I have a Tsumego here that puzzles me a little bit. I’ve uploaded it as a Demo Board here:
It is from an easy life and death series and all the other problems usually end in either life for black in a small space or killing white. Hence, it confuses me a bit that the goal of this Tsumego seems to be to create the Ko for the corner (all the other problems seem to avoid that, it even tells you often that you made a Ko but that there are better solutions). I’ve played out several sequences, but they all lead to life for the white group except if black can take the Ko.
Am I overlooking something important or is this all there is to it?
Some tsumego would specify whether or not the best solution is ko or life (such as specifying “black to live”, “black to form ko” ). But if you see “Black to Play”, don’t assume it’s the same is “Black to live”, it means try to find the best way out for Black, could be life, life in seki, or ko.
Also I would suggest playing more games. If you run out of easy tsumego, then playing more games might help you improve faster than continuing through the tsumego book.
Yes a ko is the best you can get. This wasn’t from a book or any other official printed Go book backed by a professional right?
By any chance you are doing this tsumego from OGS? Mind you even a measly 50k player can create a tsumego series of his own here with missing/erroneous instructions, variations or outright wrong solutions so do take the ones here with a pinch of salt.
Thanks for your replies. Glad that it is the Ko so I didn’t overlook something stupid :).
@spatula: I’d love to play more, but especially a 19x19 game is quite a time commitment so when I have the time I try to play on a real board if possible. However, I can easily go over a couple Tsumego in the bus or tram so I tend to do a lot of them. Not to mention that I really enjoy solving these.
@hiryuu: I’m playing those on my phone with an App called Gobandroid. As a beginner I can’t judge the quality of the Tsumego there. It feels a bit mixed.
Gobandroid is fine. I use that myself too. It seems to be assumption on your part that all the questions would be the same. Simply because Ko was wrong in other solutions doesnt mean it will be wrong for the rest of the questions. They sort them by difficulty and nothing to do with the type of questions.
