Quotation reference:
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The subject of fundamentals does not fit in one book. Depending on where one draws a line between fundamentals and more advanced knowledge, a few or many books are needed to cover "the fundamentals". Here are books teaching primarily and comprehensively the fundamentals themselves (in contrast to being mainly a motivation, such as Lessons in the Fundamentals):

- First Fundamentals: 30k-4k, big and valuable, weaknesses, aspects of psychology, unreasonable moves, helping the opponent, shapes, capture, connection, cut, life+death, reading, ko, endgame, attack+defense, etc., many principles for avoiding every DDK mistake other than advanced mistakes of life + death and reading.

- Joseki 1 - Fundamentals: 18k-3d, first corner moves, corner enclosures, approach moves, pincers, move types, stone meanings, development directions, extensions, many principles etc.

- Fundamental Principles of Go: 13k-1k, opening, efficiency, approach moves and pincers, invasion and reduction, principles.

- Joseki 2 - Strategy: 18k-7d, connection, cut, gote, sente, aji, efficiency, influence, thickness, stability, urgency, investment, playing elsewhere, options, flexibility, mobility, forcing, haengma, timing, counting territory, methods of local judgement, global positional judgement, tewari, strategic lines, strategic choices, group meanings, strategic planning, very many principles etc.

- Attack and Defense: 10k-3k, territory, influence, aims about territory and influence, mutual running fight, leaning attack, cutting fight, cut, non-contact moves, severity, attacking shape moves, contact plays, forcing, induction, overdeveloped shape, thank-you moves, reduction, invasion, related shape moves, flexibility, a few principles etc.

- Fighting Fundamentals: 13k-5d, mutual settling fight, reduction, mutual reduction fight, invasion, attack on one group, splitting attack, multiple groups fight, mutual running fight, cutting fight, leaning attack, exchange, capturing race, complex fight; primary aims about life+death, stability and strategic choice; secondary aims about territory, influence, aji and playing elsewhere; reading, interruption of a fight, techniques of attacking life incl. flexibility and severity; techniques of defending life incl. simplicity, options, contact play, flexibility and efficiency; forcing incl. combined attack and defense, timing, sacrifice; induction, overdeveloped shape; strategy incl. about what, where, when, why, how to fight, general fighting strategy; many principles etc.

- Strategic Concepts of Go aka The Basics of Go Strategy: 5k-3d, miai, aji, forcing, thickness, overconcentration, sabaki, exchange, test moves.

There are lots of books with much less teaching of fundamentals and other books specialising in the fundamentals of particular topics, such as tesuji, life+death, positional judgement, capturing races etc. If you like, I can mention also such teaching a lot of fundamentals on one topic. Especially players 5k-7d need to read also a greater number of specialising books.

Regarding Kageyama's book, I'd say that it's not actually about fundamentals specifically, as Robert mentions, but more of a book on the mindset you need to approach learning go, with a couple tesuji and other go related examples thrown in. It's worth reading for that purpose, but if you're looking for a list of things to master, his book is not it.

Thanks so much for putting together a list of books that deal with fundamentals in some depth and highlighting the fundamentals they concider as well as the playing levels they are appropriate for. Already have a couple of the books mentioned (though not quite yet the strength to pursue them) and am keen to investigate some of the other titles you listed.



This is one of the books I have, had no idea that these are the same book. Ben has written quite an encouraging review of this book on his blog:http://www.bengozen.com/book-review-the-basics-of-go-strategy/ Looking forward to reading this one.

Would love to hear from other forum members on some of their favorite fundamentals books.



Yes, I value the suggestions of someone who teaches very much. Perhaps you could recommend some of the essential books treating specific fundamentals. Btw am currently reading 1001 Life and Death Problems and just started GGPFB vol 3 (1001 seems to being doing a fairly good job driving home basic shapes which is nice as my memory is not very good).

Thanks again. Will be putting this information to good use.

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"Tsumegos are for reading power and Tesujis for knowing which moves to read"

Ok, here are English books on specific topics teaching its fundamentals and providing the most theory on a topic.

Tesuji: There is no real theory book, AFAIK. The following books have at least a very useful sorting of presented tesujis. "Nihon Kiin Tesuji Encyclopedia" (5k-6d, too expensive), "Tesuji" by James Davies (12k-5k, comparatively few types of tesujis, but excellent double sorting by function and shape), "Tesuji Dictionary" by Shuko (4 volumes). There are quite a few good Asian classics with sorted tesujis, but I do not recall the titles.

