My experience is the weaker the players are the more they recommend studying Joseki books (as in memorizing Josekis). I rarely find stronger players (>2D), who say study/memorize Josekis to become stronger.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Kageyama and I say and have made the experience that studying (i.e., NOT only memorising by heart) josekis is one (of many) useful things to become stronger. (I have not collected statistics about which percentage of stronger players might (dis)agree.)

On what do you base your statement? Stronger players say that only rote memoriation is counter-productive. Are you sure that you do not confuse this advice with the different advice of better understanding go theory while studying josekis?

Well, Kageyama, not everybody's favourite teacher ; )

I experienced situations where mainly "weaker" players lose a corner or get a bad corner position and immediately say it's because they didn't know the Joseki move. Similar: The opponent did not play the "correct" Joseki move and their attempt to "punish" the mistake led to a disaster.
A bit different but actually the same: Both players play Joseki and when someone tries to explain the result is overall not good for one player, they answer "but it's Joseki!".
For me it's not the Joseki knowledge that is missing, it's just elementary knowledge of attack and defense and elementary positional judgement. Memorizing Josekis will not solve that problem, repeatedly solving Life-and-Death and Tesuji problems will (among other ones like opening problems).

Maybe really studying Josekis is one way to become stronger, I can't comment on that because I mostly focus on the more glaring mistakes and they almost exclusively happen when the players "read".

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

most josekies can be derived from reading if you are strong enough.
there are some josekies that is very complicated so professionals rely on memorization.
at our non professional level i dont think it is really important to memorize josekies because it usually isn't the place where a game is won or lost.

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

The combination of elementary and advanced knowledge of memorised sequences, attack and defense, positional judgement and life and death is insufficient to always avoid what you describe about weaker players' mentioning of josekis. If autodidactic study does not retrieve it from dictionaries, one needs also books teaching tactical choices, strategic choices, other strategic concepts, meanings, aims, related principles, capturing races, endgame etc. Josekis involve all that.

--Useful books to become stronger--

from all these books I have, these are the best, IMO, for getting stronger.
And thanks to Roy L whose posts on rec.games.go pointed me to the right direction.

1. Life and Death Dictionary Vol 1 by Cho Chikun (eg, All About Life and Death Vol 1 & 2)
2. Tesuji Dictionary by Segoe Kensaku and Go Seigen

Some others are Davies' Life and Death & Tesuji books, Maeda's Tsumego 1-3, The Book to Increase Your Fighting Strength 1 & 2 by Segoe Kensaku, Korean Children Baduk Practice Series 1-6 (6000+ problems), Beyond Forcing Moves by Takagi Shoichi, ...

And there is more, as always

Joseki involve a large part of go skill. Professional games have everything.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I think joseki can be compared to architecture.

You can learn to build a good building by studying physics and engineering and drawing force diagrams until your eyes bleed. You can learn to build a good building by practicing building things with your own hands, and doggedly building up practical experience with construction. You cannot learn to build a good building by looking at excellent buildings and sketching them until you can know their appearance by heart - although this sort of study may explain a lot of the difference between competent architects and excellent architects.

What are peoples feels on the "Get Better At..." Series? The "Heart of Go" series?


Need some thoughts on this. Also, I've heard from some scattered posts about the Graded Go Problems series, but is it really usefull to pick up books like that?

Also if you own the Learn to Play Go series, does it outweigh any of the above, or is it good to have all of these.


What rank would you put these series of books around? Sorry for all the questions, just want to make sure I'm getting everything right.

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I assume you mean the "Get Strong at ..." series?
I can highly recommend Get Strong at Tesuji (~14-7 kyu on KGS) and Get Strong at the Opening (~6-3 kyu). I don't know the other books of the series well enough.

The Graded Go Problems For Beginner series is in my opinion the best problem collection to seriously start improving in Go (the books range in difficulty from 20 to 3 kyu). It teaches you everything from elementary things like pulling your stone out of Atari to giving the right Atari, spotting snapbacks, winning capturing races, playing elementary endgame and a lot of Life-and-Death and even some opening problems. You can not do anything wrong with these books.

The Learn to Play Go series is a good way to start Go from zero because it is well-written, easy to understand and takes you step by step. If I remember correctly the author stated that after understanding all the books, your are around 15 gup (which is korean for kyu, although I don't know what this means on KGS ^^). It is not a problem book although it also explains basic Tesuji, Life-and-Death, Opening and Endgame but the focus is on explaing, I feel, whereas the aforementioned books focus on you drilling through the various positions (overlearning).

I don't know the Heart of Go series.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

It looks like there are three parts to the Joseki part of the "Get Strong" series. Assuming all of them at useful?


I also forgot about the Elementary Go series, any opinions on that?

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Get strong at Joseki - each volume deals with a different set of Joseki. vol1 = 3-4 Joseki, volume 2 = 5-4 & 5-3 Joseki and Volume 3 are 4-4 & 3-3 point Joseki. So it depends on whether you want to ignore some Joseki or not. Elementary Go series books are very good. Tesuji, and Attack and Defense are perhaps the best volumes but Life and Death is also pretty essential reading (but I think all of them are well worth buying).

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I am John. John-I-Am.

"Opening Theory Made Easy" over Elementary Go's series' "In the Beginning"?


Or both?!

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Heart of Go series is definitely aimed for stronger players.

If your self given rank of 17k is accurate, I wouldn't worry too much about buying books yet.

I already have bought a few books I don't see why it would hurt to buy a few more. I like studying the game and I find it the best way for me to improve my playing, because it all begins in my head anyways (ex. psyching myself out, not feeling "mentally prepared" etc.)

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No. At your 17k rank, you must first of all get books suitable for that rank. To give you more specific hints, we would need to know in which ranking system you have acquired your rank, how many games you have played, which books you have read before and what you think about their difficulty for you.



Given your desire to buy some books, go ahead and buy, in this order of likely relative importance for you,
- First Fundamentals
- Graded Go Problems 1 + 2
- In the Beginning
- Joseki 1 Fundamentals
- Learn to Play Go 1

However, if all the books you have and these books should be above your head, you'd better start with those beginner books teaching 1 move at a time.

If you start from nothing, I agree the Learn to Play Go series is really good. Once you finish that, then RJ's First Fundamentals is quite an eyeopener. Afterwards, I'd concentrate on good go problem books on life and death and tesuji.

For problem books, I'd recommend buying Chinese go problem books from dangdang.com directly from China as it is probably the cheapest way. Lots of selection at good prices and usually you really don't need to know much of the language to do the problems.

Try these two sets:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?LiChangHoJingjiangWeiqiShoujin
http://senseis.xmp.net/?LiChangHoJingjiangWeiqiSihuo

If you need help with the Basic Chinese terms, they are very similar to the kanji found on the Basic Japanese for Reading Go Books: http://senseis.xmp.net/?BasicJapaneseForReadingGoBooks

If you need more help with Chinese go terms, you can use: http://senseis.xmp.net/?ChineseGoTerms

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

Why am I sensing condescension...? I'm asking for help, not any sort of criticism.

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It's not criticism. He's trying to help.

I just reread it. For some reason it sounded different the first time, sorry for the confusion!

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