Test Your Go Strength (book)

[Buri]

Greetings,
This thread feels very pertinent to me right now and I think the responses are on the mark. Speaking as a beginner, I would venture to suggest that such a test simply cannot measure playing strength because it doesn't encompass all that constitutes the great game of Go. I play one game a day and about ten on the weekend. at the weekend I lose concentration/willpower and my kgs rank drops down to a really low level again. (14kyuu) However, I have invested a huge amount of study in the game and have little trouble solving the multiple choice questions of the fuseki training offered by the Guo Juan Internet school. These go up to the level of 5 dan. Likewise I have spent hundreds of hours on basic lectures about cutting, connecting attacking, invasion , Joseki etc. Sadly, as Guo keeps pointing out, my basic character is utterly non violent and it is somehow difficult for me to consistently win on the board even though I play technically quite well for someone who has only been playing a year. indeed, I often lose against players of my rank who play the most horrendous errors but just keep banging away. Overcoming this issue is -extremely- perplexing.
A very deep game, not a multiple choice quiz.
Cheers,
Buri

[Mike Novack]

Possibly the bizarre result is taking problems supposedly of certain difficulty and then judging whether answered correctly based only on the first move?

Getting the first move right is only the start of solving a problem. Given knowledge that a specified solution exists various principles of go may be enough in many cases to determine the first move (this move is necessary if a solution exists).

But that isn't the same thing as being able to read out from there all the other moves of the possible sequences.