Opening: "Opening Theory Made Easy" (I have not read it, because I was too strong when it appeared, but others like it). Other books provide too little theory, except that DDKs find theory in "First Fundamentals". Among the non-theory books, I recommend the Asian or English "Fuseki Dictionary" by Rin Kaiho (2 to 4 volumes depending on the edition, an Asian 2 volume edition is complete though, the selection of example games is very good).

Middle Game: other than the books mentioned earlier or here, there still hardly any noteworthy theory-orientated English middle game books. E.g., "36 Strategems" is fun reading, but has little practical value. There are a few books on invasions + reductions or using influence, but IMO none of them is close to convincing. IOW, at the moment the best you need to do is to read 200 such books and extract the best of their information, if you want to get more than what you learn from the books about the fundamentals.

Endgame: the current books teach only the very basics. For problems, they can be used if you do not mind inaccuracies of the decimal fractions. For theory, I cannot recommend them. ATM, you can learn more by spending weeks of browsing the internet. In particular, search for Bill Spight, but, as a beginner, ignore all thermography.

Tsumego: sorry, I still recommend the Asian classics, which, however, are pure problem books. English theory books are missing.

Shapes: The currently best theory book is "Shape Up!" and (hopefully still) available for free as a PDF.

Ko: one can still learn more on Sensei's Library than from books. "All about Ko" teaches little, but at least some theory. However, ko belongs to the topics needing more books.

Capuring Races: "Capturing Races 1 - Two Basic Groups", 18k - 7d, types of liberties, aspects of semeai-eyes, careful definitions of such and other needed terms, literally all existing cases of basic capturing races explained with theory, the best existing formula, many principles. Limitations: approach defects, shape defects, kos and multiple groups are not described. (Other books: "Counting Liberties and Winning Capturing Races" has much less theory on basic capturing races, has a few severe mistakes in that theory, offers a bit of theory about ko, basic tesujis specific to capturing races. "The Theory and Practice of Semeais": has much less theory, has no general formula, but studies a bit positions and approach moves prior to capturing races.)

Positional Judgement: "Positional Judgement 1 - Territory", 8k-4d, groups, regions, current territory defined well, principles describing how to construct reduction sequences determining the territory; remaining boundary defense moves, gote endgames, basic endgame kos; privileges, quiescience and concepts for it, territory count, area count; evaluating fighting positions, moyos, middle game kos; prisoners, methods to ease counting, strategy related to judgement, mutual reduction fight, the carefully constructed global reduction sequences are shown, the territories are marked, more principles. (Other books: "Positional Judgement - High Speed...": current territory not defined well, simple examples of often only local reduction sequences are shown, the boundaries of territories are sometimes marked, mutual reduction fights. "The Theory and Practice of Analysis": the territory judgement core of the topic contains many severe mistakes, reduction sequences are often not shown, but a number of other aspects of positional analysis are explained.)

Life + death: "Life and Death Problems 1 - Basics", 20k - 5k, aims, sacrifice, cut, threatening to cut, connection, removal, capture; running, connection to another group, definitions for eyes and eyespaces, expansion; creating, threatening, preventing etc. of atari, lake, nakade, partition, reduction, big reduction, throw-in, snapback, one-sided approach block, two-sided approach block, external liberty shortage, internal liberty shortage; aspects of double purpose moves; basic reading principles. (Other books: there are many other life + death books, but they have less or no theory. A couple of books sort problems into chapters about specific techniques. The second candidate for a book with theory is "Key Concepts of Life and Death", which has less theory, but some slightly advanced theory. Among the theory-sparse books, I recommend "All about Life and Death 1 + 2", 5k-3d, but out of print. There are abundant of pure problem books, of which most are Asian and quite a few are good or even very good as such, except that the variation of answer diagrams often is too small.)

Other topics: there are books on specialised topics, and, if you want to learn from books, read them, but do not expect too much from them. Reading those books is better than not reading them, but currently their level or amount of theory is unimpressive. This is a problem, because every specialised topic is important. A player must not neglect any topic (except maybe mathematical go endgames, player names or definitions of the go rules). For "exchanges", I have an alternative suggestion though: study Go Seigen games from 1933 or later.

