Life In 19x19

I'm a big fan of tsumego/tesuji books. I think they're a fun activity outside of playing Go, and hey, I've heard they make you stronger at playing, so its a win-win. So I've been collecting a library of tsumego/tesuji, hunting down what some deem as 'required.' I've read that Maeda's tsumego trilogy is consider required reading by Pros (as is Gokyo Shumyo), but I couldn't find its source, as I'd be interested in a list of what is required/recommended, outside of 'see a tsumego book, pick it up.'

I'd like to avoid the whole argument of whether or not to do tsumego to get better, or if its necessary, etc.

For those who wish to do tsumego/tesuji, what would be your required tsumego/tesuji reading list? I'd like to target all levels.

From my experience, these would be required:

• Graded Go Problems for Beginners, v. 2 - 4
• 1001 Life and Death Problems
• Get Strong at Tesuji

From what I've learned from others (in no particular order):

• Lee Changho's Tsumego/Tesuji series
• Maeda's tsumego
• Gokyo Shumyo
• Guanzi Pu
• Xuanxuan Qijing

Cho Chikun's or Cho U's (depending on version) Dictionary of Life and Death from Nihon Kiin is also very good.

No particular problem-only book is required because every tsumego / tesuji book teaches something that is a subset of all other such books, and no particular problem is essential. There are, however, outstanding books by excelling at particular criteria: the most difficult classic problem collection (Igo Hatsuyoron), the most difficult modern problem collection (which?), the thickest(?) problem collection (Nihon Kiin Tesuji Dictionary), the greatest database of problems (which?), the most generally applicable theory (Tactical Reading). If you do not look for outstanding books but readerships of particular playing strengths, you might enlist further books.

I like Kiseido's latest Tesuji book - "A Survey of the Basic Tesuji" - I've worked through it a couple of times. "501 Tesuji" is good too.

I picked up the Maeda trilogy from Amazon.co.jp (and paid a fair amount on the postage), though it might not be available at the moment. I wouldn't say it's essential to get hold of it, it seems to me that it's more the case that it's just a good collection of good quality problems. I also got these: http://senseis.xmp.net/?TheBookToIncrea ... rengthAtGo which are also good quality problems.

A candidate for most difficult contemporary tsumego book might be Cho U's Tsumego, published by MYCOM in 2006. To get the full difficulty level you should avoid Cho's simplifications which water down the problems to reasonable amateur dan player level.

I really like "200 Tesuji Problems", and the corresponding endgame one, and wish there were more like it in English.

gowan wrote:A candidate for most difficult contemporary tsumego book might be Cho U's Tsumego, published by MYCOM in 2006. To get the full difficulty level you should avoid Cho's simplifications which water down the problems to reasonable amateur dan player level.

It is worth noting that in the customer reviews, a couple of DDKs rated the book highly. I expect that they found the simplifications beneficial.

Right now I am going through problems (a.k.a text lectures) from the wbaduk.com site. They are quite amazing because: a) they are grouped by difficulty level ("16k-25k", "13k-15k") and topic (e.g. "Life and Death", "Endgame", "Opening" etc.) and b) while going through them from the beginning to the end there are some repetitions of shapes which help to learn them.

I think it's nothing bad in posting here a link to this forum's topic about pdf-files I've made from that lectures: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=11963 . They are totally free to use. The answers are only on the wbaduk.com site unfortunately.

Bill Spight wrote:It is worth noting that in the customer reviews, a couple of DDKs rated the book highly. I expect that they found the simplifications beneficial.

I think that these "simplifications" are a very good idea, especially from the pedagogical point of view.

They create some kind of sub-problem(s), and this could be done with other tsume-go as well. Remenber that there are many tsume-go that contain a variation of an already known position / shape.

There are several problems, especially "classical" ones, with different problem set-ups known.
The "easier" version of these already contains e.g. moves 1, and 2, of the solution of the "more difficult" one.

On the other hand, there are a lot of problems, where e.g. moves 1, and 2, of the solution serve as a kind of "appetizer" only, just because these are so "easy" to find. But the real problem of the problem comes later.

A generalization of this concept could result in sub-problems of the following kinds:

-- Move 1 has been placed mistakenly. Find the refutation for the defender.
-- Move 2 was a somewhat unusual reply. Find the refutation for the attacker.

Probably the reader would learn more this way, instead of following explanations about (mistaken) sub-variations only.

My experience is that most tsumego books aimed at kyu players are essentially various combinations of the same problems. It seems to me then that it does not really matter which books you read. Choose whatever one is in a form you enjoy. One man's favorite will not necessarily be another man's favorite. As you get higher up the scale I don't think this is true.

@CnP - I just picked up "The Book to Increase Your Fighting Strength At Go" - Haven't had a chance to look at it yet though.

Hm, I'll add Cho U to my list to check into, thanks for the advice!

@DrStraw - Then for dan level players, which ones would you recommend?

sparky314 wrote:@CnP - I just picked up "The Book to Increase Your Fighting Strength At Go" - Haven't had a chance to look at it yet though.

Hm, I'll add Cho U to my list to check into, thanks for the advice!

@DrStraw - Then for dan level players, which ones would you recommend?

I cannot really make any recommendations as I quit solving tsumego over 20 years ago. I occasionally do some on SL from the old classic collections (and they are worth it) but no longer from a book.

Off the beaten track as least from the point of view of most westerners is a set of classical tsumego problems from the 20 volume set called 適情録 (Shiqing-lu) by 林応竜 (Lin Yinlong), 1525.
You can read some comments about this from the notes section of http://senseis.xmp.net/?ClassicalGoProblemBooks
While the rest of the material other than the problems may not be too useful for a modern understanding of go, I find the problems in this set as exquisite as those in better known classics such as Xuanxuan Qijing, Guanzi Pu and Gokyo Shumyo.
There is a limited edition reprint of this set from 1980 in Japan for the 20 volumes along with 2 volumes of Explanations by Go Seigen.
If anyone is interested in this set of problems, I suggest looking purely for just the 2 volumes of Explanations by Go Seigen.
Look for 適情録解説　上下巻揃 which occasionally pops up on Yahoo JP auction. Not cheap compared to other classical go problems but should still be much cheaper than the original price of the original offering at publication.
Why would these problems be interesting? Well I would think that Go Seigen wouldn't bother explaining, revising, and correcting these problems and their answers if he didn't find them useful and interesting. Even if you don't read Japanese (as I don't myself) I can still appreciate the beauty of many of these problems and their explanations after the Go Seigen treatment.
And yes I do own a set of these books myself.

Yang Yilun's Ingenious Life and Death Puzzles volume 2 published by Yutopian, is another collection of difficult problems. Matthew Macfadyan, a British player EGF 6-dan, worked through them and, for the last 15 "advanced" problems, he spent four hours on them and still got ten of them wrong.

sparky314 wrote:

• Lee Changho's Tsumego/Tesuji series

I love these books. I still haven't cracked books 4-6 in either series, because by the time I get deep into books 2 and 3 I hit my limit of ability.

I own a ton of go books; more than I could ever possibly need or absorb. I find myself going back to the Lee Changho books more than just about any others in my collection.