GO books

General Go Discussion
1

What are the best GO books for intermediate/advanced players?

2

Honestly almost all of them so It’s better maybe to put away the less good ones.

Because of the AI contribution, i would simply discard the books on opening and joseki from before the AI. It’s a pain to write this because these were beautiful, like sanrensei by Takeymiya or ‘in the beginning’ in the basic elementary series’ but the today’ advice is to shortcut these too old theory and try to integrate directly the AI way of playing the opening.

Some of my favorite classic still of high value: attack & defense, lessons in the fundamentals, tesuji(J. Davies), Invincible(Games of Shusaku)… The list is long.

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First and best book I ever read. Clear, useful advice and an entertaining read too :smiley:

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4

The two books that made me much stronger are:

  1. Hane Naoki’s book on honte ( 本手の打ち方が
    分かる本 (マイコミ囲碁ブックス) 単行本（ソフトカバー)

  2. A book on severe invasions/ damage to frameworks (地あらし (現代囲碁文庫) 単行本)

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5

If handicap go is on your schedule:

-basic techniques of go (has a good covering of all the different handicap)
-Le jeu a 9 pierres (very complete but in french)
-The breakthrough to shodan (how to play low handicap)
-Secret chronicle of handicap go (how to play high handicap)
-dictionary of handicap go (for even more, in Japanese)

6

@Groin, are there books that explain the AI rationale to play GO? What can we learn with AI?

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8

I haven’t read it.

9

First and only book I gave up on after not too many pages. Fuzzy, useless advice and annoying as hell to read too. :smiley:

I know many people like it a lot, so it can’t be objectively all bad. So probably worth trying out, but in case you (like me and others I’ve heard about) hate it, don’t feel bad about it, you are not alone.

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10

Well, happy for you. If a large majority of readers would put that book at their top choice it’s at reverse because they found the object of the book essential, original and well expanded. As the author says himself, the mastery of the fundamentals is what makes the difference between a amateur and a pro.
I can add myself that it’s a big part of the difference between a SDK and a dan player, and even between a SDK and a DDK.

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11

The best content i found till now about AI is still not in books but here on the forum. Check with search what @mark5000 wrote among others.

coming back to your opening post, It’s a bit too wide to give a right answer. a 9k will have a variety of interesting reading on many aspects of the game , a 6k will search more efficiency and maybe avoid subjects treated exhaustively (like a joseki dictionary), a 2k will start to like the reverse and a dan player will have more interest in history and fashion, difficulties and deep analysis. …