Forum for Graded Go Problems For Beginners
Indicated Ratings [#841]
"It may be that the listed ratings for each volume are more likely to indicate that a person of that rating should know all the material in that volume as opposed to indicate the level of difficulty of the problems."
In the preface of Vol.4 it's stated:
"if you could solve problems of the same level of difficulty during your own games, your strength would be higher than 10-kyu"
I expect it to say something similar in the other books.
I want to call the indicated ratings into question. I haven't seen Vol 1 or 2, but let me first take Vol.3, indicated as 20-15 kyu. I know 10-kyu EGF people who still find a lot of the problems in this book difficult. I have also seen some of the problems on goproblems.com rated as high as dan-level. A 14 kyu (Japanese rank???) should be able to get close to 100% on these problems? Not only in "problem-solving mode," but also in his or her own games?? I think not!
Likewise for Vol. 4. I know of 5-8 kyu EGFs who would say they are very difficult and I can only agree. I'm 2-kyu on KGS3, and still I get a non-trivial portion of them wrong. And I am sure that I would have extreme difficulty solving a lot of the life and death problems under time pressure in a real game. I have seen problems from this book on goproblems.com rated as high as 3- or 4-dan!
Also, note that Kiseido themselves has mended the ratings somewhat on their web site: ![[ext]](images/extlink.gif)
http://kiseido.com/Begin.htm#K46
Though I still have my doubts that a (AGA? JP? EGF?) 2-kyu would find all the level 4 life and death problems in Vol.4 "below his level"...
Just looked at the preface of volumes 2 and 3 (both second printing, i think), and they just say "is aimed at the X-kyu to Y-kyu player". Volume 2 has 20 to 25 kyu, and volume 3 has 20 to 15 kyu. Don't have volumes 1 and 4, so can't check them.
In the preface of the four books:
Volume 1: aim at 30 kyu to 25 kyu
Volume 2: aim at 25 kyu to 20 kyu
Volume 3: aim at 20 kyu to 15 kyu
Volume 4: aim at 15 kyu to 10 kyu
If your rating is above the strong end of the book's rating, then problems of similar difficulty as those in the book should be trivia for you.
I expect that rank inflation occurred since 1985 for about 10 stones, so players today are about 10 stone weaker. A 10 kyu today is as strong as a 20 kyu in 1985.
I think a lot depends on your attitude to solving problems. I first picked up volume 4 when I was around 10 kyu Australian (possibly 12-15 kyu in some other parts of the world). Most of the problems were way too hard for me, but I still learned a lot from looking at the shapes and then studying the answers--and the few I was able to solve on my own were very satisfying! Now that I'm hovering on the border between kyu and dan (and now that I've worked through the book several times), I can solve about half of the problems "at a glance", but I still find that it is very useful to review them, and I suspect that I will keep doing so for some years to come.
![[Welcome to Sensei's Library!]](images/stone-hello.png "Sensei's Library")