Nutshell:
— Take it easy! Take it light!
As I have quickly mentioned in the precious section, analyzing of games played by others is the most classical way of studying Go. But the question is, which games it is best to study. The answer is not easy... or rather, it is easy, but it might be different for every player. It is a matter of individuality and personal taste. So, what I should have said, is that to answer this question in general is not easy.
Or is it? I can't decide. Or can I? :)
The Subject being so subjective and personal, I can but give you my own personal opinion about it. Which is: Study games which you consider fun to re-play! Why? Because, as already said, this is a game, a hobby, and spending time on it should be as much fun as possible. Studying games you think of as boring is tedious and more like hard word and all it will lead to will be your discouragement.
Also, things you see in fun games usually stick in your mind easier and stay there longer, which ultimately leads not only to faster increase of your skill, but also in higher level of enjoyment of your own games.
Which brings us to another question: Which games are fun to re-play? What makes one game more "fun" than other?
Well... It might mean that there are some nice fights there which caught your eye, or a nice moyo strategy you try to imitate, or maybe one of the players is your idol, or whatever. Reasons for a game being fun to re-play are almost as plentiful as games out there. Or as players out there. I can't list them all!
However - what I can do, is to assure you that when you come across a game which is, for you, more pleasurable to look at than others, you'll know! And you will want to look at this game again and again. Trust me. :)
Probably the most games you will ever run across will be high-level professional games. This is what you find in books, magazines, and the such. Webpages devoted to game collections are usually concentrating on pro games.
The second most often seen category of games are the games of strong amateurs, many of them pro-level, or almost. This is understandable, I guess, since it is from those games by the super-strong players that we can learn the most. Such games are the most "correct", and have the most innovative ideas.
With regard and respect given to the skill of the top amateurs, I will give such games a blanket name pro games. So, from now on, when I say pro games I mean really really high level games, regardless of weather they have been played by actual pros or not.
Unfortunately, such games are also the most difficult to understand and follow, especially for beginners. Even if a commentary is provided, as is usually the case with books and magazines (not in most online games, though.)
Solution: Do not try to understand or follow them too hard!
I know, this sounds like counter-productive. You invest time in trying to analyze pro games, you huff and puff and sweat, and here comes a guy who just says "Don't try too hard". What a moron! Or is he?
I can't decide. Or can I? Lol.
There is a reason for what I say. And the reason is simple. As much as you try to understand all the intricacies of a pro game, you can't! Honestly! Most strong(er) can't, let alone beginners. So don't try, or you'll just get stomach ulcers.
But there is more!
To expand on this a little, let us think a little about why we study pro games... or, more generally, why we study at all, as beginners. As I have already mentioned in the Books section, the main goal for you right now is to accumulate a healthy arsenal of patterns which you are familiar with. A complete understanding of these patterns are not necessary (or even possible) right now. This will come gradually, with time.
So for now - don't sweat it. Just try to look for common patterns (i.e. patterns that you find over and over in pro games) and try to remember these patterns. Try to understand the moves as well, but don't agonize over it too much. Just enjoy! Have fun... relax... make a nice tea... or maybe have a bear... you know the drill. And look at some nice games.
Take your time.
Now that we have the above out of the way, lets talk a little about the methods of learning from pro games, about the how. Each of the outlined methods can be applied using a computer with game re-playing software as well as using real, honest-to-God, board and stones. I personally recommend the real stuff (board and stones), but whatever is your choice, is good.
This method consists of simply putting stones on the board, one by one, following the game record. Not thinking about the moves too much (however still thinking), just enjoying the aesthetics of the shapes, basking in the light of incredible skill, so to say. There is nothing hard about this method, and it probably affords the highest possible enjoyment.
Also, treat any commentaries, if present, lightly. Skim through them, or not, as you feel.
The trick to applying this method successfully is not to feel guilty for not trying to deep-analyse the moves.
Of course, if some move sparks your interest, by all means, devote time to analysis, if you want. This is great. Just don't make analysis is requirement of reviewing the game. At most, it should be a by-product, an anomaly.
This is the method I advocate the most for beginners.
And this is what a lot of the blah-blah above about "What games to study" was all about.
This is, so to say, a second stage of immersion. You do the same as in the previous method, re-play the game, move by move, but you also put some effort into trying to understand the moves. Use the comments and play out the variations they show. Try to understand them as well.
However, still do not sweat over the moves too much. Try to absorb what the comments have to say. Try to come up with some plausible (for now) reasons for most of the moves. But don't agonize. Enjoy. :)
Usually, this is what you will do when you are a little stronger, and more experienced. But maybe not... Try it. If you get mileage out of doing things like that, then more power to you! Congratulations!
