I've come to the very controversial conclusion that problem books are a great way to improve at go and am wanting to start building a collection but have no idea where to start. I currently have the entire get strong at Joseki series but am wanting some L&D and tesuji problems to support them.

Thanks for any help.

There are many many sources for problems. On line you can get the old Chinese classics free, you can buy John Fairbairn's Gateway to All Marvels on Amazon in e-book format. Maybe the best choice would be Kiseido's Go Problems for Dan Players, seven volumes covering life-and0death, opening, middle game, and tesuji for ranks from strong kyu through 7-dan. This covers a lot of territory in a consistent format. I would also recommend the (Japanese) tesuji "dictionary" by Segoe Kensaku and Go Seigen.

Disagree with the free Chinese classics online (lack of answers eventually bites you in the back,) GTAM is a great book, but the problems are... hard. Like, a lot.

Agree with the GGP4DP (I have a mixed collection of the original Japanese and the English versions, both excellent) and Segoe-Tesuji tesuji dictionary, it is superb. If you could get a copy of Fukui Masaaki's "How to Improve on a 5x5 board", I can heartily recommend it, I love the small problems in there.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Thank you for the replies. I should have mentioned that I already have Guanzi Pu (Courtesy of Logan), but it's just too hard for me right now. Some of the problems feel about right but sometimes I'm not even able to understand the answer, let alone solve it myself. I don't feel I'm using my time well when I sit down to work through it because I don't know if a problems hard because I need to to think more about the answer or if it's just way out of my league, and I end alternating between lazy token efforts to solve them and long periods of fruitless rumination.

Go Problems for Dan Players sounds good I'll look in to it.

Edit: I don't want to imply that I want a collection of easy problems. I like a challenge but I do need to feel I have some hope of success.

Segoe-Seigen is great in that it has 3 different level of problems, C are within reach of mid-SDK, B are closer to strong SDK-low dan (i.e. I can usually spot the idea but can't read it out) and A... Seem hard even to understand the answer diagram

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Reading about it this sounds very good and exactly the kind of thing I want. Unless anyone has some better suggestions I think I might just go ahead and get a volume each of Problems for Dan Players and Segoe's tesuji dict.

That being said though, does anyone know a good place to buy go books in the UK? The only good place I know is Go Game Guru and they don't stock either of these series.

IIRC I got SS-Tesuji from Yellow Mountain Imports, as for GGPFD I got them in person in our local go bookshop in Barcelona. In UK/Europe, Schaak En Gowinkel, aobo-shop are two places I know that sell online.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Unfortunately, according to amazon.co.jp the Segoe-Go tesuji dictionary is out of print. I didn't see the Chinese version on Yellow Mountain Imports either but maybe it is available from some other source.

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A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Silly me, I ordered from Yutopian Thanks tchan!

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Level Up! Essential Life and Death Vols. 2-4
Yi Ch'ang-ho's Selected Life and Death Vols. 2-6
Weiqi Life and Death Drills Vols. 1-2

Get Strong at Go Series Vol. 6: Get Strong at Tesuji
Mastering the Basics Vol. 3: Making Good Shape
Mastering the Basics Vol. 4: 501 Tesuji Problems

Weiqi Life and Death 1000 Problems

After you absorb these you'll be of at least ~3-dan fighting strength and ready to start on the classic problem collections.

The first thing I would do is get a copy of the Segoe tesuji collection. It's a great collection of problems, and something you'll get more and more out of as you get stronger.

If you haven't already read Attack and Defense I would get a copy of that.

I was also impressed with the Train Like a Pro series. It's set up as a daily series of exercises on all parts of the game. They're good problems by themselves, but with the breadth of coverage they will also highlight your weaknesses quite well.

I can speak well of the Get Strong at Series from Kiseido, as well as Positional Judgement.

I'd recommend Yilun Yang's Fundamental Principles of Go and Whole Board Thinking in Joseki, both from Slate and Shell. They're both excellent.

Finally, it's probably time to study the opening a little if you haven't already. One good way to do so is to pick a fairly simple opening (e.g., the sanren sei or Shusaku) and play over twenty games where it appears. It will give you a reasonable survey of where the important focal points of the opening are and also how the game generally evolves.

Good luck!

A good feature of the Segoe-Go tesuji dictionary is that it is organized according to particular tesujis, for example warikomi (wedge). There is a collection of problems for each tesuji type so you get lots of practice in recognizing each type.

Thank you all for the replies. The tesuji dictionary sounds very good and since it's out of print but currently still available at a reasonable price I'm going to take the opportunity to snag it now, but the Graded Go Problems For Dan Players books seem a little too expensive so I'm going to compare the prices on some of the other suggestions.

I am highly tempted to order the Segoe-Go Tesuji Dictionary while copies are still available, though I suspect that I will have trouble even with the C problems for awhile. Is the format similar to Weiqi Life and Death 1000 Problems? I bought that book from Yellow Mountain Imports without realizing that it hadn't been translated into English. (I know that sounds silly, but I tossed it in with my order for a board and stones.) Fortunately, I can read the diagrams as they are given with Hindu-Arabic numerals, but I suspect I am missing out on useful comments in the text. Is there any prospect of an English translation of Segoe-Go Tesuji Dictionary? Or does the dictionary just contain Western-numbered sequences without comments?

Buy it! If you want samples of C level problems let me know and I'll post a few. There are comments, but I get along fine without even checking them. Of course, I discovered an awesome Chinese dictionary (iOS) app that does OCR from pictures... So now I could figure out "something" of what the comments say if needed.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Thank you.

So, the stones have Western numbers for moves in the diagrams?

Unfortunately, I don't have an iPhone, or even a smart phone, though I do have a scanner and a basic cell phone with a camera. There doesn't seem to be a simple, cheap OCR program with Kanji/Hanzi for Windows, however. Maybe I will pick up a cheap Android phone and a cheap Android program I found called Hanping.

I've gone ahead and ordered all three volumes of the tesuji dictionary. It turns out I didn't factor in international shipping so it was a lot more expensive than I originally realised (almost double the price ) but I impulsively bought them anyway. XD

Yeah, I decided that I don't need more problems right now (between the 1,000 in my Chinese book and the thousands of sgf files included with my purchases of Many Faces of Go and SmartGo), and that I would be better served by purchasing some instructional texts to follow reading Shape Up! I think that Attack and Defense by Davies should be my next purchase based on reading various threads on L19.

At least keep them in a "future purchase list." I also have 1000 tsumego, and SmartGo (the iPad version,) and the problems in SS-Tesuji are in a whole other league. I don't have the book right here with me, so the only problem (C level) I can show you is this one. White to play, from the "cutting-connecting" (roughly) section.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net