Alizais wrote:I learned what seki is and I learned that for some reason, I want to avoid ko.
The point is about what each side has to gain or lose in the ko. In a seki (usually, give or take), both sides have zero points. In effect if W can jump into B's corner and make seki, he has denied black the territory he would have gotten in the corner, but that is all.
When a corner situation becomes ko, all of the stones of one side will die. That means that the side with fewer stones profits more when he wins than the side with more stones does if he loses. In this case, black has 10 stones involved in the ko, and white has 4. That means that if white wins the ko, white scores ~20 points for the corner while if black wins, black scores ~8 points in the corner. One way of looking at it: by making ko rather than seki, black throws away 6 points (because he puts 20 pts at risk in order to have a shot at making 8 points). Another way to look at it; after black starts the ko, white will come out ahead (relative to the seki) if he can find ko threats worth more than 8 pts, but black can only come out ahead if he can find ko threats worth more than 20 pts.
As for learning - the main reason to do tsumego, imho, is to practice your reading. You are welcome to do whatever you enjoy and find productive, but eventually you should do tsumego to push your reading harder rather than to learn other things.
@ r19, white doesn't need to make another move to kill the group. After all, once black has removed his own liberty by playing r19, it's not like he can make his group live by coming back to play o19...
), for practice figure out why alternative moves are worse, especially look for ones where white can create a dead shape.
