John Fairbairn wrote:So (with a very small number of exceptions) why don't we see such books?
I think that the Baduktopia four-volume series "Essential Life and Death" is exactly like this. The problems are and not just leveled for difficulty, they are categorized for techniques (e.g., 1-2 point, center of three stones, etc.), with not too many examples per technique. The authors also felt that existing collections were disorganized and were thus frustrating to players.
John Fairbairn wrote:For learning a language a separate book on Shakespeare's contributions, a separate book on "making out" in English, a separate book on phrasal verbs, etc is what you expect, and what you get. Why aren't tsumego books equally specific?
I would wager that if you were given a book of tsumego problems featuring only the tombstone tesuji, or only the golden stork standing on one leg tesuji, or only the elbow-lock tesuji, or only the cork-in-the bottle tesuji, or only L-groups, etc. etc, you would very soon not just learn but absorb that tesuji, and potential examples would magically leap out at you in your games, like heavy rain stotting off the ground. Not only that, I think you would enjoy the process, because even if the first couple of problems taxed you a lot, once you recognised what to look for you would rattle of the rest. Such postive feedback cannot fail to induce a warm glow.
So (with a very small number of exceptions) why don't we see such books?
I would make a distinction between problems organised by either vital point or final goal and those organised by technique.
Making a category based on, say, the 1-2 point is better than nothing, but it is like simply telling a child learning to button up his clothes that "this is a button". The technique he really has to learn is to put the button securely in the buttonhole. Go problems organised at that level of technique are very rare. There are a couple of examples in the series tchan points to (and which I have), but even that series relies mainly on goal groupings such as seki and ko.
I enjoy doing tsumego, and actually prefer it over playing the game. It's quite possibly the absence of the competitive ("versus") aspect of the activity, and it offers rewards in small, frequent doses.
The exceptions in terms of English language books in my opinion are:
* Art of Capturing Stones
* Art of Connecting Stones
* Counting Liberties and Winning Capturing Races
* Key Concepts in Life and Death: Nakade and Under the Stones
* Magic of Placements
* Magic on The First Line
* Mastering Ladders
* Monkey Jump Workshop
* Rescue and Capture
* Vital Points and Skillful Finesse for Sabaki
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.
One difficulty I could see with such a collection: if the readers already know that they are in the "two-stone edge squeeze" section (or "tombstone" as JF calls it), they may only read far enough to find the two-stone edge squeeze, without actually verifying whether it works.
It seems like such a problem collection should also have problems where the tombstone doesn't quite work: maybe the tesuji is there, but doesn't kill, or maybe it looks like the tesuji is there but it isn't. So each problem you have to ask yourself whether the shape you're learning does or does not work in this case.
Similarly if you're in an "eye vs. no-eye race" section, the book could have mostly problems where forming an eye is key to winning the race, but a few thrown in where forming the eye is actually a mistake and causes you to lose.
Actually the more I think about this, the more I like the idea! There's no reason problems on SL couldn't be organized this way...
