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tsumego as a source of bad habits
Alex Weldon: While looking for real-world examples to use in the book I'm planning (Breaking Bad Habits . . . a kind of dictionary of common mistakes, and how to avoid making them), I came across a game between an 8k and a 9k on KGS. A simple life-and-death situation came up. This is a simplified, but functionally identical position:
This should be a piece of cake for an 8k. a in Diagram 1 is a perfectly straightforward way to get a ko, which I believe to be the best W can expect. b can also get a ko, but a less favourable one. However, that's not what W played. Diagram 2 shows the actual game.
Just as studying joseki can be harmful, as people will tend to play the patterns without thinking about the whole board, perhaps tsumego can be damaging if overdone... players attempting to substitute recognition of common patterns for actual reading. Thoughts?
Bill: Yes. First, good luck on your book! It sounds interesting. :-) Second, I'm not sure that White would have been better off not to have learned some patterns. (Besides, he didn't exactly learn this pattern, did he? ;-)) Third, I think it's a hard problem. E. g.,
Will an 8-kyu realize that
(Will he even think of trying
Robert Pauli:
I'm not so good at tsumego, myself, but I think this is an advanced problem.
jfc: In response to
Bill: Thanks, Calvin and Jonathan! I think that does it. :-) Dave: WOW! The double ko death turns this into a great problem. I hope there isn't an easier way that would preempt this solution :-) Alex Weldon: Wow. I clearly didn't read it carefully enough. Anyway, yeah. Fantastic problem, if that's really the best solution. Odd to stumble across it this way. We should definitely move it somewhere else in the library, as a problem, and meanwhile I'll look for a better example of misapplied tesuji resulting from applying tsumego patterns without reading. :-) Bill: I have created Tsumego From Games 42 for this problem, and copied the attempts here to the Tsumego From Games 42 /Attempts page, with minor edits. I'm leaving the original here, pending approval of the move and edits. unkx80: Hey ya... I did not get this solution myself too. Nice. =) In an interview in DGoZ 4/04, Lee Ki-Bong (7d = 1-2p, teaching Baduk at the Myojing University in Seoul) surprisingly stressed following:
This is a copy of the living page "tsumego as a source of bad habits" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |