Solving go problems

As a beginner, the best way to become better at playing go is to solve many relatively simple problems. Any problem should be so simple so that you can solve it in under half a minute. The better you become, the more difficult problems you can solve within the same time frame. You do not get better faster by trying to solve harder problems than suits your level, rather the contrary.

I would say that 90% of the players strength comes from how good one can correctly "read" a number of moves forward. A good way to practice this skill is to play many games of go but it's even better is to solve lots of go problems. As a beginner, you can barely manage to read one move ahead, but with a little practice, you can soon read ahead 2-3 moves correctly and with a lot of practice 10 moves or more.

When you have solved a problem, you should be so sure that it is the right solution so that you do not need to look at the correct answer. Therefore some problem books are lacking a section with solutions. So you have to have read out the entire problem with all possible variations before deciding to look at the answer. Sometimes you are still wrong and then it is important to try to understand why it was wrong and why the correct answer is right.

You do not have to spend hours on end to solve problems, but it is perfectly OK to solve one problem here and one there. Eg when sitting in the subway, before going to sleep, sitting on the toilet, waiting in line, when there are commercials on TV, etc. So buy / borrow some problems books, spread them out in your home and always have one with you wherever you go. ;)

On the internet, there are some problems collections to come by and the best is undoubtedly goproblems.com. There you can easily start with the problem that suits your personal level and then advance. There are currently 8035 problems, of which I've made three.

Life and death, 6 kyu

Life and death, 3 kyu

Tesuji, 8 dan (?)

There are also some "apps" for smart phones (Android / iOS), which has many go problems. I have yet to find any that is easy to use and that I think is good for beginners, but I have not been looking so hard. Those that cost money are probably also the ones that are best. Please tell me if you find a good app.

New Go Books

Every time I go to China I want to buy some weiqi books. The two main reasons are that it is so damn cheap and that there are so many of them to find.

This time the main reason was to find a beginners book for kids that I can give to my sisters kids. We went to the major bookshop in down town Shanghai and went to the weiqi section. There they have a wall filled with all kinds of weiqi books.  After some search we found this one. ErTong WeiQi RuMen (Go for beginner kids). The book starts with really basic things like counting liberties moving on to capturing stones and to end with medium level problems. Totally 219 pages, almost A4 sizes. The only problem with the book is that you need to know how to read Chinese, but Girlwing promised to translate the book to Swedish for the kids.

For myself I found some books as well. They are two problem books in the level 5 to 1 kyu and one book 1 kyu to dan level. The books are filled with problems. One consist of life and death and the other of tesuiji problems.

First Girlwing didn't want to let me buy the more difficult of the problem books but after some begging she allowed me to buy it if I promised not to read it until I became 1 kyu. I wonder how long time it will take me until I can start to read that one...

Also, when we came to Shanghai we had a couple of "The world of Weiqi" (围棋 天地) waiting that Girlwings father had bought for us. Those are mostly for Girlwing to read but I can find some fun in watching the pictures and trying to solve the problems in them. I can also replay the pro games with interesting variations. We have been thinking of subscribing for the magazine but then we probably have to subscribe for several copies at a time. Anyone interested in subscribing with us? It will probably be at least 50 yuan per issue.

Life and death problem

It was fun to create the previous tesuji problem so I started to make another one. This one is a life and death problem.

It is really tricky to make a good problem. I had to start over several times and move around the stones. But I think I got it right in the end. You can try and see if you like it. This one is probably easier than the tesuji problem.

Black is in trouble. Is it any way to make life here?