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Tsumego
    Keywords: Life & Death, Go term

Literally, tsumego means filling the stones. We should understand this as a (mostly local) problem with one solution as opposed to fuseki or chuban problems, where several options exist. Several go books exclusively consist of tsumego. Typical examples include: Life and death tsumego, connection tsumego, and ladder tsumego. (Although the latter is not really local, there is only one solution). Solving tsumego often requires a tesuji.

What does MainLine in tsumego mean ?

An advice, shared by almost all Go authorities - i.e. professional players and top amateur players - is that solving tsumego is the best way to improve. You can refer to HowAndWhatToStudy to verify this. It is also important to know How to approach a life and death problem.

A fun problem: Snow White in the dark woods


A good (external to SL) place for (mostly) tsumego problems is [ext] Goproblems.com.

Another place: [ext] TsumeGo of the Day

Another (about 600 problems here): [ext] Harada's Tsumego Homepage


Stefan: There are at least two approaches to tsumego.

The first approach is to solve the problem more or less 'on sight'. Speed is a concern - you typically spend 20 seconds or less on the problem (even if that implies not completely reading it out), decide on the right move for the situation, and check your move versus the correct answer. The purpose of this kind of study is to internalise a lot of different situations and get them in your head as working knowledge. A bit like developing reflexes when you learn how to drive a car. I use this kind of study to get to know the basic shapes better and work them faster in games (tripod group, anyone?), as well as to increase my tesuji-spotting capability.

The second approach is to take as much time as you need for a problem, but work it out systematically and don't look at the solution until you've convinced yourself you have completely read out all moves and countermoves (bonus points for working out the value of endgame sequences and how additional moves in the area influence the position). This takes a higher level of concentration. I use this kind of study to increase the accuracy and completeness of my reading (and frankly also to regain a bit the ability to focus, because the fast reflex-stuff makes me a tad sloppy in actual gameplay).

For the first approach I love taking a book a la Graded go problems for beginners and race from cover to cover. For the second approach I like the above mentioned [ext] goproblems.com. Solving problems there with a registered account gives you feedback in the form of a rating. And having a rating to maintain or boost tends to cause some of us to concentrate a little better... :-)


See also:

Take a bet at life and death - a tsumego tournament variant


Dieter: I think it is very important to continue searching the various plausible moves, even if you have found the solution to a tsumego. This way one learns to know the shape even better. Also, even if "a" move works, there might be a better move. This is one of the themes in KanazawaTesujiSeries. I invite everyone to add possible moves that I haven't included and the reason why they fail.



This is a copy of the living page "Tsumego" at Sensei's Library.
(C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.