Hi, do you think it is worth buying books or should I just save the $$ and do online problems (goproblems.com) and look at annotated games (go teaching ladder)? (I'm just beginning and about 15k.)

thanks,
Eric

It largely depends on how you learn. I do both.

I like the seemingly endless problems available in various programs and services (e.g. SmartGo, WBaduk, goproblems.com). I think they help a lot.

I also like the structured thinking presented in books. For a book to be published, it generally has an author, interpreter, editor, and publisher; all of whom are invested in it being well written. While not everyone will agree with everything in every book, you should be able to find books in a sequence that line up with and reinforce your skills and strengthen your weaknesses.

Sometimes with computer problems it can be easy to click and correct. While books require reading go diagrams, which seems much more like reading a board to me.

Plus you can let friends borrow books and they can learn, too.

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I definitely think there are some books that are worth buying.

I wouldn't recommend buying tens or even hundreds of books (unless you really like them; then go for it!)

I think there are only three books that have had a large impact on my learning and enjoyment of Go; Kageyama's Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, James Davies' Life and Death, and Janice Kim's Palace of Memory.

I've only tried a couple other books; some of which I dropped after a few pages, one of which I tried to work through, but could never get interested in finishing (it was way too dry).

I haven't really bothered with l&d all that much either (I mean, there were times I did a fair amount of problems in a sitting, but I never did anywhere near as much as people recommended for reaching shodan; maybe I should do some more sometime).

Most of my improvement came from simply playing, and especially with stronger players, and listening to their advice.

Tsumego is so incredibly important to improving one's reading, which in turn is critical to improving one's Go.

When I think about all the free moments I have through the day when I wished I could do some tsumego (as opposed to not), it feels wasted.

I have no problem with electronic measures, but I don't have a smartphone or anything like that, and I can't just carry my netbook around all the time. In that spirit, I will definitely be buying a few problem books, so long as I can find them cheap.

Books are great, but there seems to be next to nothing for 5-15k readers. All the books I know of are either very elementary (the sort that start off by teaching you the rules of the game) or rather advanced (aimed to push you into, or well beyond, shodan). The exception to this, I find, is the Graded Go Problems for Beginners series, which are supposed to be aimed at complete beginners, but in practice are suitable for (roughly) 20k - 1d players. I've also not found anything comparable to that series online, and when I was 15k I found it far more approachable than most other life and death problems.

Down the road you'll gain more from studying quality tsumego collections and the refined play of professional games.

I think it's worth buying a tsumego book or two, just so you can see for yourself whether you prefer it or not. I think it's different than doing problems on the computer because you can't click through them, and they're easy to carry around with you to do on the bus etc. The Graded Go Problems for Beginners series is quite nice because there are a wide variety of problems. You can start with volume 1 and 2 - and though you might find vol. 1 a bit on the easy side, lots of people recommend doing easy problems. Other books with problems you could tackle are 1001 Life and Death Problems and Get Strong at Tesuji, both by Richard Bozulich.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Thanks for all the great replies and suggestions!

I have some general go books, which I like for getting the big ideas, but one of the points of my question is whether the exercises (like life and death) online at goproblems.com are as good as the books on life and death problem.

For example, some of the problems at goproblems.com have comments which sound to me like the given solution might not be correct -- so are the online problems mostly good and correct (and good to learn from) or are the book collections much better?

There will be fewer mistakes in books, but knowing that the answer is "right" is less important than the time you spend thinking about it yourself. You can't really go wrong doing problems online - you might just like to do them in books as well. If you're puzzled about an answer, go ahead and ask about it here.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I think for the 10-5k level, at least, Attack and Defense is an invaluable read.

I think you should start online and when you establish a regular habiit. If youre like me, sometimes it is fun to buy books just to buy them and not use them. If you start online, you dont get the thrill of spending money and establish a routine. After that routine is set buy a book

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be immersed

I think you should start online and when you establish a regular habiit. If youre like me, sometimes it is fun to buy books just to buy them and not use them. If you start online, you dont get the thrill of spending money and establish a routine. After that routine is set buy a book

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be immersed

Ah, double posted, which one to quote?!? (=

But really, I would agree with this advice, start online and you feel like it you can always buy books later. From my personal experience most of my real improvement has come from working problems and having someone stronger review my games (all right, I probably have to give some credit to browsing SL). I buy books on occasion because I find them fun to read (and really isn't having fun what a hobby is about?), but if I'm being honest with myself the only ones that have really helped me get stronger are problem books and books of commented pro games (and those really helped mainly because they involved me working the problems and playing through the games many times...not really just from reading the text of the book). I'm sure others have had different experiences,

I find there is a huge difference in quality between goproblems.com and good problems books, and goproblems.com is best for tsumego, I find the tesuji and yose there not very good. I think one of the primary differences, is that the books often develop a sequence of similar problems in a position. For example with the same basic configuration the books will have problems of progressing strength, whereas the goproblems.com are hit and miss.

Hi Eric,

Get Strong at Life and Death by R. Bozulich is a good book. I would recommend it if you want to have at least one book because it covers a lot and has a good amount of problems. The problems in this book should be good enough for the L&D category until you get to dan level.

As for free resources:

The Go Game Guru blog posts 3 problems (easy/intermediate/hard) on a weekly basis. You can solve them online and the complete solutions can be downloaded. Try the "easy" ones. They are not that easy if you are a beginner, but they are worth trying.

The free client software for both Tygem and WBaduk contain hundreds of life and death problems for players of all levels. The free WBaduk iOS app has the same problems.

Thousands of tsumego problems are available on this page without solutions (presumably to avoid copyright issues). The elementary problems are good to try on your own. The bent four problems are a bit confusing because they require you to know Japanese rules regarding the bent four. However, this is not an issue once you learn this rule.

You can also try the beginner exercises on Sensei's Library.

I dislike goproblems.com for a number of reasons, so I cannot recommend it.

Finally, a few words of advice. Do easy problems. Do lots of them. Do them over and over again. Don't guess-and-check. Convince yourself that your solution is correct and then check. If you don't get the solution in 5 minutes, look at the answer and try to understand it completely. Some beginner problems may seem so easy that it makes no sense for you to be doing them repeatedly, but they make a big difference to your fundamentals. It is like building muscles. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't also challenge yourself with more difficult questions, though.

A very small number of books are good to start, good to keep reading and good to re-read once in a while. I'd suggest getting one of those.

I think "Lessons in the fundamentals of go" is one such book.

This is a controversial book. Some people like it and some dislike it. As for me I wouldn't recommend it since it didn't help me very much at improving, but everybody has to find out themselves of course.

As a beginner myself, I've found the most useful book to be Graded Go Problems for Beginners Volume One. It's structured, linear, and at a just the right level of difficulty for the starting player. It also has a whopping 239 problems, which, trust me, is a lot. I like having it in book form because I can take it anywhere and it forces me to work the problem in my head. I believe you can buy an electronic version if you have an "i" device, but I prefer the "limitations" of the physical copy for learning.

I also have Janice Kim's series, which I find matches my learning style. She uses a light touch, and allows plenty of space for you to figure things out on your own. I'm curious about some of the other books commonly recommended, but haven't bought any.

As for websites, my favorite introduction remains The Interactive Way To Go. It's free, and well worth your time. It's step-by-step approach is wonderful.

If you just got the resources I mention above, and practice with them repeatedly, I think you'd have a lot of material to get you started. Of course nothing will substitute for real game.