Encyclopedia of Life and Death

    Keywords: Life & Death, Software

[ext] Encyclopedia of Life and Death CD by Cho Chikun Kisei, Honinbo

The complete set of problems can be found [ext] here. They are in PDF format and come without solutions so as to avoid copyright problems.

Hyperpapeterie: I am concerned that removing the solutions may not be sufficient to avoid copyright issues, and that if this is the case, it is also therefore legally problematic for us to link to the collection. Unfortunately, I do not understand copyright issues so well, but my reading of KifuCopyrightDiscussion and SLCopyright/Discussion leads me to think there is a serious question here. Anyone who has followed those discussions and can vouch for the legality of the collection, feel free to ignore and/or delete my comment.

Bill: If the problems are from Cho's book, Basic Life and Death Encyclopedia ( 基本死活事典 ), then the problems probably existed before there were copyright laws.

From the [ext] Kiseido page. placeholder till folks that have the CD rewrite this.

Ben: Can you still buy this from Kiseido somewhere? I can't find it on their website.

The largest collection of life-and-death problems ever assembled in any format. Nearly 3,000 problem are contained in this user friendly software. The problems are divided into five categories:

  1. Beginner (200 problems)
  2. Elementary (922 problems)
  3. Intermediate (935 problems)
  4. Advanced (793 problems)
  5. Strange and unusual positions (28 problems)

Diligent study of this software will make your life-and-death problem-solving ability that of a dan-level player.

Note: This product runs only on IBM compatible machines (meaning MS-DOS)

The Elementary level problems include problem 405.

UlrichGoertz: In my opinion this is a great resource for players of almost all levels. The user interface is a bit outdated, though, so people may want to translate the problems into SGF format. Bill Shubert has written a tool which does this: [ext] cho2sgf (this is the source code in C, and should be easy to use on Unix systems). I have translated this into Python: [ext] cho2sgf.py; to use this version, you need to have [ext] Python installed. The problems can then be used with Uligo, for example.

schulzki?: Ulrich, cho2sgf.py is not available from the referenced Uligo page anymore. Is this intentional?

bocephus: I have this and find it a wonderful resource, especially combined with Uligo. The MS-DOS part of the program doesn't work on my XP or Server 2000 boxes. It did work under an old 98 box. Luckily, you don't need a working install to run the script to convert for Uligo usage. Now if I can figure out how to get Uligo working for my Clie, I'll be all set.

pc: You can run this old DOS program on most machines if you get the DOS emulator: dosbox. You can download dosbox off the web. I carry the program around on a memory stick and can use it on a multitude of machines, new and old.


NN: Total number of problems in original app is 2878, and those 3 PDFs have 2553 problems , so it's not 'The complete set of problems' as is written on the top of this page. Also, I have 4 SGFs (problems from app converted to 4 SGF) and total number is 2650, still less than on original application. (And more than on PDFs, because there is SGF with 97 problems, called 'other')

The error is within the cho2sgf.py program. It only creates the abc files, and not the s1 and s2. These have another 228 problems. (28 advanced in s1 and 200 beginner problems). You just need to tweak a little bit the source code in python and you have the original program. Search for this line:

problemCollection = 'abc' and just replace abc with s1 (for rare problems) or s2 (for beginner problems)


This is a copy of the living page "Encyclopedia of Life and Death" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2014 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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