Here are the link to the book serie http://www.kiseido.com/road.htm and the introduction:

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別後竹窗風雪夜
一燈明暗復吳圖

Nice to see Kiseido haven't given up on publishing books. Thanks for the heads up.

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I am John. John-I-Am.

Let us look at the titles:

K82: Handicap-Go Strategy and the Sanrensei Opening
K83: The Basic Principles of the Opening and the Middle Game
K84: The Basic Life and Death Positions
K85: A Survey of the Basic Tesujis
K86: All About the Endgame
K87: Sabaki — The Art of Settling Groups and Making Good Shape
K88: Attacking Weak Groups
K89: The Chinese and Mini-Chinese Openings
K90: The Kobayashi Opening
K96: Tasuki Openings
K98: Parallel Openings
K99: The Shusaku Opening

This yields 0.5 + 0.5 + 5 = 6 of 12 books or 50% of the series The Road Map to Shodan about the opening topic.

Interesting.

I started studying the opening as a German 1k, it was ca. 1/3 of what I needed to become 1d and I rushed to 3d quickly with the 5 months I spent studying as a 1k. Until 1k, I hardly studied the opening at all, but this can be explained by my too fast improvement from 10k to 1k. I simply had no time to study the opening, but I needed to catch up and fill my related knowledge gap in order to become 1d - 3d.

So, yes, I agree that quite some knowledge about the opening is very useful for becoming a dan player at all and an overview of typical openings should be part of that knowledge.

However, 50%?! The title of the book series suggests being for kyu players wishing to become 1d. 50% about the opening is way too much!

From beginner to 1k I learnt about as much knowledge as from 1k to 3d. So altogether I'd say that the opening should be 1/6 ~= 16.6% of the acquired knowledge. That is, one third as much as this book series plans to offer.

Surely there are gaps in the English opening literature and it is good to see them filled sooner than I feared. However, spending 1/2 of the series on the opening must mean that lots of other topics of go theory are neglected and the series cannot really fulful its promise of teaching kyu players everything they need to become 1d.

There seems to be too much PR in the series title. Maybe it would be better to create two series, of which one discusses only the opening or - considering the book titles - only specific opening patterns. Surely this would be sufficiently interesting in itself. There is simply no need for an exaggerating series title.

Anyway, I am curious to see what this series is all about and have ordered one of the books. More later when I receive it.

I think this is more about marketing, and the sales power of "SHODAN" rather than a carefully calibrated breakdown of exactly what it takes to make shodan. Also, your experience that 1/6 of your shodan-ness was about the opening isn't necessarily the rule, shodan is sufficiently weak enough that a wide range of playing strengths for the different phases of the game can be accommodated within it.

"The Road Map to Shodan" title is a bit of marketing fluff, but it isn't unreasonable. I'm 3 kyu and the titles list looks very reasonable to me as sensible stuff to work on to jump to 1 kyu. I'm not sure about "K84: The Basic Life and Death Positions" & "K85: A Survey of the Basic Tesujis", as I'm guessing there will be considerable overlap with other older series Kiseido books. So those I will wish to flick through at a tournament bookstall, to see if they are right for me. If they hold new insight, then yes. If they are a subset of books I already have, I'll give them a miss. The other titles are all areas where I perceive I haven't even started on the material and have plenty to learn. So I think as the majority of books are bang on relevant to me, only a few stones from shodan, it seems a reasonable tag for the series.

Well the authors have experience but one does wonder what can be added to their previous books. A better take on the usual sloppy endgame fare might be nice...

Everything, except joseki next move problems; this topic has enough books. Every other topic touched or overlooked in their previous books deserves much more discussion.