goproblems.com / Version 2009 March 25

http://www.goproblems.com/

THE site for Tsume Go study. It offers more than 5000 interactive problems.

Wherether you want to test your strengh using the time trial^[1], practice solving problems of a certain type (fuseki, endgame, etc.) sorted by difficulty, of a certain group (basic shape, snapback, carpatners box etc.) or just solve a random problem, it's the place for you, offering over 4000 problems posted by users, a comment system and a nice crowd always happy to anwser questions posted by comments.

The site is free, but requires a Java enabled browser.

agro1986: I made a program to generate a "sorted" goproblems.com. Therefore, one can traverse the problems (in html) from the easiest to the hardest. More info and download here

Vose? I am going to start to add Li Ang's problems to the site if anyone wants to help we can keep track of our work here /tracking input

Velobici: You may wish to talk with Ang Yue before starting this project.

juhtolv: If you do not want to or can not use Java for some reason, you can download all those problems as SGF-files. You'd better use goproblemscom2gquiz.sh for that purpose.

usagi: I wrote another utility similar to goproblemscom2gquiz.sh because I could not stand only sorting the problems into "easy, medium and hard". It's called disort.sh and sorts SGF files into directories based on the contents of the DI tag. So if you ran it in the directory containing 5000 go problems, you would end up with directories like this: 6d, 5d, 4d, 3d etc. all the way to 30k with all the go problems by that difficulty inside. My program works even better if you use juhtolv's program first! Then everything is sorted by genre and exact strength. This breaks the set down better so you can study them more easily with a program like Go Grinder, Drago or even Uligo.

Remark: As disort.sh is not usable for Microsoft users without further preparation there is a windows-only script SortProblemsByRank .

Reuven - I link to problems there using [GP | !http://www.goproblems.com/prob.php3?id=5]. It'd be nice if there was a standard of some kind.

(Adum "fixed" it - Now u get another "life" every certain amount of problems..)

Scartol: Am I the only one who finds the general difficulty rating system (Easy, Medium, Difficult) too vague? Easy seems to cover 30k-20k, and as a 9k, I can't even begin to follow most of the Difficult problems; which leads me to suspect that Medium covers 20k-5k or so. Quite a range! Maybe we could have a Low Medium and High Medium rating?

mAsterdam: goproblems.com is not the only site with this problem.

jvt: Maybe it is because of the Chinese custom of having only three levels of difficulty: chuji (beginner), zhongji (intermediate), gaoji (advanced).

MK: It has been recently switched into an estimate of kyu/dan level needed to solve the problem.

HolIgor: It seems to me that the problems are rated by the ratio of successful solutions there. A problem may change the level from hard to easy in a matter of hours as it is solved by more and more people. As the most of the solvers are of low kyu - dan level, all problems of 5 kyu level and below tend to become "easy" with time. I think one can ask adum to introduce new levels of difficulty. I think that now the grading is just for me (1k IGS). For me easy problems are easy, medium are medium and hard are hard. adum seems to be of the same level.

unkx80: Instead of using "easy", "medium", "hard" to see the difficulty of the problem, one can see the two numbers x/y instead. From http://www.goproblems.com/info.php3], we know that x is the percentage of the people who got the problem wrong (at the first attempt). Because "easy", "medium", "hard" is derived from x, it might be better to look at x instead. If I am not wrong, "easy" corresponds to x <= 60, "middle" corresponds to 60 < x <= 90, "hard" corresponds to 90 < x.

Benjamin Geiger: What's stopping goproblems.com from entering some sort of partnership with a Go server? That way, when you log into goproblems.com, it could present problems of appropriate difficulty. More importantly, it could combine the success ratio with your rank and calculate based on that? (For example, if most of the visitors are 5k-2d, the success ratios given aren't going to be very helpful for a 25k. However, if it could determine how successful other 28k-22k players have been...)

uxs: That would probably work, but I'm not sure if that is even necessary. Just having an account system on goproblems where information on the problems you solved is kept and used for balancing would probably work too.