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All those books teach fundamentals or sometimes also things beyond the fundamentals. There are hardly English theory books yet for whom I would say that they would be teaching advanced go theory far above the fundamentals. I have ideas how such books can be, but I want to work out the fundamentals more, so that I will have a solid foundation for describing advanced go theory. Also other authors have so much respect for advanced go theory that, AFAIK, they have not attacked it yet. For the learner of the fundamentals, however, this is good news;) Well, as said before, there are basic fundamentals and advanced fundamentals. The books mentioned in the OP belong mostly to the former, while the latter are covered by the more specialised books.

EDIT: added Shape Up!

Thanks again! Is good to have been a bit further enlightened here on how to pursue the fundamentals of go in the facets forwarded. As am getting a little more into studying go it seems favorable to mark out a good balance between what will most improve our game and those things which are interesting and fun. I guess it's all interesting but we will obviously find some things more intriguing then others along the path of our development.

Read Opening Theory Made Easy a couple times and Rin Kaiho' Fuseki Dictionary seems a good choice to facilitate further understanding of the fundamentals taught in that book.

Have Davis' Tesuji as well as Get Strong at Tesuji and looking forward to reading those probably more then any others (aside from the books I mentioned earlier in the thread). Though a ways off, from what I've read around Segoe' Tesuji Dictionary sounds more interesting then the Fujisawa volumes but the question of accessibility is an important one to consider and I've no idea how they compare there.

About Asian tsumego, have heard/read a fair amount of raves for the Level Up and Jump Level Up series as well as other collections (at a bit higher level Maeda, for example). Already have several tsumego books, actually, it seems laughable how many go books I've collected for my level (41 books not including magazines and stuff, a few of those are diagram free like 1st Kyu and Reflections on the Game of Go) but with the problem we sometimes see about keeping english go books in print I'd made the decision to go ahead and start acquiring the books that would conceivably want to read for the foreseeable future. Even before your recommendations there were several volumes yet to be added to the library; whether or not life provides the time to play and read all these books is another question.

From a quick search it seems that Shape Up is still available though I've not looked into it further.

Also appreciate your recommending Sensei's as a good source for ko knowledge. Think All About Ko was the one book I passed on when rounding up books from the Mastering the Basics series so didn't have anything for that yet. Though yet to get a drop in the bucket SL seems like an awesome resource if one know where to look. Been looking at their pages on proverbs recently.

Am looking forward to reading reviews of your book on capturing races. Enjoyed reading a little bit of Hunter's idea's on the subject in The Second Book of Go but had to return it to the library before getting chance to finish up (someone then misplaced or pinched the book and as it was our area librarys only copy that source is dead). Think there are significant portions of Hunter's actual book on capturing races available in the British Go Journal online.

Your books on positional judgement and life n death also sound interesting. Already have Chikun' Positional Judgment High-Speed Game Analysis so too late there. lol Actually the reviews of this books have been a mixed bag so am interested to see what I get out of it though it's a ways down the list of things to read. If it turns out people think Positional Judgement 1 / Territory is a better or more accessible book that would go higher up the list for sure.

Have most of Fairbairn' books on Go Seigen I think but from what people say about his play I steered clear only reading bio bits from the books thus far. Could be wrong but I think Yuan Zhou' book on Seigen has games not covered in John' books so I'd like to get that eventually too (enjoyed Zhou's book Understanding How to Play Go, the explanations offered on his games felt fairly practicable and the games interesting). From what I have seen of Go' games looking at them from the perspective of exchanges seems quite interesting.

At this point Lee Changho' earlier games are what I'm most interested in looking at but with there being so many sources of commented games either in books or online it makes looking at uncommented games a little less appealing (really hoping to see some nice, expansive volumes of commented Changho games made available in english!).

The comments on advanced theory sparked my curiosity, and seem to correspond with the limited experience and exposure that is currently mine in that it seems like a fair number of people, when they get to this stage, mainly look to the pro game itself.

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"Tsumegos are for reading power and Tesujis for knowing which moves to read"

If you think that learning a small fraction of the necessary knowledge and getting imprecise counts suffice... Cho's book can replace 5k knowledge by 1k knowledge, but that's it.

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Unless one already knows particular advanced theory, it is hard to get it just by studying pro games, because one does not know well what to look for.