There are lots of free online sites to practice go problems (
GoProblems and
GoChild, just to name a few), including software (
Gobandroid and
WeGolgo Lite among my favorites). But I'm pretty fond of books, and I prefer practicing from a book when I have the choice.
Why? Because instead of having the stones arranged on screen with one click, I have to manually setup the stones on a physical board myself. And instead of starting over with another click, I must remove the stones and set it up again. This
tedious labor is what fixes the pattern more easily into my brain. An analogy would be copy/pasting a piece of text versus typing it in. This is part of the "
Learning the hard way" movement.
Of course you can read from a screen and use a physical board also, but the temptation to place the stones on the screen is too high, at least it doesn't work for me. When left alone on the board, nobody tells you if the first stone you placed is wrong, as happens when using software.
For documentation purposes, I do believe software is great, it allows storing each variation with comments in full detail.
Even if I knew a whole book by heart, I still like to have it around. I believe that authors when choosing the problems, strive to maintain them cohesive, and not leave corner cases untouched. I fear that studying random problems from different sources may take longer to cover all aspects.
This is my book collection so far, there are many great reviews already online, so I won't add another one here, instead just a few personal comments.
My first book
Many books have overlapping subjects, but chapters 7 and 8 of this book alone are worth it's value. They cover the subject of counting liberties and winning capturing races. Even though I haven't studied them thoroughly (I should someday), I know where to go when I need it.
Vol 1. is way too basic, I bought it only to complete the series.
I promise lot's of quotes from this excellent book in future posts.
Books that haven't arrived yet:
