Can anyone explain what this set of problems is supposed to teach? It seems like these are encouraging really awful moves. I must be missing the point, and I haven't had much luck finding the meaning of "Jie" either.

Jie = Ko doesn't it ?

That makes sense since these problems seem to encourage starting kos. My confusion stems from the fact that most of these kos seem bad or pointless for the player starting them.

Perhaps the whole point of this set is just to show how to start a ko, not how to start a useful/good ko?

Can you give an example of a problem for which you think the solution is not a good move?

I expect that the kos are actually good for the player with the move. (That does not mean that the player will win the ko, OC. ) Perhaps you could post a problem where the ko seems bad to you.

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I'm sure the lesson is supposed to be helpful, but it just seems crazy to me.

Here's an example:

If black wins the ko, he can live in this example.

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be immersed

OK, but my confusion stems from the fact that it doesn't appear winnable. I guess one's supposed to assume that if this were a larger board and one had more ko threats than the opponent then this ko should be played?

The vast majority of go problems I've seen before explicitly call for a solution without a ko. The few involving ko I've done in the past involve winning a ko not just starting one.

Overall I'm really enjoying the GoChild site, and it does seem to be re-wiring my brain to quickly see solutions to go problems elsewhere & in actual games, but this set seems like developing bad habits.

You don't necessarily need to win the Ko. Your group is dead without the Ko anyway, initiating the Ko either lets you live, or gives you two moves in a row.

By initiating the Ko you only give your opponent two more points. Surely you can find two separate moves or two moves in conjunction which are worth more than two points somewhere on the board.

That's how I see it at least.

Well, yeah.

You don't need to have more ko threats than your opponent to want to start this ko.

The point is not to find a way to live unconditionally.

If you just give up on this group, then it is dead and your opponent gets all its points.

If you start a ko, and lose the ko, then the group is dead and your opponent gets all its points, and you get to play a ko threat somewhere else that he had to ignore in order to win the ko. So you got something out of starting the ko even you ended up losing it.

Hmm, well, I guess I just don't see the point of a set of problems for how to start a ko. I mean, it seems obvious how to start a ko.

Just because you can't "win" a ko doesn't mean you shouldn't start it. It all depends on how much compensation you can get from fighting a ko (and also a little bit about how desperate you are).

I personally do not get how you say starting the ko can be bad for black. If he loses, he's still dead. If he wins, he lives. Now, knowing exactly when to start a ko is tricky business, but I doubt all that many tsumego can answer the question of timing. Even killing or living with a group could be completely wrong if the timing isn't there (i.e. there are bigger moves elsewhere).

Now, in that example, obviously it is the case that black has lost the game. Even if he were to win the ko he would lose the game. So I wouldn't think about that position occurring on a 7x7 board, but instead picture that position occurring on a 19x19 board where ko threats exist. The point of this particular problem isn't to find all the ko threats and such, nor to know exactly when to start the ko, it is simply to start the ko in the first place.

Edit:

Maybe these problems are too easy for you. Let me find a few harder ones, and then post them here.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

I particularly liked that set of problems because I have a hard time seeing potential (ideally picnic-) ko. I'm a bit better at it than I had been before, though.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

This particular corner pattern isn't obvious, at least not to some players. I mean...it's not designed for dan level players, but there is a point in your development as a go player where you won't see that connect and die or that this group could live in ko.

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Occupy Babel!

It's often not obvious to me. All the time I make the mistake of leaving a group for dead because I can't see how to make it live unconditionally, instead of trying to start a ko for life. Of course, I am not very strong yet.

It may be easy to start a ko, but hard to see the possibility of starting it.

Fair enough.

Since there are no explanations on the site and I didn't know jie = ko I was confused about the purpose. After fumbling through ~10 of these I was baffled that the "correct" answers were to start un-winnable kos.

I do understand that doing so can be helpful in the context of a larger game, but I'm skipping the rest of this set.

I've been working through these basic problems because even though most are easy to solve on sight there are a few in most sets that I get wrong at first. I was surprised at how many in "connect & cut" I didn't know!

Fair enough! And yeah, connect-and-cut took me quite a while.

_________________
Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

From the Gokyo Shumyo, questions 23 (top) and 74 (bottom):

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B 19x19 diagram
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . O X . . X O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . X O . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . O X X X , O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . O O . O O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , O O O . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . X X O X X . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . O X X X . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

#23 isn't too hard for me, but # 74... Anyway, see if you can solve either of these.

Also, an example from joseki: Black to live unconditionally in the corner.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . O X X X . . . .
$$ | . O O X O X . . .
$$ | O X X O . . . . .
$$ | . . X O . O . . .
$$ | . X X O . O . . .
$$ | . O O X X . . . .
$$ | . O X . . . . . .
$$ | . . O . . . . . .
$$ | . . . , . . . . .[/go]

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Black to play & live on both of these?

No. The the answer to both of the first two problems is a ko for at least one of the sides. If you don't know who it is to play, than solve it for both. I still have yet to solve problem 74 - my point in posting that one was to show that the statement (quote) "it seems obvious how to start a ko" is very dubious. There's an entire section of the Gokyo Shumyo devoted to it.

Edit:
I couldn't disagree with this more. You must identify what you can do in any situation. If you can live/kill unconditionally, than obviously ko is a failure. If it is impossible to live/kill unconditionally, than to not at least make ko is an even greater failure.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.