RobertJasiek wrote:Akura wrote:And the only other english tesuji book
Pure tesuji / tsumego problem books do not need text; they can be in any language. All the reader needs to understand is a variation's outcome and this is easy enough without comments. Positional judgement or middle game problems are harder without text.
You're absolutely right.
Actually I wanted to say something like "easily accessable books for westerners" or anything similar, but it turned out to become "english books"...
The main problem in learning tesuji (and life and deat, too) is that you have to practice a lot. Much more than one or two games on KGS a week would provide. So it's practically inevitable to read books on the topic. But just learning from huge problem collections (like "501 tesuji problems") is very hard, especially when you want to understand the underlying structure (compare Robert's approach to joseki).
So beginning with book like "Tesuji" from Davies is essential to understand what you're actually practicing. But to polish your skills, you have to do thousands of thousands of problems no matter how good you understand the tesuji itself.
And practising during games is really hard. Some weeks ago a german 5dan told me to improve my reading, as this my current main weakness. So I started to do lots of tsumego, of course, but I also try to read as much as possible during games. This is very tiring, but in the end you have to apply the tesuji you learned from books and, even more important, have to know when they can't be applied.
So for conclusion, the best way to learn tesuji, I think, is to switch from theoretical books to problem collections to intense in-game reading.
Robert certainly hasn't made it personal this time.