Been going through OGS’s learn to play materials, and everything is fine, probably too slow and easy in fact, until I hit Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS the first line section. Suddenly, from puzzle 8 here, I go from being able to do everything instantly to being completely baffled even after a lot of thought. Am I the only person with this experience? What should I do to carry on learning if I look at a completely basic introductory thing from 15 minutes and I’m still just baffled?
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Hmm i agree, that puzzle, and the next one are quite tricky nets. It also took me a moment to see the solution, i’d say its not super beginner-friendly tbh..
(the trick is to prevent those stones from getting out before removing the liberties, and then finding the shape that “works”)
Still baffled I’m afraid
Assuming triangled squares are D1 and E1, (solution w/ explanation–>) after 1.f2 d3, 2.d2 doesnt work due to e2 3.e3 f3 leaving e3 in atari, but you can alter the move order with 2.e3 and now d2 and d4 are miai and 2…e2 can be answered with 3.f3. The puzzle variation is 1.f2 d3 2.e3 d2 3.d4 -correct-
I agree it’s harder than other problems there.
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Even just trying to do dumb brute force:
-The only move that isn’t an instant fail is to try and cut off escape by playing at f2.
-But that leads to white playing a 1 point jump at d3.
-Jumping on top of d3 at d4 is an istant fail.
-The only move I could find that isn’t an instant fail is to cut at d2.
-If you cut a d2 though, the two stones on the first line try to escape at e2.
-blocking that at e3 leads to an atari at f3.
-replacing e3 with moves that look vaguely encircling on the 4th line also fails.
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Yup! And the next move is hard to find imo, its not a shape i would instinctively look for ^^
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its a relatively common shape point. I dont know if it has a name, but it is “playing where your opponent can form a bamboo joint”. I remember learning it from James Davies’ “Tesuji”. I agree its not easy to find it as the second move of the sequence.
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I haven’t looked at the specific problem(s) you mention - I just started “working” through these yesterday. I have had similar experiences elsewhere though (I’ve actually started doing tsumego!)
For me, I’ve come to believe there’s two things it can be:
1: The puzzle may in fact be more difficult than the rating says. Recently on a well known tsumego site I stared at a 7 kyu puzzle for a really long time. I read several branches that didn’t work, but couldn’t see a solution. Even when I gave up and displayed the solution I still didn’t understand it! I commented and they upgraded the difficulty to 5 dan! This is surely an absolute fringe case, but sometimes the rating is questionable.
2: The usual reality is that there’s a technique I haven’t fully mastered. If I can solve ‘x’ difficulty puzzles bam-bam-bam-bam no worries, and then have a blank on an ‘x’ difficulty puzzle it’s likely due to a gap in my arsenal. I tell myself that once I’ve internalized whatever technique I’m feeble on, I’ll also solve those types of problem with ease. Unknown if this is true, but it makes me happy to think so.
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