By the way, some level of cross between this method and the previous one is what, in my experience, is applied the most, but almost every player out there. So you too should find your own balance and walk your own path towards success as a Go player. I wish you all the best.
This is really an advanced method, probably not applicable to players below dan level. But what Do I know. It consists of playing and re-playing a game multiple times, each time giving your best effort to understand the moves and the ideas involved. It works like pealing an onion - each time you re-play the game and think about the moves, you have the feeling of understanding it a little better, you come slightly closer to the truth, layer by layer.
But, as with pealing an onion, there is lots of proverbial tears involved. In this particular case, the tears are manifested through time, and effort, and sweat. Its really work to study like that. But, of course, the rewards are the greatest. For advanced players.
For beginners (and weak players in general), the reward-to-effort ratio is, in my opinion, too low to bother with this method. I just mention it here for completeness' sake.
Memorizing games is an odd technique, one which seem to have many more opponents than people recommending it. I have to admit that my own mind is not completely made up yet, although I lean towards being in favor of memorizing games. In moderation. :)
Well, lets quickly review some pros and cons of this method.
First the cons:
— The main problem people have with sheer memorization of games
is that it teaches you moves without teaching you the reasons for these moves.
You end up expanding lots of effort and in the end all you seem to be is
a mindless automaton, blindly copying the moves you memorized. What's more,
without understanding why a move is played, you might tend to make
the same move in similar position, not realizing that the positional differences
make the very move a mistake. In other words, you miss the context of
the moves - something which is very important in Go. And this makes you play
weaker rather than improve your skill. So it might be counterproductive.
Then the pros:
— As I have already stressed quite a few times, the important thing for you
right now is accumulating an arsenal of patters which you are familiar with.
This does not necessarily imply that you need to actually understand
these patters, although of course, some level of understanding is much
preferable to none. Memorizing pro games is one of the ways to firmly
implanting not only good patters, but also their proper contexts, into
your brain. The theory is that this might come handy in all stages of your
development as a Go player by providing mental clues (as in "this looks
familiar", or "I've seen that before"), and maybe speeding up
the absorbtion of new ideas. Who knows?...
Another argument in favor of memorizing games is that, as I have heard, the young pro aspirants (or inseis as they are called in Japan), start their study by memorizing 100 classical games. Now, I am not sure if there is any truth to that, but if there is, it tells us the value the professional teachers place on this method. However, it has to be remembered that the students in that case are themselves already among the top-level amateurs, so it might not necessarily show how suitable the method is for beginners.
A good thing is that this method, for good or not, can easily be combined with any of the other studying methods. Just a word of caution: relying on it alone is almost certainly a bad idea.
There is a lot of places you can get Go game records for study. The most useful are probably the books because the games there usually come with commentaries. Same goes for any kinds of magazines and other publications. Here are some good titles. Each of them has a multitude of good games and rich, deep commentaries to help you understand the intricacies of the games.
Recently, and no so recently, there has been a push towards compiling and editing and presenting (read: selling) huge game collection in soft-format. The daddy of all those is probably GoGoD, or Games Of Go On Disk. It is a huge collection of not only thousands of game records spanning all periods of Go history, but it also includes all kinds of other goodies, like esseys on major players and events in Go history, ancient manual translations, and more. Its worth the buck, if I may say so. The authors put a great amount of work to make their product of truly high caliber!
However, there are other sources of game records available as well. One of the major ones is the excellent GoBase.org site, which I have already mentioned before. It also offers much more than just game record. You can find there current Go news, articles, problems, databases, dictionaries, and more. All in all, a very highly recommended site!
For more links to various game collections sites please check the Internet section.
Other sources for game records in soft-format are all kinds of bundled study and database software. These will be discussed more in the Tools section.
And, I would be remiss to mention here all the great Go servers out there, where you can observe games of often the highest level as the are played, live. And you can discuss the moves with other kibitzers, or simply watch other discuss them and use these discussions as game commentaries for you to learn from. I have given my advice about the server in the Where? section of my Playing Tips page.
And finally, there are the club games. Watch strong(er) players play in your local club, and then sit and listen when, after the game, they go over the moves and analyze the ideas, point mistakes. This is an almost invaluable source of knowledge, especially if the players are nice enough to let you participate in the discussion and maybe ask some questions.
The same goes for tournaments you play in. Watch strong(er) players and listen to their after-the-game comments.
It can be priceless.