Reuven -

I'd like to ask if it's a good idea to "systematically" copy problems from here to http://www.goproblems.com/.

Opinions are more than welcome..

Bill: I have a question. Do you think that doing so would discourage people from working on problems and commenting on them here on SL? Would it have the opposite effect?

(Any idea how to make a poll?)

It may seem funny that now that I have useful java (means I can try goproblems.com at all, bad design that it isn't even remotely usable otherwise!) I find it pretty useless. There's no way to keep a limitation to problem level when browsing, and no way to keep off from the problems that explore rules peculiarities or game theory (which I consider an uninteresting hobby.)

Of course one can say I should use the timed trials for keeping to the level of problems I want, but that's useless for training. There's no usable way to get to the next problem, even if I accept the fact that I did not solve this or that problem. Reloading the page really circumvents the idea, and of course is just the little extra that surpasses the annoyance limit.

This is not to say that goproblems.com might not be usable for some people, but at least setting the problem level restriction should be there -- and this applies regardless of the reader's level. As it is, it seems to remain a useless curiousity for the one who just wants to train him/herself.

Oh well, I bet some people tell me "Don't Use It, Then," and of course I won't. Yet there remains a remote possibility someone takes this as constructive criticism, so I took the effort. HAND.

-- ObOlli?

Well it does sound like criticism to me... Wherether it's constructive... Well... ;)

Thing is that problem levels aren't too accurate there. Since they're calculated by the % of people who failed to solve a certain problem. Which sounds preety reasonable... Until you think of the way you treat the problems - A lot of people don't take them seriously enough (most of the time at least), some click randomly, some just want to see the anwser... There's a way to divide them "easy"/"medium" and "hard". If you're interested in studying certain things, you can also access them by groups... Well if you really have a way to improve it, maybe you should contact adum or say something on the forum there... Reuven

ilan: I have problems with goproblems.com. First of all, I can't understand what their rating system means, i.e., "5k 30 seconds". Secondly, their full board problems come in such small diagrams that I can hardly see the stones. Finally, I don't undersand the time trial, does it ever end? It is kind of tiring to continually solve the problems without knowing when it stops. In general, I end up failing (at easy levels)because I can't see the full board problems, or because it takes me 30 seconds to read the statement of a problem (a real difficulty reading!), or the problem simply appears after only 15 seconds. Anyway, I haven't found it too satisfying so far...

Ectospheno: My main complaint regarding goproblems.com is that any user can add a problem that shows up in the time trials. So occasionally you get a problem that is just wrong or one that was intended as a joke. Hit a few of those and your time trial is over despite how seriously you may be approaching the problems. Then some authors don't realize their problem is stupid and argue forever when you point it out. I'd much rather use something like GoGrinder with my own problem sets.

Tirian: I won't deny that the site has its weaknesses, but it has been both entertaining and educational for me. The first step was to leave the time trials, create an account, and use the database engine to create untimed problem sets that were either "unsolved" or "untried" so that I wouldn't have to face the "fun" (sic) problems more than once. Perhaps I'm in a unique situation where random problems from the "easy" set go from things that I can see instantly to ones that I can usually get in a minute of cautious reading.

I asked about the curiosity of the ratings on their forum about a month ago, which seems doubly odd to me when I see an easy problem with a hard rating and then investigate the Attempt Paths and see that 90% of those users got the problem right. Didn't get a response to that, so lack of communication is probably the biggest shortcoming of the site that I can identify. Still, the vast majority of the problems are well-created and I learn a lot from playing there.

Truc: I was puzzled by this apparent discrepancy too. I'm lead to believe that when you do Navigate Solution it counts those clicks in Attempted Paths.

Ed?: If someone makes a wrong move/misclicks and then presses the back button and continues with a different move their record will show a fail but the path shown in Attempted Paths is the final one taken (the one that shows you either 'wrong' or 'solved'). Activating the navigate solution before completing the problem will also give a fail. A lot of people seem to make a mistake, realise that they have made a mistake before getting the 'wrong' and then use navigate solution to see the answer. I think that each time you refresh the page or open a new window for that problem it will count as another attempt if you click on the board.

