Chinese Problem Books

[zac]

Hi all,

Has anyone had any experience with these chinese problem books?

https://www.superbuy.com/en/page/buy?ur ... 5665951076

They're part of a larger series that starts at 25k, and goes through to 3 dan.

I'm going to make a big order soon, and also looking for recommendations.

I'm already looking at the weiqi life and death drills mentioned on senseis https://senseis.xmp.net/?WeiqiLifeAndDeathDrills (also mentioned in that "to get to 8d is not hard" post, the first two volumes but apparently start at a fairly high level)
and 1000 weiqi problems which is often recommended.

Also looking at;

https://www.superbuy.com/en/page/buy?ur ... 4049483190 (set of four life and death problems, by Zhang Jie. The 25 book Zhang Jie set mentioned below I've seen one positive review for, so figured these might be good as well) and

https://www.superbuy.com/en/page/buy?ur ... 3167384047
which I've heard starts at around 5k and works through tesuji, life and death etc. in sets of three books.

I've also seen this set mentioned somewhere here before, a set of 25 books by Zhang Jie;
https://www.superbuy.com/en/page/buy?ur ... 6963705377


I like the idea of buying a series that drills similar problems over and over and I tend to like problem books with a very gentle difficulty curve. I've got the Jump Level Up series on it's way to me already, and have high hopes for that as well.

Thanks all for any input, suggestions, experiences etc.

[EdLee]

1000 weiqi problems which is often recommended.

[zac]

1000 weiqi problems which is often recommended.

What is it's difficulty like? I figure there must be a reason it's often recommended, what would you say makes it so good? I really like my L&D problems to look like positions that arise in games, rather than artificial problems designed only to push my reading.

I've got a few objectives in mind in ordering more problem books;
1. Lots of easy-ish problems to drill quickly (currently I use GGPfB vol 2, the one and three move problems from 1001 L&D, the first Lee Changho L&D book, and the two Lee Changho tesuji books that cover ladders and throw-ins, though the latter gets more difficult in the latter part. Even problems that are easier than those can be nice to drill sometimes)
2. Increase the number of problems that are a slight challenge at my level (currently the 5 move problems from 1001 L&D, some of GGPfB3 and 4. These kinds of problems take me anywhere from a minute to 5 mintues to solve)

I really like the look of these series that take a whole book to cover e.g. 15-10k, 10-5k, and are divided into seperate books for L&D, tesuji etc. I think I learn from problems best by drilling lots and lots of similar shapes, moves etc.

[EdLee]

Hi zac,

I'm very much under-qualified to evaluate.
But my impression is mid-kyu to low-dan levels.
Some problems may even be mid-dan, but I'm not certain.

It has a mixture of 'real-life' shapes and contrived shapes.
But I don't have a statistical analysis of the breakdown.

Its target audience is clearly children. ( It explicitly addresses "dear children" throughout! ) Children's learning curve is vastly different than adults'. My impression is it's part of the foundation, like grade school education.

My guess is the same probably holds true for all the other books on your shopping list.

[zac]

Hi zac,

I'm very much under-qualified to evaluate.
But my impression is mid-kyu to low-dan levels.
Some problems may even be mid-dan, but I'm not certain.

It has a mixture of 'real-life' shapes and contrived shapes.
But I don't have a statistical analysis of the breakdown.

Its target audience is clearly children. ( It explicitly addresses "dear children" throughout! ) Children's learning curve is vastly different than adults'. My impression is it's part of the foundation, like grade school education.

My guess is the same probably holds true for all the other books on your shopping list.

Thanks Ed. I'm sure it's worth picking up, probably will fit in to my second category of challenging problems (to impossible, if they are up in the dan level). Will be a nice book to keep returning to. It seems like the weiqi life and death drill books will be similar.

I'm getting a feeling that if I'm going to keep improving at the game, that I need that grade school education. Guo Juan said something about western players lacking strong fundamentals, which means that many make it to around the 1 dan level, but they find it much harder to go beyond.

