I can be kind of a broken record on this subject but hopefully there's enough other conversation on these forums to drown it out

I'm always expressing the opinion on tsumego threads that people should do more easier problems and less beating their heads against the wall on difficult problems that they would never have the time to solve in a game. (Actually I think both kinds of problems are valuable but I think people usually need nudging in the easy-problem direction.)

Recently I've been putting my money where my mouth is and going through the "Kyu level testing" problems on GoChild. These start out with totally trivial problems that take literally one second to solve, and even at the section I'm up to now (3.3, in the 2500s) I can solve many of the problems pretty much instantly (in a few seconds).

But as the level of difficulty gradually rises, I'm encountering (a) problems in which I really have to stop and count liberties or read out capturing races, causing me to spend 10+ seconds, or (b) problems in which my two-second intuition is incorrect because of some subtlety I should have noticed and I actually get the problem wrong. And I can tell that these are all situations that still fall into the "obvious at a glance, play the right move in two seconds" category for a dan player.

As I work through the thousands of easy problems in this set, I feel like I'm getting these patterns more into my fingers, so that in an actual game they're both more obvious to me at a glance, and can also be used as "leaf nodes" in my look-ahead tree so that when I'm doing actual real-game calculation I can stop there because the result is clear.

A lot of these problems would probably be considered too simple to be worth doing by many 10k players - but if a 3k player still thinks he has a lot of room for improvement in execution of this level of problem, maybe it will inspire some 10ks to spend more time on these close-combat fundamentals as well.

I think it's good for blitz game.

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长考出臭棋.

I have made the same experience on GoChild at my modest level, and I entirely agree with you. These problem collections are very good and I have the feeling they help me hammer down some basic shapes I thought I knew about. I found this helps me to understand better the more complicated problems, like the ones in "Tesuji".

Let me add a euro or two in your mouth, I've started more or less the same thing (but with intermediate/L&D 600, then intermediate L&D 1000). I've actually extracted the problems to use them with gogrinder, as the sets are really great.

Added benefit: having 80 to 90% of solved problems is more fun than failing them all.

80 to 90 % right sounds like a quite healthy ratio. Mixing it up with hard problems is probably good as well, but if you're "failing them all" then they are too hard for sure

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

Well, i'm better in game than in tsumego, without a doubt

I totally agree with dfan.

Lack of precision in ordinary, usually rather easy reading is much more likely to lose you games, than the occasional carpenter square you get wrong.

I agree with Davefan!

I had no issues with this one

And the suffering from missing an easy read is much worse that botching a complex L&D problem in a game. Trust me, I know

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RazorBrain


- Another One Bites the Dust
- BOOK REVIEW: How Not To Play Go
- Finally, a DGS Client for the iPhone

especially when one misses an atari, while the group is key stones.

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长考出臭棋.

I wonder, what is the percentage of correct answers that makes the most ideal problem set? Maybe 50% is a good balance? I suppose it also depends how long you spend on each problem...

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"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

I would guess that the improvement is proportional to time you spend reading, and other factors are not so important.

If I read out a problem carefully and decide "OK, now I know the answer", I'd like to have at least 80-90% of those correct, regardless of the difficulty level. Of course, there could also be problems that I cannot solve even after investing like 10 minutes. I tend to quit if that happens for more than 30-40% of the problems because the time I invest into hard problems doesn't seem to weigh up to the benefits. I started working on the Lee Changho tsumego and tesuji series (http://senseis.xmp.net/?LiChangHoJingjiangWeiqiSihuo) recently, and it really made me a believer of building up your tsumego from the foundations (ie. basic shapes).

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

80-90% sounds reasonable. When I worked on GGPB Vol. 3 I had such a success rate (86%). This is motivating and should reveal your most important weakness. As for me I had problems in the opening and detecting shortage of liberties in L&D problems. A high solving percentage incites you to redo the problems where you failed and to work on your major weakness. Now I am doing the last 150 problems of 1001 L&D Problems, and the solving quota is only 70%. This is more frustrating and shows too many weaknesses to work on at the same time.