Akakumo?: Does anyone know if it's OK to reuse some of GoProblemsCom's problems in other applications? Specifically, I'm close to finishing work on a Tsumego Solver for the Pocket PC. It's nowhere as good-looking as GoAlbum, nor has as many features, but it does support deep-level variations. So, I'm wondering if I can bundle a few (maybe 50 or so) problems with my application. Thanks!

Morten: A quick look on the goproblems site didn't show any obvious statements regarding the rights users have w.r.t. the problems (or I missed it). I'd suggest that you just send him an email and ask the question - he's normally quite responsive.

Akakumo?: Good idea, I should have thought about that first :-) Thanks!

• Akakumo?: Just heard from him, and to my question about reusing some of the Go problems, he replied: "that's no problem at all. good luck with your project". Very cool, thanks Adum!

Chrisd: What does one do when one sees a problem that has been given a sub-optimal solution? It does not seem possible to edit the solution. I think it is bad that some of the problems have wrong solutions.

Bill: Some of the problems? So many of the recent problems are flawed that I have stopped visiting the site. There are many sources of correct problems on the web, if you do not mind dealing with a foreign language. OC, you can trust problems by unkx80 and some others.

unkx80: The interactivity of goproblems.com is a big draw, but there really is a quality problem in a significant number of problems, especially the more recent ones, like Bill mentioned. On the other hand, through both SL and goproblems.com I can see how fast some people have progressed in Go - many of santac's recent problems are really not easy.

Bill: I composed my first problem when I was a 3-dan, and it was not a very good one. When I see a problem by someone who is clearly out of their depth I often have conflicting reactions. On the one hand, I may be appalled at the flaws in the problem or galled at the confidence of ignorance, and on the other hand, amazed and heartened by the courage of the composer who undertakes such a difficult task. If studying problems is a good way to improve, composing problems is a great way to do so.

When I encounter a flawed problem on goproblems.com, I can just shrug and move on. But if I, and everybody else does so, weaker players can easily be misled. After all, a problem may get a dan rating because it is so stupid that most people supposedly get it wrong. OTOH, if I spend time and energy to critique a problem and make suggestions to improve it, I may not get a response, I may be over the head of the composer, etc., etc. Is it worth the trouble? Why not just compose my own problem? And why am I going to the site, anyway?

I would like to see some way to encourage and help novice composers without inflicting their flawed attempts on people who just want to solve problems.

Chrisd: Yes, the problem is that it may be a wasted effort to point out that the problem has a flaw. The problem that made me post this message here was 4881. The flaw that I spotted was already in the discussion that belongs to the problem. In fact, it was noticed one day after the problem was posted on 2004-07-31. Sensei has the posibility to correct mistakes because anyone can edit. I think it is a problem that on goproblems.com there does not seem to be any mechanism of self-correction. I have difficulty believing that I am the first person to ever come to this conclusion. Is it known what adum thinks about this? Maybe it would be best if goproblems.com was wikified.

Chrisd: I have now raised this issue on the goproblems forum.

Olaf: A community is only as good as its members. Commenting on the problem would be the first step. If that doesn't work, then post in the forum. If that doesn't work then try to contact a moderator or apply for moderator status yourself (if you are dan level). I can appreciate Chrisd for trying to do something and if I was a mod I would help. To Bill, become a moderator, then you can edit flawed problems directly instead of just "shrugging and moving on"! :) Sure, there are a lot of things that could improve this site, but adum appears rather busy. Isn't the code open sourced though? Just a matter of getting to work, all Java coders. ;) The site seems to be having some database problems right now though...

gosta: How old is this page?. Still Problems with goproblems.com, that some or many problems are wrong? (25.05.06)

/2008 December 27 Hacking Incident