I'm sure that solving thousands of problems will improve most of the important skills. Although there are some really good english language problem books, there just doesn't seem to be a lot at any one level of difficulty. If I spend an hour a day doing problems, it doesn't take long to work through e.g. GGPfB or 1001 L&D, and once I have finished one of those books I might not be ready to take on the next level of difficulty. Hence looking for chinese language books; plenty of them at all difficulties, and cheap to boot.

[nasdaq]

The weiqi life and death drills, even the first book of the 3 are dan level, but really good problems involving tesuji, but also just plain reading exercises to the find the good move.

1000 is good, i've done the l&d section. Not too hard but all at a consistent level low kyu would be good.

The lee changho l&d books i've done vol1-4. start of easy and 4 is doable for me 1kyu. vol5 gets a bit dan level.

i like the 800 rapid weiqi drills book, same level as ggpfb vol 3. a few easier a few harder.

I got the classic gokyo shumyo, genegn gokyo, guanzipu, a bit hard but really improve reading, mybe 1 dan start on the gokyo shumyo. not read them that much.

I did get the tesuj ones from:
https://www.superbuy.com/en/page/buy?ur ... 3167384047
good problems low kyu. but never studied them.

To be honest I made my own pdf + solution collection by scribing problems from weiqi101, the maeda problems are very good. It takes a lot of time to do, labour of love...

I was like you and got too many tsumego books thinking i would find the perfect book and have all these resources to get uber strong and now find myself just doing the one pdf book i made myself over and over. tsumego can be hard

[EdLee]

need that grade school education.

[tchan001]

The Chinese equivalent of the English series Speed Baduk (https://senseis.xmp.net/?SpeedBadukForBeginners) is quite nice.
https://tchan001.wordpress.com/2010/06/ ... qi-series/

Apologize that for the most part I haven't updated the pictures in the blog and many are still linked to photobucket.

You might search around my blog for other Chinese go book series that might interest you.

[zac]

The weiqi life and death drills, even the first book of the 3 are dan level, but really good problems involving tesuji, but also just plain reading exercises to the find the good move.

1000 is good, i've done the l&d section. Not too hard but all at a consistent level low kyu would be good.

The lee changho l&d books i've done vol1-4. start of easy and 4 is doable for me 1kyu. vol5 gets a bit dan level.

i like the 800 rapid weiqi drills book, same level as ggpfb vol 3. a few easier a few harder.

I got the classic gokyo shumyo, genegn gokyo, guanzipu, a bit hard but really improve reading, mybe 1 dan start on the gokyo shumyo. not read them that much.

I did get the tesuj ones from:
https://www.superbuy.com/en/page/buy?ur ... 3167384047
good problems low kyu. but never studied them.

To be honest I made my own pdf + solution collection by scribing problems from weiqi101, the maeda problems are very good. It takes a lot of time to do, labour of love...

I was like you and got too many tsumego books thinking i would find the perfect book and have all these resources to get uber strong and now find myself just doing the one pdf book i made myself over and over. tsumego can be hard

Thanks nasdaq. I had heard that the life and death drills books were quite difficult. Picking them up along with everything else for a later day.
I'll throw in the 800 rapid weiqi drills book, sounds like it would be at a good level for me now, and it's cheap, so why not?

I also thought about making my own pdfs, but couldn't find an easy solution to do it. I do have the Lee Changho books in pdf, and like to print off a couple of pages to carry around for when I have a spare minute.

I do like owning books, too. I don't really have any illusions that any particular book will improve my strength in go, but I do believe that solving problems is a big part. I prefer to have a wide variety, rather than repeat the same problems too soon. I know that some problem sets can be poorly organised, or rely on explanatory text, or have poor printing quality, so that's why I'm looking for personal experiences/recommendations.

Thanks again

[zac]

The Chinese equivalent of the English series Speed Baduk (https://senseis.xmp.net/?SpeedBadukForBeginners) is quite nice.
https://tchan001.wordpress.com/2010/06/ ... qi-series/

Apologize that for the most part I haven't updated the pictures in the blog and many are still linked to photobucket.

You might search around my blog for other Chinese go book series that might interest you.

