Which James Davies book first: "Tesuji" or "Life and Death"?

[PeterPeter]

I have decided that I most need to improve my reading and close contact play, and these 2 books look like good ones to study. They both look fairly similar in this regard, so which would you go through first? Which one is easier, and which one is generally more useful?

[EdLee]

Hi Peter, have you already bought and read Graded Go Problems for Beginners, any of the volumes ?

[snorri]

You can't go wrong either way. Tesuji has a section where Davies describes how to read. It's really a layman's description of depth-first search. No earth-shattering insights, just hard work. It would be like reading a diet book that says, okay this is critical: eat less and exercise more. I've heard people say that L&D is too easy and Tesuji is too hard, but I think both books have problems of a wide variety of levels. As such, they are meant to last you a while. I've seen 6d players still studying Davies' L&D.

For books, I wished I'd had Baduktopia's Essential Life & Death when I was starting, but it wasn't available then. That series has less explanation, but a better ordering in terms of difficulty. But you can get difficulty ordering from goproblems.com. I like goproblems.com except that is annoying when they have incorrect refutations in some solutions.

[gowan]

I would recommend "Tesuji" first because you'll find more opportunities to use what you learn in your games than all the L & D shapes. Both will help your reading in general so it probably doesn't much matter which you read first.

[gogameguru]

If you can only get one book, then definitely get Tesuji.

If you can get both, you might want to just read through the first few chapters of Life and Death and then leave it be for awhile while you focus on getting through Tesuji. I think you're much more likely to experience immediate improvement after reading Tesuji. Life and death skills are very important, but sometimes take awhile to translate into greater success in games.

[jts]

I would definitely say tesuji first (althought the suggestion to get GGPfB even before that is quite good).

I am very surprised that anyone would suggest that L&D is easier than tesuji. I guess you might say that L&D starts with some basic chapters before the difficulty really ramps up, but even the elementary concepts are illustrated with fairly challenging problems.

[Bantari]

I have decided that I most need to improve my reading and close contact play, and these 2 books look like good ones to study. They both look fairly similar in this regard, so which would you go through first? Which one is easier, and which one is generally more useful?

These two books are like two sides of the same coin. If you can afford both, get them both, this would be my strong advice.

My first book ever was the 'Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go' which was a little too advanced for me when I was starting (although later it proved to be a true gem!) But 'Tesuji' and 'L&D' I have red right after that and they are still two of the books I recommend the most. They have had great impact on the level of my play.

If you can only afford one, its a coin toss, no pun intended. I'd say go with 'Tesjui' just because its slightly more generally applicable. But if you can, get both.

[foeZ]

If I can suggest something else, and probably better than the books you mentioned (in my opinion at least).
You can go through every single problem in Cho Chikun's tsumego encyclopedia

http://tsumego.tasuki.org/books/cho-1-elementary.pdf
http://tsumego.tasuki.org/books/cho-2-intermediate.pdf
http://tsumego.tasuki.org/books/cho-3-advanced.pdf

These are roughly 2500 life & death problems ranging from 30kyu to 3dan
If you've done them all, your reading should be very strong already.
I also recommend doing every single problem, even if it only takes you a few seconds to find the correct solution.

Solving them all will increase your reading depth.
Solving them all repeatedly will increase your reading clarity.

Once you've done that, if you want to keep challenging yourself, you can try these high dan problems.

http://tsumego.tasuki.org/books/xxqj.pdf
http://tsumego.tasuki.org/books/hatsuyoron.pdf

[PeterPeter]

I do like the commentary and explanations in the James Davies books, though some of the problems can be hard. Perhaps I should review "Tesuji" without doing the problems, then move on to one of the sources that is pure, easy problems.

[Amelia]

I have read Tesuji in parallel to GGPB 2 and 3 and found it helpful. The problems in Tesuji are hard but they are good examples of how a given tesuji can come up in a game, so trying to solve them is useful even if you end up looking at the solution. After you've understood the solution, you'll find out several of them come up in the middle game problems of the GGPB series.

[hyperpape]

What is the copyright status of those books that Tasuki provides?

[oren]

What is the copyright status of those books that Tasuki provides?

The Cho Chikun ones are not from books, but are a rip of the problems from a software program with the solutions removed.

The classic go problems for the most part are probably fine from copyright perspective.

[hyperpape]

The Cho Chikun ones are not from books, but are a rip of the problems from a software program with the solutions removed.

Are you saying this makes a difference, or just noting it?

[oren]

Are you saying this makes a difference, or just noting it?

Just noting it. A lot of people I've seen assume they've been copied from books, but it was a bit easier.