I'm thinking about picking up a book on Joseki and a book on Fuseki (or just one book that covers both, if it's out there) This will be my first book on the topic, I don't really feel like something big like the new 21st Century Dictionary is really necessary for me right now. Which book would L19 recommend?
Really the only thing I ask of it is that it's not super expensive and it covers 3-4 points. But I would assume that would be basically any Joseki/Fuseki book.

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You haven't read any books on the opening at all? Opening Theory Made Easy might be good. For a joseki starter, personally I like Rui Naiwei's Essential Joseki (which apparently is not available from Yutopian anymore, but an inexpensive copy shouldn't be that hard to track down).

This. Or, you can try Robert's joseki book (but I haven't bought it yet.)

What strength are you? The typical target for a first fuseki book is 10 kyu or weaker. If that's the case I would recommend "In the Beginning" from the Elementary Go Series.

At that level I don't think you need to buy a joseki book; just look up stuff that happens in your games on SL or josekipedia (they cover 3-4 points ). I'm not sure a dictionary style book is more helpful than an online dictionary, and in any case the best way to study joseki is to use a pro game database (eg. GoGoD).

He seems to be mid sdk:
http://www.gokgs.com/gameArchives.jsp?u ... 2&month=10

As a first joseki book, Vol. 1 is suitable, but the OP wants also apparently more than only a few 3-4 variations. They can be found in Vol. 3, but its ca. 200 3-4 josekis are more than one would want as a first joseki book.

OTOH, if one buys something like 38 Basic Joseki, then one also does not get a suitable selection of 3-4 josekis for beginners because such a book simply has too few variations.

I do not think that there is a single book meeting the OP's specifications particularly well. Either he gets a solid introduction to joseki basics at all but without many variations (such as Vol. 1), a small selection that is actually too small (38 Basic Joseki), a selection that is already too big and has too much discussion of details (Essential Joseki), a dictionary (whichever, he then must extract the simple josekis and postpone everything more complicated) or some other kind of training material not ensuring variations learning for a starter easily (database or Get Strong At).

Without the OP's specification of "not super expensive", I'd recommend two books: an introduction to basic joseki theory (Vol. 1) and some book with sufficient variations for selecting all the simple ones and later using that for then also studying the more advanced variations.

If, however, the OP wants to learn only about a dozen josekis at the moment, then several beginner books (or Vol. 1) surely offer at least that much.

IOW, there is still scope for another book of a "Joseki for Dummies" kind, which would teach ca. 50 josekis in all didactical detail plus the most interesting basics of go theory. If it existed, I would recommend the OP such a book for his intention to buy only one book at the moment.

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Concerning fuseki books for beginners, we have recently had a few threads on that topic.

For 3-4 joseki you can buy another book, but I really think for just joseki... you can find joseki dictionary online that are just as good.

I suggest dictionary of modern joseki: korean style. It has the main things you see like kobayashi, minichinese, low chinese, high chinese, and sanrensei. It has even the peeps that you hear are "new and modern" even though the book is from 2004.


Now some people will say it is outdated, but I have not run into fuseki I havent seen in the book. It has almost any fuseki, including just cross fuseki... it covers everything.

Even as a relative beginner, I found "In the Beginning" useful. I discovered "Opening Theory Made Easy" later, and it may be a better place to start (or at least "as good").

I also found 38 Basic Joseki helpful. It may make sense to combine that with something like Ishida's Dictionary of Basic Joseki Volume 1, or the 21st Century Dictionary. You may be able to find a Vol. 1 of Ishida's for a decent price. (I haven't read Robert's books or others that have been mentioned, so I can't comment.)

Yilun Yang's workshop lectures from slateandshell.com are a good option. He has good instruction for playing the opening.

Ive heard some bad reviews of yilun yangs books lately like his L&D are hard, but you need to study many easy L&D and hard L&D dont help you.

Or that his books are aimed at 10k-3k, and won't help stronger players.

Ive heard many bad things from high dans about his stuff, but I wouldn't know, I haven't read any.

I like lessons in the fundamentals of go, modern fuseki: Korean style, strategic concepts of go, elementary go series L&D and tesuji, and some tesuji set books.

I really don't know about buying "In the beginning" or "Opening theory made easy" or "38 basic joseki" due to being outdate and the theory being iffy as in whether you need to learn that at all, as I never did and am fine for the most part.

I find that joseki dictionary+ a fuseki book on opening patterns+ an opening PROBLEM book, not a conceptual book/joseki book+ progame database is best for SERIOUS study.

All you really need is a joseki dictionary and a fuseki book though.

Opening Theory Made Easy is not outdated in my opinion. When a pincer is good, how to extend from a wall, how not to harm your own stones and the basics of attacking, reducing and sacrificing is still pretty common knowledge nowadays.

It's a beginner book for when you make your first steps on the big board. It does not teach the merits to any specific opening, which is useless anyways in my opinion before entering the Dan-ranks. When I was a weak DDK, this book helped me a lot.

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Why bad reviews? That his LD books (Ingenious LD Puzzles) are hard means that they are hard (and suitable for dans - not bad. (The have a bad printing of triangle stone marks.) Of course, they are, as problem books, as unconceptual as many problem books.



The conceptual books make serious study much easier.

Well, as you can post here, why bother to buy a book?
Just find webpages.
It's free.

My reccomendation is EidoGo (http://eidogo.com/).
Or any page is Sensei's library will help you.

So far as I know, Web2go (http://web2go.board19.com/) is the very best in the world, and I usually use it.
But, sorry, it's in Chinese.

One great advantage in on-line Joseki dictionary is that it is linked to the professional games that the joseki is played.

The quality of descriptions and texts in books is much better. Many will show refutations about why certain moves are NOT played which databases can not do.

I think the best is a mix of books and database lookup.

This already starts with the selection of josekis and the verification that every variation declared 'joseki' is indeed a joseki and that each of its moves is. The work for such verification, if one does not know the josekis yet or non-basic variations can have modern changes, is about 10 - 20 minutes per variation. An attitude "free is the only criterion" can easily amount to weeks of spent extra time for a few hundred variations the reader would be verifying for himself because he tries to avoid the expense for a book, for which its author has already done the verification. Trusting joseki databases amounts to the illusion that they would have been verified with the same care and be up-to-date and has the disadvantage that they contain so many variations that the user needs work to find the basic variations.

I'm sorry, do you have a point here?

Databases are databases of pro games. It's never been the case I would have to verify a specific game in question especially since most of the time I care about percentages with high numbers.

I have meant databases or webpage references of josekis. (Databases of pro games are something else. Of course, you can also parse a pro games database for josekis using tools such as Kombilo, but you need a very good memory or need to search again whenever you forgot your earlier queries. And you need the time for doing the queries and the wisdom to do meaningful queries so that you find interesting rather than outdated variations.)

Try SmartGo. It's a very easy program for database searching. I don't find I need to have a very good memory for investigating joseki.

You investigate them. You play, say a month later, a couple of games. During them, how do you find josekis without having a "very good memory"? Do you or do you not recall every result of your earlier joseki investigation?

You look them up again and go through them.... This is not a very hard process with good software.