Go (Weiqi, Baduk) ISBN Rating List

On LifeIn19x19, the user Mivo asked: "On your list, the only two Joseki books that got a '++' for 'rank improvement' are the ones that you have written. One other book got an 'average', the rest gets '-' and '--'. [...] this pretty much invalidates the whole list, at least from my perspective." Here is my reply from 2011-12-04 why I think that all rank improvement ratings are fair relatively to each other:

The following refers to only the "rank improvement" rating.

Joseki 1 Fundamentals gets a (++) because its contents together with the contents of a yet to be written similar book Middle Game Fundamentals amounts to over 50% the knowledge I acquired for my improvement from 3d to 4d. Therefore the book would have been worth over 1/4 rank in that dan range. Due to the exponentially growing learning difficulty with increasing strength, this is worth about as much as one or two kyu ranks. Books with such an increment as a kyu I have rated (++): Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, Tesuji (Davies), Attack and Defense, Strategic Concepts of Go. The latter alone and especially its first, theory part sufficed to make me about 2 stones stronger. Joseki 2 Strategy contains, among other things, over 2.5 times as many strategic concepts and discusses some of them in greater detail. Reading the Ishida thrice made me another ca. two ranks stronger and most of the related information is in Joseki 2 Strategy. Part of the rank improvement was due to learning josekis by heart (and understanding them); this is not in this volume, so of those extra two ranks maybe a bit more than one is also available as information in Vol. 2. It has more information on other topics though and they amount to about one or two ranks I would have gained from reading the book. Therefore my estimate is that this book would have made me 2 to 5, probably ca. 3 to 4 ranks stronger. Anything less than (++) rating for (my) rank improvement by Joseki 2 Strategy (if I had had such a book as a 5 kyu) would be a great understatement.

That does not mean that necessarily every reader becomes that much stronger or even stronger at all from these two books. Preference for teaching and learning style and learning ability from application of generalising contents plays a great role.

Joseki Encyclopedia (Nihon Kiin) (--) : This is a great heap of variations, the type of book for the proverb "Learn josekis by heart and become 2 stones weaker.". Since (as my webpage explains) my rating refers to reading a book only once, reading that encyclopedia only once won't help at all for becoming stronger. A first reading of 10,000 variations is good for creating confusion.

Dictionary of Basic Joseki (-) : Reading the three volumes once helped a bit but real understanding came only during my second and third reading when I could concentrate on actually getting insight rather than only following move by move without understanding yet, as during the first reading when I did not know most of these josekis yet. Dictionary of Basic Joseki can qualify for (++) if one spends three months or more for reading it daily for several hours.

Jungsuk in Our Time (-) : In quality it is similar to Dictionary of Basic Joseki.

Star Point Joseki (-) : As before. The fact that it contains some 4-4 variations Dictionary of Basic Joseki does not have does not avoid the necessity to approach the unfamiliar variations at all before one can try a deeper and broader understanding.

Essential Joseki (--) : It is a variation-orientated book with relatively few josekis and significantly fewer, scattered go theory hints in the text than Dictionary of Basic Joseki. Accordingly it gets a worse rating.

Choice of Jungseok (o) : It has instructive examples for the sake of teaching strategic choices. It lacks generalised go theory though. If it had refined its contents by more powerful teaching strategies, it could easily have gotten a better rating. It leaves the work of revealing the contents to the reader though.

Get Strong at Joseki (--) : Teaching by examples only. Take a dictionary and its interesting moves and make problems out of them. It is better to read Dictionary of Basic Joseki and consider each next move to be a problem; you get many more variations, many more problems and a broader selection of them. Since that dictionary qualifies as (-) after reading once, (--) for Get Strong at Joseki is appropriate.

The Great Joseki Debate, Modern Joseki and Fuseki, Lee Changho's Novel Plays and Shapes and other similar books (--): Teaching by examples only. Small selection only. Therefore much less useful than Dictionary of Basic Joseki.

38 Basic Joseki (--) : I spent 4 hours per joseki to actually learn something. With an ordinary "reading once", I would have learnt and remembered essentially nothing. The book can be (+) after hard work but only then.

Whole Board Thinking in Joseki (-) : These books actually try to teach something general, so at least a (-). However, as soon as trying, they also already stop again. Much space of the pages is wasted. The selection of strategic choices is limited and the reader is left with most of the work of identifying them from the text or diagrams. Choice of Jungseok teaches significantly better. So (-) is right for Whole Board Thinking in Joseki.

The other two books in the list I would need to dig out to be sure which they are.

Altogether there are many (-) or (--) books in the joseki section or the list altogether because of too one-sided teaching by (often even dictionary style) examples. Principles, generalisations, structure, general advice on joseki study are missing. Fundamentals, strategic concepts, analysis methods, move meanings, group meanings, strategic lines, strategic planning and often strategic choices are hardly any and mostly not any topic at all in almost all (especially) joseki books. Almost all the didactics is left to the reader's autodidactics, sheer effort and ability to reinvent go theory.

See the contrast to my joseki books: Vol. 1 and 2 do not have the many variations yet (that is for Vol. 3) but have everything else missing in the other books: essential knowledge for understanding and application in general. That kind of contents giving books (on other topics) with much smaller scope already a (++) for rank improvement, see above.

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In case of topical coverage, the absence of exhaustive generalising theory in almost all books is even more widely spread. My advertisement since about 1996 for more general knowledge in Western books has, I hope, at least had some effect: An increasing percentage of books has at least a few (instead of previously none) principles etc.