Tsumego

    Keywords: Life & Death, Go term

Chinese: 死活题 sǐhuótí [1]
Japanese: 詰碁 (tsumego) [2]
Korean: 사활

Tsumego, a Japanese go term adopted into English, are life and death problems.

We should understand this as a (mostly) local problem, as opposed to fuseki or chuban problems where several options exist.

Japanese and Chinese books differ in that Japanese books tend to have problems with usually only one solution, whereas Chinese books may have more than one solution or have ko as the solution. In both cases, seki is an allowed outcome.

There are many published collections of tsumego, or life-and-death problems, many in Asian languages but increasingly many in Western languages. Some collections are available on the internet.

Most professional players and top amateur players agree that solving tsumego is the best way to improve. It is also important to know How to approach a life and death problem.

See also:

Problem pages:


[1] Simply 死活题, because 题 = 问题 = question/problem rather than Wéiqí = Go / sǐhuó = die/live / wèntí = problems => 围棋死活 and/or 死活问题

[2]

Bill: Perhaps the original meaning was something like go within a circumscribed area. The go classic, Guanzi Pu, (known in Japan as Kanzufu), has both life and death and yose problems, for instance. But it has come to mean life and death problems. Similarly, tsumeshogi refers to shogi mating problems. Perhaps the shogi term came first, where the king is contained and killed, and came to mean life and death in go by analogy. John Fairbairn would probably know.

JohnF I don't know which came first but, yes, tsume means abbreviated or compressed in this case. It shares the same root as -tsum- in damezumari but even in the case of tsumaru/tsumeru the meaning is one of compressing the space available, packing something in (e.g. canning is kanzume). Kanfuzu is wrong. It should be Kanzufu, but really as it's a Chinese book we should refer to it as Guanzipu (or Guanzi Pu). I put in kanzume as a tease - the kanzu here has nothing to do with kanzufu :) It's the aberrant Japanese reading of guanzi.

Bill: Thanks, John. Kanfuzu corrected. ;-)


This is a copy of the living page "Tsumego" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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