Any good collection of puzzles for beginners? These 30k puzzles here are too hard :-(

Teaching
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Hello everyone!
I just started learning Go, from almost the very zero, i.e. all I knew about the game was how capturing works, about suicidal moves being forbidden, something about Ko rule forbidding repetitions and that something like Komi exists (for some reason I thought it’s 0.5, but looks like it’s actually 6.5-7.5?).

So, I did read some of the rules (not all of them yet, gave up after reaching how Scoring works, I don’t need to know this well yet), I did quick tutorial:

and played several 9x9 games.

I intend to play much, much more of them and learn more of some basic tactics, so hoping for some nice beginner puzzles, I clicked Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS and sorted by difficulty… but my feelings about [30k] puzzles are at least mixed :open_mouth:

I tried some of these [30k] puzzles, but most of them looks either:

  • Broken?

  • Too hard…

  • looks like troll puzzle or something?

  • Are not understandable or unclear, both what you have to do and the solution

with maybe few puzzles that are very easy 1-2 move positions.

For example, let’s loot at these [30k] “black to kill” puzzle:

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS

Starting position: https://puu.sh/CgCvw/39933996a6.jpg

Final position: https://puu.sh/CgCxp/183c7a92a1.jpg

So… what do I have here?

  • Starting position I don’t understand,

  • 6 moves, which I completely don’t understand, maybe aside 1-2 of opponent moves that look sensible, like a try to do some blocking or prevent my aggression? Not sure…

  • Final position, that I don’t understand, but it’s apparently win (kill) for black… but how? Why? I tried to continue it in few ways and usually ended up with white prevailing…

Can I somewhere find puzzles like this, but with explanation?

And if [30k] looks like this, then maybe I can find something easier somewhere, like [31k]-[35k] puzzles?

I would be glad for some advice and link to some interactive materials I could learn the basics from :slight_smile:

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for kids

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Have you seen @mark5000 beginners puzzles?

Nice explanation after each one and also hints

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Well… if the 30k puzzles are too challenging, then you might consider participating in a teaching game, where you play against someone experienced in Go while he/she teaches you throughout the game.

@below Yes, same here. I have been constantly playing Go and have a lot of experience in the game. Just send me a challenge and I will gladly accept it. :slight_smile:

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Well to be fair, as most of puzzles are user submited, there are some which are rather questionable. Have you seen our new tutorial for beginners? It is very new and thus not yet completely “refined” but maybe you would get some merit off of it, and possibly even share some of your feedback :slight_smile: https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go

And as always, I would be happy to play some games with you and discuss rules and strategies :slight_smile: Just send me a correspondence challenge if you want, or add me as a friend and spam me for a game when you see me online if you prefer live games.

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Being a beginner myself, I agree that that “black to kill” puzzle is slightly too difficult. It’s more like a 10k-20k puzzle. 30k, in my opinion, should be basic atari positions that don’t require reading.

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These are some advanced kids, props to them.

image

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You really can’t rely too much on our puzzle ratings - they are kinda arbitrary and often way off. In particular, the one you linked to in your initial posting seems quite harder than 30k to me, and is also missing a number of valid solutions.

I have a number of beginner puzzle collections listed in my profile (https://online-go.com/user/view/482205) - I would hope some of these should work better for you.

I also like the gochild recommendation. They have puzzles at every level. I still go there once in a while :slight_smile:

1 Like