Archive for the ‘tsume-go’ Category

How to learn from Go problems

Monday, April 9th, 2007

There is a new article in the “Korea Times” series: Lesson 90: Life-and-Death Problems (Part 2)

It makes a few very good points about how to learn from Go problems:

  1. find the right problem set for your level - most of the time it’s in very simple situations where mistakes occur, so there is no real benefit to study very complicated problems if you’re missing simple ones
  2. don’t look at the answers - in the real game there’s no Fujiwara-no-Sai to tell you the answer :-) I don’t suppose there is any harm in looking at the answers eventually - but just don’t look before putting a significant effort into solving the problems.

In order to read other articles in this series, here is the index page.

Posted in advice, baduk, tsume-go | 7 Comments »

Awesome tesuji in Judan Challenger Final

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Yoda Norimoto 9d and Yamashita Keigo Kisei (who is also defending the Kisei title against Kobayashi Satoru) are fighting today to decide who will challenge the current Judan title holder, Cho Chikun.

The game is still undecided as I write this, but I was delighted by a tesuji that white (Yoda) played earlier in the game. White to play in dia 1 - where would you play? Hint: the lower-right corner is hot: black looks vulnerable in the corner, but what is the best way to attack him? White is also weak, he doesn’t really have many choices.

Dia 1

White 1 in dia 2 is a very nice tesuji - it takes advantage of black’s lack of liberties. If white 3 was in place to start with, white 1 would be easy to find, but in the game white 1 is surprising at first. Black is isolated in the corner after white 5 - black cannot push through on the left because white will block with atari.

Dia 2

So here is the second problem for today, easier than the first one: black to play and live in the lower-right corner in dia 3.

Dia 3

Just simply playing atari and pushing doesn’t lead anywhere: black is left with one eye. Some special measures are in order for black to live.

Dia 4

Sacrifice is the magic word: dia 5 is the best black can do, which is to fight a ko for his life (if white plays 4 at 5, for instance), but that’s of course much better than dia 4.

Dia 5

Posted in problem, tesuji, tsume-go | No Comments »