So I've finally graduated school and have begun my "real life." Just so happens that real life is a bit less stressful then school at the moment so I wanted to come back and study Go the way I have always wanted. After moving yet again (this time to Connecticut) and finding work I found that I have a bit more time on my hands then when studying and living at home.

In any case I had bought a ton of books way back when but never got to reading them, this will change now. One set that I bought is Graded Go Problems for Beginners Vol 1-4.

As someone who is still a beginner (I've read two beginners books and played a few games) and no better then I'd say 15k at the best, How should I go about working these problems? In Jonathan Hop's So you want to play go level 1 he says he likes not giving the answers like Chinese L&D books do. But in GGPB vol 1 the answers are at the back of the book.

In this first volume I often find that I'm not 100% sure my answer is correct, and worry that I'm playing a bad stone. Should I look at the answer or not? If not, and say I am incorrect, wont I be instilling a bad habit?

Thanks for the aid

Jonathan.

_________________
**We're living in a world that's make believe, they made; we believed.**

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A private blog on Asian go books and interesting go sightings
Now open only for a select few.
Go is such a beautiful game.

Yes, you should look at the answers. Spend as much time as you want on a problem and then look at the answer. Just understanding the shapes over time will help you in reading during your games.

A lot of people say no, but IMHO at you level you should look at the answers. You could try to figure everything out for yourself, but I don't think that that is a very efficient way to learn. You do need to learn to read, but you need to learn basic patterns, too.

_________________
Sheik Yerbuti -- if that really is your name --

So at a higher level you would recommend not to? Like 'when you're dan, you should stop looking'?

I'm starting to lose my conviction that knowing the answer to a tsumego changes anything about whether it is useful.

When I first started playing I went through Graded Go Problems for Beginners v2, puzzled out the answers, took a lot of time, etc. and when I learned the answers I guess I had learned something about what the right move in these situations would be, so it helped.

But I have recently re-opened GGPB2 and am doing the problems again, just for reading practice. I know what the answer is at a glance to almost all of them but the practice of reading out the sequences seems to be quite useful and the problems are maybe more useful to me the second time--now I know the answer but quickly reading out the entire tree to the end seems like really good practice and seems much more analogous to what I actually do in games than when I learned them in the first place.

I'm starting to feel that the answers are not all that relevant, that the point of the problems are more like practicing scales for a musician. Of the really hard ones that I've done and figured out the answers to over time, I'm not sure I have used them very much in games. I almost always win/lose based on tsumego that I would consider easy if I approached them as a Go problem.

I would say, when you're 6kyu and you're doing 6kyu problems: Don't look at the answer! Are you doing 2kyu+ problems, try to work as hard as possible on the problems before looking at the answer.

You should ALWAYS look at the answers. The purpose of doing life and death is to improve, so it is absolutely critical that if you make a mistake it is corrected and not reinforced.

I have no advice for dan players.

_________________
Sheik Yerbuti -- if that really is your name --

You make it sound like the answer to the problem always contains some fundamental insight into life and death that explains why you were having trouble with it. Something like, "The solution is to throw in on the third move. Now that you know about throwing in on the third move, you'll be able to solve all problems where the solution is to throw in on the third move." Do you really think that's true?

I assume that if I want to master new techniques and new corner shapes I should study books about tesuji and life and death. If I want reading exercise, I do problems. Reading out every variation and solving the problem mentally without ever looking at the solution is an extreme approach, but strikes me as more rewarding than the opposite, and very tempting, extreme: looking at the answer as soon as the problem starts to feel too difficult.

A friend told me that one of his friends keeps track of how many consecutive tsumego he has solved correctly. If he makes one error, he has to start again at zero. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a good way to keep yourself from looking at the solution before you've really read thoroughly.

I understand how what I said might be interpreted to mean that, but it's really not what I meant (sorry I should have been more clear). If you do a problem and get it wrong, you are likely to make a similar mistakes the next time you do a problem that requires a similar tesuji. slowly, making the mistake will become more and more ingrained until it is difficult to remove. The value to looking at the solution isn't that you now know the answer to the problem, it is that you know that you were wrong and need to be more careful in your thinking. If you could somehow know if you were right or wrong without knowing the solution to the problem, that would probably be better than looking at the solution, but unless you are solving problems on a computer (which brings has it's own issues), that doesn't seem possible/ practical.

There is one thing you must beware of though. There are a few solutions published in books which are plainly wrong
Do check the errata section of Sensei's Library for problem books you own.

_________________
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A private blog on Asian go books and interesting go sightings
Now open only for a select few.
Go is such a beautiful game.

Too bad

Too many diverging opinions on that subject. Nobody knows the correct answer, if it exists at all.

My advice: Flip a coin. When it's in the air, you'll know what side you're hoping for.

_________________
If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

Good ole Piet Hein!

_________________
Sheik Yerbuti -- if that really is your name --

You should not listen too much to what other people say is best for you.

YOU have to find out YOURSELF what works best for YOU.

But, if you still want to hear my opinion ...

I will always look at the solution. Sometimes I can't find it myself, sometimes I am not quite sure and even if I am sure that I am right, it gives me satisfaction to see 'my' solution printed. (And sometimes I am sure that I am right and it turns out I am not. )

Or to put it differently:

Some people ask about the right time to do cardio - before or after the workout, in the morning or in the evening. Correct answer: the best time is the time when you will actually do it.

That means for Tsumego: It is by far more important that you actually do it than whether or not you look at the answers.

_________________
Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)