Graded Go Problems Vol. 1

Though I've taken in a fair amount of Go related reading, aiming to throw myself into the online arena with some semblance of experience, I've procrastinated a bit in order to try my hand at a problem set; my very first problem set, in fact. Most readers will be familiar with it: Graded Go Problems Vol. 1 by Kano Yoshinori. Why did I start with her text?

A lot of the free problem sets available on "teh internets" suffer from some common ailments. Most are simply too difficult. Judging from personal experience I'd say the great majority of Go problems are aimed at intermediate players looking to master difficult formations like the "Rabbity Six" or else improve their speed and fluency with simpler problems of perception, such as forcing semeai in a pinch. Otherwise, most problems come with inadequate or no solutions at all. I've seen a few places where the community is allowed to discuss a problem, proposing alternate solutions, but it is relatively rare. A beginner like myself needs a clear cut solution to every problem. We also need to start at the most rudimentary level, solving problems that may seem ludicrously facile to a 15 kyuu.

Go, like so many other academic subjects, builds on itself. A keen understanding of the basic tenets of the game is essential to grasping the more complicated ones. For example, a good player should be able to recognize the beginnings of a ladder or net by mere familiarity. It is unlikely a beginner will be able to do the same. At the very start of their playing career he or she will meticulously calculate the position and steps that will lead to a ladder, understand what placement leads to where, and whether it is either beneficial or detrimental to their overall board position. While it is just as good to figure it out in a live game, it is useful to have practiced it well before hand in problem sets. As in Yoshinori's book, by presenting the same problem category to a player in a myriad different board configurations a player learns to recognize the base ordering by picking it out of the board. In essence they are detecting a signal amongst a great deal of "noise". From there rote repetition will do its work and a beginner will soon turn into an intermediate, but it must begin somewhere, and it must begin solidly.

A few cursory attempts at the same kind of problem will not yield a mastery of the subject, though a player may feel confident about their skills. When they approach the next and more difficult problem, the one that builds on the previous problem's challenge, they'll find it needs not only a new level of ingenuity to solve, but also the firm understanding of the basic idea it builds upon. If there is even the slightest vitiation in their understanding of the elementary crux of the challenge it will be a distraction from the efforts needed to consider the greater depth in the more difficult problem.

Yoshinori's book indulges that British schoolmaster side of me that likes to see a repetitious education process slowly and painfully hammer the simplest rules into a student's fragile gray matter. The problems repeat themselves, over and over again, inculcating the same lesson until it becomes a sort of neural scar tissue - as tenable and cardinal as gravity or hunger. A well trained Go player should snarl and jump at basic threats, feral even in the midst of such a refined game. Their thoughts will be on higher planes of meditation, leaving baser worries and woes to tooth and fang, or in this case, in the care of rote memorization and recognition.

There is of course the worry that this might happen:


But that's a much higher degree of the phenomenon. No doubt Yasuhiro was peering through space and time, conversing with an ethereal, misty visage of fat, when he made that move. It is probably a stone placement of significant cosmic importance, but of terrible detriment in what is,in the end, a mere base game. At least, that's how I like to explain it.

Next post: The Banana Peels of Go - Unlikely Sources of Trickery And Treachery for the Beginner, sourced from Go Problems