Mark Wirdnam

Hello everybody%%% My name is Mark Wirdnam. I started playing Go in 2000, and helped initiate the Go-club in Basel (Switzerland) the same year. An earlier Go-club in town had ceased to exist in 1996.

This is a slow-growing list of positions taken from professional games that might make good reading exercises. For now I'm just adding positions as I encounter them.

why does black answer at 2?  

an easier one: does white 1 ultimately capture the marked black stones?  

what explains this unusual sequence?  

Does a white play at "a" capture the marked stones?