Top 5 existing English books sorted by improvement potential:
1. First Fundamentals
2a. Joseki 2 Strategy
2b. Fighting Fundamentals
4a. Attack and Defense
4b. Tesuji (Davies)
4c. Strategic Concepts of Go
4d. Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go

Sorry, these are 7 books, but it is too hard to order those at the shared place 4. Place 1 is explained simply by the fact that improvement at DDK is much faster than improvement at SDK. The books have something in common: they strongly rely on conceptual contents or presentation.

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crux, why do you "honorarily" mention Counting Liberties and Winning Capturing Races? The book has several severe factual mistakes at important places. Therefore, the book should not be listed near the top.

The books which helped me improve the most:

1. Graded Go Problems (Vol. III)
2. Tesuji
3. The Endgame
4. Dictionary of Basic Joseki
5. GO: Invasion & Reduction

#3 really helped me to win more games. #4 really is a selection of good and bad examples, as someone above mentioned. #5 It explained the concept of reduction, and I have read it over and over again.

Of course I read Lessons in the fundamentals of go, but I dont know how much I gained from it.

1.lessons in the fundamentals of go
2. Improve your intuition series (cheap and small individually, better as a whole)
3. Invincible
4. Lee Chang ho tesuji set
5. None really decided.. I haven't seen a book that would be worth getting that doesn't overlap with the above. Maybe elementary go series life and death?

Would the Go: Invasion & Reduction be referring to the French edition of Lee Chang Ho's book http://senseis.xmp.net/?GOInvasionEtReduction
or are you talking about Keshi and Uchikomi - Reduction and Invasion in Go? http://senseis.xmp.net/?KeshiAndUchikom ... vasionInGo


Lee Chang ho tesuji set is a set rather than a book and this set is not in English.

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Ah true tami..

@ tchan001:

the first one, by Lee ChangHo. Very good book if you are interested in his style. And a lot of useful middle game techniques. But it's not so much about general prinicples.

These are the 5 books that helped me improve a lot and most of them are still helping me improve:

- Weiqi 1000 (http://senseis.xmp.net/?WeiqiLifeAndDeath1000Problems) => okay this is not in english but it does not matter because it is problems. One of the best tsumego book out there.
- Essential life and death series (1-4) (http://senseis.xmp.net/?LevelUpEssentialLifeAndDeath)
- Jump Level up series. (1-5) (http://senseis.xmp.net/?JumpLevelUp)
- Graded go problems for beginners series (http://senseis.xmp.net/?GradedGoProblemsForBeginners)
- Dictionary of basic tesuji (http://senseis.xmp.net/?FujisawaTesujiDictionary)

Otenki's list seems to require a bigger budget than for just 5 books. hehe

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Weiqi 1000 is only 30 renminbi so the rest has to compensate

Cheers,
Otenki