

Making Good Shape

There are three parts in this book - an introductory text on various aspects of shape, a problem collection, and two commented games. This structure works very well, making this a useful book; I imagine a wide range of players starting even with relative beginners can get something out of it. Apart from a few minor typos (e.g. mixing up "white" and "black" occasionally) there's little to criticize. One or two problems have me wondering whether they were reviewed by professionals for correctness (although most likely I'm just missing something).

The ABCs of Attack and Defense

This is a book on middle-game fighting, but very different from "Attack and Defense". This one teaches the reader through a set of examples, all of them taken from handicap games, with varying levels of handicap. It covers some of the lesser-known 4-4 point josekis, but primarily shows example continuations after the joseki. Like "Understanding How to Play Go" from the same publisher, this is based on material not originally intended for book form - in this case it is taken from a TV series by Michael Redmond. However, it works a lot better than "Understanding How to Play Go" does, although there is some repetition of material. I'd recommend this book to mid-kyu or stronger players.

A Way of Play for the 21st Century

This book is essentially about fuseki; it discusses a number of example games from the beginning until the start of the middle game. I've heard people criticize it for being too hard, and they may have a point - whatever Go was trying to say about play in the 21st century probably went right above my head. That doesn't mean I didn't find the book useful. On the contrary - at around 2 kyu, it provided me with new ways to think about the opening, and develop a better feeling for what would be a normal development. The commentary feels different from the standard kind you get e.g. in Go World, it is more detailed and the games here don't have any complicated fighting in them. I think 4 kyus and above should take a look at this book.

Pure and Simple - Takao's Astute Use of Brute Force

The first part of this book could be described as a sort of whole-board problem collection. The reader is asked to find the best move, with a view towards simplifying the position, and there is discussion of the various possibilities. The material is not very dense - I came away from it thinking "was that all?" The second part consists of annotated games from a title match between Takao and Cho U. The annotations are not as extensive as in, e.g. The 1971 Honinbo Tournament. On the whole, I found the book disappointing. There are numerous errors, such as diagrams repeated in the wrong chapter, which indicate a rather sloppy translation job.

The Treasure Chest Enigma

This is a book that's unlikely to make you a stronger go player, but it's a charming collection of tales and humorous whole-board problems. Those looking for go content should find a little of it in the annotated games, although they focus more on the players and the atmosphere than the game itself. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Vital Points and Skillful Finesse for Sabaki

Published by the same company as Takao's Astute Use of Brute Force, it share's some of the other books problems. The material here is more interesting, but it's difficult to recommend a book with this many errors in the diagrams. The translation is distracting, clumsy phrases like "skillful finesse for sabaki" don't improve with excessive repetition. The book began to fall apart a few days after I started reading it. On the whole the lasting impression is that of a missed opportunity.

Counting Liberties and Winning Capturing Races

Perhaps the most positive surprise in my entire collection: a systematic, logical approach to the problem of reading semeais. I only read this at 2d, and it introduced several concepts that I was not consciously aware of previously. It has changed my approach to go. Highly recommended, for anyone out of the DDK range.

Dictionary of Basic Tesuji (Vol. 1 - 4)

This is essentially a collection of tesuji problems from various historical sources, some of which have also found their way into other English-language books (such as Davies' "Tesuji" or "Making Good Shape"). The advantage of this collection is that it's a lot more complete than other books on the topic.

It's a lot of work to go through all four volumes, and the feeling I had was that the problems get harder along the way, with a few classical problems that are essentially too hard for amateurs to solve (to paraphrase: "Meijin Inseki overlooked a brilliant move when he composed this problem").

It's hard to rate these books. I'd recommend them, but perhaps not quite as urgently as some other books on this list. On the other hand I feel that publishers who translate such a body of work into English deserve support, so if you can afford them, please do so: you'll not be disappointed in any case.


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