This is a list of relative difficulty (in my eyes) of go problem collections, in order to keep track of what I'm doing.
Higher in the list means it's easier.
The dashed line represents the divider between "this is too easy" and "this is still making me think a little"
It's still a short list, but it should grow longer over time as I do more problems.
The dashed line SHOULD move down a fair bit over time, too.
The plushed line indicates the current difficulty horizon. Books lower than that are not currently part of the tsumego training cycle. I think I'll leave it at five I MEAN SIX titles between dashes and pluses, that's enough variation for me.

For the sake of dramatic tension, imagine a sequence of soundless training scenes, with the Rocky theme playing in the background.

Graded Go Problems for Beginners Volume 1
Level Up Review 1
Graded Go Problems for Beginners Volume 2
Level Up Review 2
Essential Life and Death 1
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
501 Opening Problems
Essential Life and Death 2
Graded Go Problems for Beginners Volume 3
1001 Life and Death Problems
Graded Go Problems for Dan Players Volume 1
Cho's Elementary
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Essential Life and Death 3
Essential Life and Death 4
Graded Go Problems for Beginners Volume 4
Graded Go Problems for Dan Players Volume 2
501 Tesuji Problems
Cho's Intermediate
Cho's Advanced
Graded Go Problems for Dan Players Volume 3


The following titles I have (access to) and expect to be harder than what's in the list already.
I haven't examined them enough recently so I don't know for sure how to relatively sort them.
These titles are prime candidates for populating the list above.
Considering the vast amount of problems to dig through, it will be a while before I have these all sorted.

Gokyo Shumyo
Gokyo Seimyo
Xuanxuan Qijing
Igo Hatsuyoron
Maeda 1
Maeda 2
Maeda 3
Making Good Shape (only half of this is really a problem book)
Get Strong at Joseki 1
Get Strong at Joseki 2
Get Strong at Joseki 3
Get Strong at the Opening
150 Life and Death Problems for Shodan
150 Joseki Problems for Shodan
150 Tesuji Problems for Shodan
150 Life and Death Problems for 3rd dan
150 Joseki Problems for 3rd dan
150 Tesuji Problems for 3rd dan
150 Life and Death Problems for 6th dan
150 Tesuji Problems for 6th dan
150 Joeski Problems for 6th dan
150 Life and Death Problems for 7th dan
150 Tesuji Problems for 7th dan
150 Joeski Problems for 7th dan

LAST EDIT ON 17-jan-2015

Moved two books back onto the shelf, added two new ones to the routine.

EDIT 14-dec-2014:

Just shuffling a lot of things around.

EDIT 12-dec-2014:

Shifted Graded Go Problems for Dan Players Volume 1 into the "currently being studied" section, per RBerenguel's suggestion.

EDIT 08-dec-2014:

Inititial creation of all that stuff on top.


ORIGINAL POST:
So, since I've decided to a) play go again and b) aim for the impenetrable shodan wall with my mighty pea shooter intellect, I will have to face my deficiencies.

What I'm going to do for a while is go over all the tsumego books that I have (I got a box full from someone else when I said I would try playing again. It's nice to have friends like that)

I think problems like this are too easy:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B 1.Capture the white group!
$$ . . . . . . . .
$$ . . , . , . . .
$$ . , O , O , . .
$$ . , O , O , . .
$$ . , O O O O , .
$$ . . , , , , . .
$$ . . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B 2.Can you spot the vital point?
$$ ------------
$$ | . . O X . . . .
$$ | . . O X . . . .
$$ | X O O X . . . .
$$ | O O X . . . . .
$$ | X X . X . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . .[/go]

Still a little too easy...

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B 3.Can you find the vital spot?
$$ ----------------
$$ | . . O . . . . .
$$ | . X X . X X . .
$$ | O O O X O O O .
$$ | . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . O . O . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . .[/go]

Getting closer, surely.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B 4.Black to live
$$ -------------------
$$ | . . . X . O . .
$$ | . . . . X O . .
$$ | . X X X O O . .
$$ | . O X O . . . .
$$ | . O O . O . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . .[/go]

I needed a double-take, here. Seems like a fair enough place to start perfecting.

This is from "Essential Life&Death 1" which is apparently aimed at 15-10k. I certainly want to have those down perfectly. A 10k mistake, even if averted, should not arise in the mind of the mighty dan player. I can, have and intend to in future ignore any factual evidence to the contrary. Especially if I end up doing such a thing myself.

I really seem to know most of these (from a quick sampling, I only really wondered about the above problem much) but I want to be sure I know ALL of them. And then after that, there's volume #2. I'll try and see which other books are just about this level of difficulty. Once I can just zoom through them at my leisure like with problem #3, I want to edge it up to whichever set of problems is slightly harder.

I'm trying to raise the floor, that is, I want to ensure that the worst I can do is actually not that bad. And I want the simple things to take me very little effort while I'm playing. I want to spend more time on the complicated parts. Ideally this will end up shifting my idea of "complicated" upwards. It should also help me advance a little bit since I'd play better than anyone who still makes the mistakes I have by then memorized, though I doubt that's really all that separates me from the exalted ones.

I have done problems near the edge of my ability for a long time, which is entertaining, but it seems to do very little for actual fighting strength. I keep thinking of something utterly brilliant, and then mess up the execution on minor details. Or maybe it turns out that because of one misplaced stone, it isn't actually possible. The transition from feeling very smart to feeling very stupid is abrupt and painful. I would like to avoid it more often than I do.

