Life In 19x19

Hello Is it worth buying invincible?

Absolutely! When I put all my books up for sale (I had over 200), that is one of only 3 I did not offer.

DrStraw wrote:Absolutely! When I put all my books up for sale (I had over 200), that is one of only 3 I did not offer.

Damn what that was a fast reply lol.

But isnt it a whole kifu in one diagram? Thats the only thing that actually makes me unsure wether i should buy the book. And isnt that like annoying? lol

Don't know anything about kifu. But for the heavily annotated games there are several diagrams per game. For the games which are not heavily annotated there is only one diagram per page.

DrStraw wrote:Don't know anything about kifu. But for the heavily annotated games there are several diagrams per game. For the games which are not heavily annotated there is only one diagram per page.

Oh i see. Then i think ill be buying the book today

got it as a present for christmas. Totally worth buying it!

If you've got an iPad you can also buy it in digital format
https://gobooks.com/books.html

I own the book but I'm about to purchase the gobooks-version for the iPad. It's so much nicer to play move by move through the diagrams (and you can still use a wooden goban to replay certain moves)

CnP wrote:If you've got an iPad you can also buy it in digital format
https://gobooks.com/books.html

Or a Mac, Go Books now has a working, nice, Mac version too

Needs Os x 9/10 to run the GoBooks app....something to remember after I upgrade my Snow Leopard....

Skitarg wrote:Is it worth buying invincible?

Hi Skitarg,

Actually it's not such an easy question to answer,
despite the impressions so far presented.
( I have a hard cover copy of it. )

It depends a lot on what is meant by "worth it".

As a start, what's your approx. Go level ?

I would say it is if you're a SDK or stronger. I can't really say whether or not it is worth it if you're weaker. Maybe other could share their experience on that.

Even disregarding the benefit of going through the games of players of that calibre, there's many beautiful games in it (among those I've replayed, the twenty, ie the ninth of the Shuwa-Shusaku series, is my favourite. The flow of the game just feel so natural), so it's worth the cost if only for the artistic value. At my level, I certainly can't understand all the intricacy of the games, but at the very least (sometime thanks to the comment) I can see the talent of the players and appreciate the beauty of their go.

I think you can learn from these games just from seeing what good go looks like. Seeing many good shapes in games eventually will help you play those shapes too.

As far as appreciating the beauty of the games, the fine historical material in the book adds to that, too.

Bki wrote:I would say it is if you're a SDK or stronger. I can't really say whether or not it is worth it if you're weaker. Maybe other could share their experience on that.

I bought it at 15k. I did not find it useful at that level, and have never re-opened it.

I probably also got it around 15k, but enjoyed it. Enough that when it came out on SmartGo Books I purchased it again.

Probably even a bigger question than your rank is whether or not you are the sort of person who enjoys professional game commentaries. So look at some free ones -- say at gogameguru -- and if you find them interesting, you will probably like Invincible, because the commentaries are even better. If not, well, buy a problem book instead or something.