Thanks tchan,

I had a bit of a look around your blog previously, I think I just missed those speed baduk books. Is the order you listed them in order of difficulty;
i.e. Intro, foundational, beginners, intermediate, advanced? Can you give an indication of the level of difficulty? I could only find some sample pages from the intro series, which showed very easy "black to connect" type problems against e.g. a peep at a tigers mouth, pushing through a bamboo joint etc. I think I mentioned that I have the Jump Level Up series arriving next week, I've heard that the two series (level up, speed baduk) are quite comparable.

[tchan001]

I have tried to list them in the order of difficulty but unfortunately I don't know what the actual levels of the problems are as the books do not seem to provide ratings. I looked at some Chinese posts and apparently the whole series starts off at 30k and takes you to the dan levels.

You can check out my post for Top 1% to see what type of problems are contained within the Advanced series.
https://tchan001.wordpress.com/2011/06/ ... swer-book/

You can check out the sensei post for Train like a Pro series to see what people say about the first two books of the Dan series. https://senseis.xmp.net/?TrainLikeAPro

[Jujube]

In general, what's the easiest way to order these books? Is it to go through a proxy service or is there a site which offers delivery directly, and automatically calculates postage and so on? I'd be interested in the 1000 weiqi problems.

[zac]

In general, what's the easiest way to order these books? Is it to go through a proxy service or is there a site which offers delivery directly, and automatically calculates postage and so on? I'd be interested in the 1000 weiqi problems.

I'm ordering through an agent (superbuy), so that I know that all the books will be there, and they will all arrive at once. I don't mind paying the service fees, bad exchange rates etc on a big order. I've heard people order direct from Taobao without issue though, for me it was marginally easier to just deal with one company to pack and ship everything. Unfortunately I won't know the shipping costs until they arrive at the superbuy warehouse, but have a rough estimate. For the 40 books in the order postage is likely to add 100-300% to the cost. Still, each book will be less than $10 delivered, which for me is a good deal.

The 1000 weiqi problems you are likely to be able to find on eBay or Amazon. I found it on the Australian Ebay by searching with the Chinese title, but it was significantly more expensive than buying direct, even if I was to order it by itself. Initially I was only going to order a couple of books, and just kind of go carried away. Once they all arrive I'll give a review of the books, and my experience ordering them.

[zac]

I ended up ordering both the 12 book and 25 Zhang Jie sets, 1000 Weiqi problems, the 800 rapid drill problems, a set of three pocket sized L&D books with 100 problems each, and some blank kifu books to use at my club.
The total for the books was a bit over 500 Yuan. I was hoping to be able to send it by sea, which would have cost me around 3-400 yuan, but for some reason it wasn't available as an option (too big, maybe?), so I had to send it via EMS. The upside is that I'll receive the books in 5-10 business days (vs 20-30). The downside is that the postage cost me 1000 yuan. The package weighs a bit over 17kg. Still, it left me paying about $8 AUD per book. For comparison, I recently bought Graded Go Problems for beginners for about $35 with shipping. Getting Jump Level Up 1-5 cost me over $150 from the USA.

I've been pretty impressed with Superbuy's service. They take photo's of everything once it arrives from taobao/tmall to their warehouse, so that you can check to make sure everything is OK. It took about a week or so for everything to arrive to their warehouse- this was including some extra time because one of the sets had arrived to them without all the books- they contacted the seller and got them to send the missing ones. They have been very quick to respond to enquiries, and update my account once things arrive, photo's are taken, package is sent etc.

Once I receive everything, I'll have to take photos and do a bit of a review on the content. I'm pretty sure that all the books are primarily problems, although I've only seen a couple of sample pages of the 25 book set, so that actually might contain some lessons, explanations etc. as well. There has been a sudden influx of Chinese students in to our go (weiqi, maybe?) club, and they have promised to help me with my Chinese so long as I help them with their English As an aside; only a couple of the students actually know how to play the game. They travel from China to Australia to learn English, but end up learning a Chinese game using Japanese terminology!

[EdLee]

Hi zac, is superbuy based in Australia, and is Australia the destination of the shipment of these books ?