Poll: Where do you find tsumego to solve?

[nagano]

You may want to add weiqiok.com to the poll.

[usagi]

I am interested where people find the tsumego they solve, if they solve any.

I am not a very seasoned problem solver, but I am doing tsumego once in a time, but then I am not sure where to look for them. And they are so different in didactical value...

Back in the day I took all of goproblems.com, sorted them by genre, DE and DI tags, into sets of 20 or so. Then I went through them all, fixing broken solutions and removing problems I considered un fit for study (i.e. anything that required you to read instructions). I changed some of them into normal problems. I made sure they all worked with gogrinder as well -- in the process doing a little coding for the gogrinder project so it worked more better with the goproblems.com problem collection. Adum actually gave me permission to distribute the collection as I had it in 2006. The collection was so massive I only barely finished the life_and_death section.

A few months ago I updated the collection, changing some problems genre and doing work on the other genres as well. It's quite interesting to go through the sets -- of course they are tsumego and doing them is helpful, but doing them in order of difficulty is fascinating. You can feel them getting more difficult and you have a weird sense of progress that I have never experienced before -- except when playing MMOs. I believe I have learned something intangible by doing problems this way that I would not have known earlier. Something related to people's plateaus, how they get through them, visualization, and so forth. Very interesting stuff.

[Chew Terr]

I am interested where people find the tsumego they solve, if they solve any.

I am not a very seasoned problem solver, but I am doing tsumego once in a time, but then I am not sure where to look for them. And they are so different in didactical value...

Back in the day I took all of goproblems.com, sorted them by genre, DE and DI tags, into sets of 20 or so. Then I went through them all, fixing broken solutions and removing problems I considered un fit for study (i.e. anything that required you to read instructions). I changed some of them into normal problems. I made sure they all worked with gogrinder as well -- in the process doing a little coding for the gogrinder project so it worked more better with the goproblems.com problem collection. Adum actually gave me permission to distribute the collection as I had it in 2006. The collection was so massive I only barely finished the life_and_death section.

A few months ago I updated the collection, changing some problems genre and doing work on the other genres as well. It's quite interesting to go through the sets -- of course they are tsumego and doing them is helpful, but doing them in order of difficulty is fascinating. You can feel them getting more difficult and you have a weird sense of progress that I have never experienced before -- except when playing MMOs. I believe I have learned something intangible by doing problems this way that I would not have known earlier. Something related to people's plateaus, how they get through them, visualization, and so forth. Very interesting stuff.

You have mentioned this before, and I meant to ask into it. Have you by any chance gotten permission to distribute the most current set? If not, do you still have the older distributable version? It would be great to have a set like that for use with GoGrinder (especially for my phone), but it would seem a bit silly to redo the work you already have, if it's legal and ethical for me to at least ask you you can share.

[tapir]

You may want to add weiqiok.com to the poll.

I did, but this removed the results. Dead in gote. Sorry to all.

Surprising for me was, that goproblems.com got less votes than gochild, nobody uses flash cards and special problem series are not widely used. If anyone can reset the poll please go forward or maybe it is better to wait for new votes.

[Stable]

what are the special problem sets?

[tapir]

There are several pages presenting a weekly or daily tsumego afaik. One of the best is http://www.hitachi.co.jp/Sp/tsumego/index-e.html this one which is presented by one of Japans leading amateur players Harada Minoru. And it runs now for 14 years.

[Mark356]

Good question!

I greatly prefer printed media to online tsumego. I spend enough time hunched over my laptop frying my eyes already.

The problem is, I'm not sure what to do next. I worked through Graded Go Problems for Beginners v3 three times already (though maybe it's time for a fourth revisit?). I have Life and Death, but find it frustrating. I printed out Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of L&D v1 and got better than halfway through it (counting a problem as read when I could either solve it for sure or read out that I could not solve it), but after a while it got frustrating too-- by the end I was barely solving a third of them. Plus, it's a bit weird going through only a diagram set from a book series that originally was a text-heavy treatise.

[tchan001]

Good question!

