Question for Dan players about Tsumego

[snorri]

...category theory was one of the worse pills I had to swallow back then...

We don't have a vomiting emoticon, so just assume I've added one.

Math is cool, and (mostly) beautiful.

[gowan]

I have heard things like, "I learned Japanese solely to study go books." Another sold his car to pay for go lessons and then moved to Asia. Most regular people do not consider this normal behavior.

The "oldimers" on these boards probably would not consider this behavior so abnormal. I recall that when I was most passionate about go ('60s and '70s) there was no internet and very little written in English to study. Learning enough Japanese to get something out of Japanese books was a reasonable choice. Since you had to play face-to-face, if you wanted a large array of opponents of different ranks you had to relocate and where better for go then than Japan. And without people like Richard Bozulich who relocated to Japan for go we probably would not have all that good go literature from Kiseido and its precursor Ishi Press.

[erislover]

I myself like to solve them and was very surprised by a 2 Dan KGS who told me that he rarely does or did them...
Curious to know if that`s the case for many players.

Go is a hobby for nearly everyone who plays it. Thus people will seek to do the activities which give them the most pleasure rather than things which turn their hobby into work. Some enjoy riddling out pro games, others just playing, others looking at joseki, and still others life and death. I cannot imagine anyone would say that any of these are somehow better than any of the others. I am 1D KGS and I am sometimes astounded by how much joseki knowledge others have. I know almost nothing. But I feel like I am an alright fighter and know how to make profit from attacking others at my level. If they start out with an extra ten points because of their superior joseki knowledge I can on average make up for it in middlegame in one way or another. (So long as I can control my bloodlust.)

From conversations I've had with people all the way to 4D KGS I'd guess this is about the time (4-6D) that these things begin to converge and these various things come together.

Personally I enjoy life and death problems a lot because there is no time pressure to read a sequence out. Put it on your phone, print it out, whatever. And I enjoy them like little puzzles. But if someone didn't enjoy them I'd be quick to recommend something else. People should just enjoy the game so more people play it, rather than drop out or get frustrated because they feel pressure to continuously improve and thereby do things they don't like.

[quantumf]

The main reason I'm not fond of tsumego is that I lack the motivation to put the effort in, at least for hard ones (I'm quite fond of overlearning easy ones). There's such a small payoff for solving them ("oh, that's right, yay").

It's only in over the board games that I get to exercise and stretch my reading ability (or Internet tournaments). It requires my competitive nature to get my brain to push itself. This has been enough to get me to about 2d, but I'm not sure how much further I will get. Over the board games are quite infrequent, and they only last a couple of hours, and not every move is a reading problem.

[Bill Spight]

The main reason I'm not fond of tsumego is that I lack the motivation to put the effort in, at least for hard ones (I'm quite fond of overlearning easy ones). There's such a small payoff for solving them ("oh, that's right, yay").

May I suggest that there is a sweet spot (or range) of problems that are not too easy, not too hard, but just right.

[quantumf]

The main reason I'm not fond of tsumego is that I lack the motivation to put the effort in, at least for hard ones (I'm quite fond of overlearning easy ones). There's such a small payoff for solving them ("oh, that's right, yay").

May I suggest that there is a sweet spot (or range) of problems that are not too easy, not too hard, but just right.

Possibly But is that sweet spot evolving? And is it in an effective way? Even if the problems in that sweet spot get slightly harder over time, is it because my reading strength is improving, or is it because I've just learnt the solution to enough problems? I fear it's the latter.

A related question (perhaps worthy of its own topic) - how many tsumego problems are there? I'm guessing somewhere between five and ten thousand unique problems?

[RobertJasiek]

how many tsumego problems are there? I'm guessing somewhere between five and ten thousand unique problems?

Despite copy and paste of classic shapes, I'd rather guess in the order of magnitude of 200,000.

[Bill Spight]

The main reason I'm not fond of tsumego is that I lack the motivation to put the effort in, at least for hard ones (I'm quite fond of overlearning easy ones). There's such a small payoff for solving them ("oh, that's right, yay").

May I suggest that there is a sweet spot (or range) of problems that are not too easy, not too hard, but just right.

Possibly But is that sweet spot evolving? And is it in an effective way? Even if the problems in that sweet spot get slightly harder over time, is it because my reading strength is improving, or is it because I've just learnt the solution to enough problems? I fear it's the latter.

I had the same fear of simply memorizing specific problems, instead of being able to work them out. That's why I waited months before reviewing problems. But with the ready availability of a large number of problem these days, I doubt if that's much of a problem.

As for the level of problems, there is some research which indicates that the best level of difficulty of learning tasks is such that one can succeed about half the time. Like handicap go.

[tentano]

What about the advantage of just having a few thousand tsumego memorized so that if it comes up in a game you can play it without hesitation or worry, because you know this part? This seems enormously advantageous to me.

[Bill Spight]

What about the advantage of just having a few thousand tsumego memorized so that if it comes up in a game you can play it without hesitation or worry, because you know this part? This seems enormously advantageous to me.

If you want to memorize tsumego that you can expect to come up in real games, you can study pro games, your own games, joseki, and standard life and death.

[tentano]

I just don't understand why it's bad if you do tsumego so much that you know them by heart.

Deliberately avoiding that seems a bit silly.

[Bill Spight]

I just don't understand why it's bad if you do tsumego so much that you know them by heart.

Deliberately avoiding that seems a bit silly.

It's not a question of being bad, it is a question of efficiency. If you want to memorize tsumego that are likely to come up in a game, doing tsumego is not the way to do it. If you want to improve your game by doing tsumego -- there are other reasons, OC -- it is by developing your skills for tsumego, not to memorize the problems and answers.

Edit: Look at it this way. You want to hone your tsumego skills. (People often call that reading, but that's not all there is to it, nor is it all there is to reading. ) You get a problem wrong. You know you got it wrong because you looked at the answer. OK, so you do it again, later on. But when you come back to the problem, you simply remember the answer. That does not help you hone your tsumego skills. Knowing the answer may be useful in a game, but that is a different question.

[tentano]

Well, you don't really know the answer unless you also know why it works and why the obvious-but-wrong move fails.

Certainly it's useless if you know the answer in the book but not the wily tricks your opponent would try to fool you into letting it live.

I really wouldn't say I had it memorized if I only knew the first move of the correct answer and had no idea how to finish the job.

That's a bit like knowing that a short story begins with "The" and pretending you're familiar with it.

[Bill Spight]

Well, you don't really know the answer unless you also know why it works and why the obvious-but-wrong move fails.

You and I are on the same page about that. See what I wrote about that on SL: http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoProblemsTheFudgeFactor

Certainly it's useless if you know the answer in the book but not the wily tricks your opponent would try to fool you into letting it live.

A book that does not cover those wily tricks in the answer diagrams pretty well sucks.

I really wouldn't say I had it memorized if I only knew the first move of the correct answer and had no idea how to finish the job.

So true.