The recommendation re: reading I've got most often is to drill the basics until you are about to puke a bulky five. I've been doing this (I stopped for around 5-6 weeks, though) with Cho Elementary tsumego in March, and I have definitely seen an improvement in my game sharpness. I think 80% of the problems are well below KGS 5-6k, and only a few make me think for longer than 3 seconds by now, but I still try to read all variations, every time. A go game is closer to a marathon (not-too-deep-reading for really long stretches) than a sprint (say, a really deep or "branchy" tsumego.)

Worth noting how a chess book writer (Soltis, discussed in another post) says you only need to be reading 2.5 moves ahead (5 plies) and evaluating the resulting position. Do this, and you'll play good (in chess.)

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Cho Chikun's elementary 3 times in a row is a good training set. Then work on intermediate 3 times in a row. THen advanced.

I kind of want to do elementary for a 4th time.

Here, I guess problem #4 is more about recognising corner shapes (The pig snout), but Cho's collection goes through them enough without actually naming them.

I've done Cho-Elementary more than 5 times already according to my Anki stats (4869 card reviews, there are 900 problems in the set.) I'm adding 1 Cho-Intermediate each day to prevent Anki-burnout, still 784 to go. I'll keep this level at least until I have added Lee Chang-Ho's Tsumego 3 (maybe even 4, but I haven't started SGFing them yet), after that I'll probably aim for 5-10/day. Problems from intermediate take me (sometimes) too long (not all, but some problems are stupidly complex or my brain is stupidly shut down ATM) so I prefer to keep the timing of my tsumego sessions tighter, but at least daily.

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Its always interesting what material people consider to be basic. I'm 8k kgs and some of the elementary problems I can't even solve with a board, let alone read out in my head

You will soon, just keep at it!

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Of the list I made above, which one starts to look hard? Hopefully not #1 ...

Well, the first one is actually the hardest if white gets to play a move every now and then^^.

But yeah, the first two are on sight, the third was maybe a couple of seconds and the fourth took me about one minute to find the point and another one or so to read it out completely. But even then I'm never sure if I'm right(which is the biggest issue I have with Cho's problems).


But then again, a lot of people here seem to like it, so I can only wish you good luck with them =)

#4 I would put at cho's elementary difficulty. For me, though, it takes some reading but is not overtly tricky.

I actually thought it was white to kill at first.

I needed 10 seconds to realize why a didn't work, first.



I remember cho's elementary being too slow for the kind of high-speed repetition I want to do, though the third one was good for taking one problem and trying to figure it out over a long time (20-30 minutes?). I should compare it with the sets I have, though. Since it's freely available, and I'm in no need of an answers sheet anyway, I should really treat it as part of my library.

Is there any other source like tasuki's page?

nvm

Okay... so "Essential Life&Death 1" took me about six hours over several sessions. Lots of double takes, but not so far out that I can't figure it out.

At least I could solve them all, with perfect confidence. Just nowhere near as quickly as I'd like.

Also played 2 wins and one loss on KGS. It didn't seem to go noticeably better, though the second game I got to feel all smug and superior when my opponent let a large corner group die. I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything I couldn't do before, though.

I guess I'll try plowing through cho's elementary next, and see if it feels easier or harder.

I would probably die of boredom doing the same set on loop. It's really great how I can just chop it up in small sessions. Ten minutes here, maybe twenty minutes there. Just have the book handy when boredom may strike at any moment!

EDIT: About 50 minutes for the first 100/900 of cho's elementary. I'll finish it anyway, but it's clearly much slower going. I'll do it again later on, and it's good to just know how fast it goes NOW, and then hopefully I can cheer myself up with how fast it goes next time.

I'm also collecting a list of problems which take me a lot longer than the rest. It'll be a short list, since I only hit two of those in the first 100. Hopefully they'll help me form a good idea of which types of problems are especially hard for me, which then allows me to work on especially those.

Kinda too busy today. Didn't even get up to 200 in cho's e, but I fought a narrow +4.5 win on KGS. I made a poor opening, but struggled back because my opponent suffered from premature tenuki. This lead to group kills. I feel good about myself.

I tried to solve this for not-a-ko for a long while before spotting the solution.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Problem 227
$$ -----------------
$$ | . . O X O . . . . .
$$ | . X . X O . . . . .
$$ | X . X X O . . . . .
$$ | O O O O O . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . .[/go]

I was staring at the original thinking it's nothing BUT ko and THEN click the spoiler....

Damn, same

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

By the by... if you're the guy who did the mobile versions at tasuki's site, thanks for that. It's a lot nicer to look at on my phone than the regular versions.

Guilty I'm glad you found them useful!

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Four losses in a row ...

Each time, I misread a situation. Exactly the one point I've been working on all week.

Even an ego as massive as my own takes damage under these circumstances.

There is, obviously, only one solution: moar tsumego.

I mean, it's only been just one week. Clearly that's nowhere near enough to attain god-like insight.

I still wish it gave me 1/16 god-like insight. 1/32. Something. Giveth a sign!

How the tables turn ...

Today featured a game in which I took two handicap stones against someone who misread a ladder and walked it all the way.

I'd heard before that western kyus are notorious for "not even being able to read a ladder", but I rarely get to see it in action.

Apart from the ladder, there were two group kills to mourn for my unfortunate opponent, too. I feel a lot better to have this overwhelming victory after yesterday.