I greatly prefer printed media to online tsumego. I spend enough time hunched over my laptop frying my eyes already.

The problem is, I'm not sure what to do next. I worked through Graded Go Problems for Beginners v3 three times already (though maybe it's time for a fourth revisit?). I have Life and Death, but find it frustrating. I printed out Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of L&D v1 and got better than halfway through it (counting a problem as read when I could either solve it for sure or read out that I could not solve it), but after a while it got frustrating too-- by the end I was barely solving a third of them. Plus, it's a bit weird going through only a diagram set from a book series that originally was a text-heavy treatise.

Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of L&D was originally software and not available in book form.

[Chew Terr]

I worked through Graded Go Problems for Beginners v3 three times already (though maybe it's time for a fourth revisit?).

I really ought to finish that one, someday...

[RedStick]

One of my favorite parts of my iphone are the problems in the Smart Go Pro app. Check it out.

Also has tens of thousands of professional games from the 17th century til 2009.

[xed_over]

Surprising for me was, that goproblems.com got less votes than gochild,

gochild has a better selection of problems, and better organized in a more progressive learning style.

goproblems changed their interface some time back, and I now find it more difficult to use than before.

I had trouble figuring out how to use gochild initially, but once you get it, I find it quite easy to use.

[nagano]

what are the special problem sets?

I would like this clarified as well. Do you mean the classical collections, and those newer ones known to be especially difficult, like the Kwon Kap-Young series?

The problem is, I'm not sure what to do next. I worked through Graded Go Problems for Beginners v3 three times already (though maybe it's time for a fourth revisit?). I have Life and Death, but find it frustrating. I printed out Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of L&D v1 and got better than halfway through it (counting a problem as read when I could either solve it for sure or read out that I could not solve it), but after a while it got frustrating too-- by the end I was barely solving a third of them. Plus, it's a bit weird going through only a diagram set from a book series that originally was a text-heavy treatise.

If it helps, this is my current study plan:

1. 1001 Life and Death Problems
2. Making Good Shape
3. Speed Baduk volumes 10-12
4. Lee Changho’s Life and Death
5. Lee Changho’s Tesuji
6. 501 Tesuji Problems
7. Weiqi Life and Death 1000 Problems
8. Cho Chikun’s Encyclopedia of Life and Death
9. Xuanxuan Qijing
10. Gokyo Shumyo
11. Train Like a Pro
12. Guanzi Pu
13. Wu Qingyuan Weiqi Duiju Quanji
14. Igo Hatsuyo-ron

[kokomi]

Surprising for me was, that goproblems.com got less votes than gochild,

gochild has a better selection of problems, and better organized in a more progressive learning style.

goproblems changed their interface some time back, and I now find it more difficult to use than before.

I had trouble figuring out how to use gochild initially, but once you get it, I find it quite easy to use.

I found many problems on goproblems.com are difficult than they are ranked. At least in the time trial. Also it gives a lot pressure (under time trial) when people gives lines of descriptions of what you are supposed to do with the question. I often feel frustrated on solving only 2 problems when the 5 smily faces disappear.

[palapiku]

The best part about goproblems are those ones where you have to play out a long ladder across the board. Under time pressure. Ugh.

[blue88]

Also it gives a lot pressure (under time trial) when people gives lines of descriptions of what you are supposed to do with the question. I often feel frustrated on solving only 2 problems when the 5 smily faces disappear.

Just don't use time trial then. By using the problem search you can find a set of problems matching your rank without having any time trouble solving them. I think time trial should be seen more as an additional function and not as the main aspect of goproblems.com.

I prefer books too, but I hardly am able to find a calm minute to open one. So basically when I'm reading tsumego books I'm likely to be on the bus or lying in bed. When I just feel like squeezing in some tsumego I use goproblems.com.

So far I've read Graded Go Problems for Beginners Vol. 3, James Davies' Tesuji, Get Strong at Tesuji and I'm currently reading GGPfB Vol. 4. Although the order has been more or less a coincidence, I can recommend it. Maybe on should switch the order of the two tesuji books though.