Sorry, the josekipedia links do not work for me. Can you make a diagram or SGF file? Thanks.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Actually the problem is that josekipedia is just wrong, as it is so often. Be careful using it! However, along the way the original comparison is only superficially similar.

In the first case, White has played six stones to Black's seven and it is White to play.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W Search Pattern
$$- - - - - - - - - +
$$. . . . . . . . . |
$$. . . 8 7 . . . . |
$$. . . X 9 b 1 5 . |
$$. . . a 0 X 2 3 . |
$$. . . . . . 6 4 . |
$$. . . . . . O . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |[/go]

In the second case, White has played five stones to Black's six but it is Black to play.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W White invasion under a 1-space extension
$$- - - - - - - - - +
$$. . . . . . . . . |
$$. . . . 4 3 5 . . |
$$. . . 6 . 2 1 . . |
$$. . . . . X . . . |
$$. . . . . . 7 9 . |
$$. . . . . X 8 . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |[/go]

Let's throw an example of each variation into katago and see what happens...
In the first game Black invades at 3-3 on move 26. It is the quickest such invasion in GoGoD. What does a quick and dirty look reveal?
Black should slide at D2 or play on the right at Q12 with a small lead (~57% and 0.8 points). The timing of this invasion is a mistake, losing over 10% and giving White the lead
The best choice, White is now a little ahead (~55% and 0.5 points)
Locally best although Black would be better off to shift to the right side for now
The best choice
The hanging connection is preferred but the difference is not so big.
The best choices
Black should test White's response by descending at F2 first.
The best choice (White leads ~62.5% and 1.5 points)

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Yi Se-tol (White) vs Kweon O-min 1998-12-18
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . O . X . . X . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . 8 O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . 7 9 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . X . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . 1 2 6 X . . . . . . . . X . . . . |
$$ | . . 5 3 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

This example for version 2 will have to be theoretical. GoGoD has no example of the line shown in josekipedia. This game is the quickest 3-3 invasion under a 1-space extension. In the game, Rin played the far more common . Takemiya played instead of the normal jump to S6. Play proceeded as shown.
katago calculates that White would be better off to play a knight's move on the left at C6 with a small lead (~52% and 0.2 points). On the right side White would be better off to invade at R12 (~49%)
The best choice and Black leads (~59% and 1.1 points)

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Rin Kaiho (White) vs Takemiya Masaki 1978-12-14
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . O . . O . . X . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . X . . . . . X 4 3 8 |
$$ | . . . . . . O . . . . . . 9 . 2 1 0 . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . 5 . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Let's use katago to check the alternative choice for White next
White would be better off to turn back to C6 on the left for now. However, this alternative would be only slightly worse than the diagonal play at S4 in the game (~1% difference).
Best choice
White should play the hanging connection at S2, expecting ko. This move is much worse, minus 16% and almost 3 points
Black throws everything away. The "ideal move" in josekipedia is -41% and 6 points in katago. Black falls behind. Instead Black should jump to S4 for an 80% winrate.
White should slide to S5 with a safe lead (~62% and 1.5 points). This move loses 8% and more than a point
Black blunders again, minus 21% and almost 2 points. Instead Black should push through at R5 and cut at S3 in order to seal White into the corner.
White gives some of it back. This should be the hane at S6. Descending gives up 11% and close to 2 points. White is "only" about 63% and 1.7 points ahead.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . O . . O . . X . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X 6 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7 . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . X . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . O . . . . . . 4 . X O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1 3 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Looking back to the original question the take aways should be:
1. Be skeptical of what you read in josekipedia (alternatively don't read it at all!)
2. The two corners are quite different, be careful in trying to compare them
3. Joseki do not appear in isolation. Historically the version 2 invasion typically occurs after Black plays a stone in front of the extension (e.g. K4 in the example game). This means that the hanging connection at O3 will be over-concentrated/unnecessary as often as not.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Thanks, Dave, for the diagrams and analysis.

And yes, the second diagram is decidedly bizarre.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

if you solve the problem 100% and it takes 1 minute it's good

I mean just staring at it and then just checking the solution

4 is worse when black is strong locally, but might be necessary when the situation is different, like not having that hoshi stone on the lower side

Here is the closest thing I have found in pro play. From GoGoD 2006-02-23c, Takemiya (W) vs. Hoshino Masaki, 8 dan. Hoshino played at a, but here is the mainline variation from the Elf GoGoD commentary. After taking kikashi elsewhere, White plays the hanging connection. The hanging connection for also looks playable, as it is within 1% of the mainline sequence.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bcm47 Variation for
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . a . X . O . . . . . . O X . . . . . |
$$ | . 1 X . . . . . . . . O . O X X . . . |
$$ | . X O O . O . . . , . . O . O , X 5 . |
$$ | . O . . . . . . . . . . . O . . 3 2 . |
$$ | . . 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . O X 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . X X . X . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . X O X . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . X . O . O . . . , . . . . X , X . . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . O . . . . . X O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iVl9RhqsFV8

This is exactly the kind of tsumego that's useless. This shape never comes up. Besides, the solution is kō, so you may spend way too long trying to live without it

I once spent well over 30 minutes trying to find a way without kō in what I thought was a tough problem and the solution ended up being kō anyway

Are we talking about the same tsumego? Sometimes links go to unexpected places. {shrug}

I am not one of the tsumego-tsumego-tsumego people. There is a lot more to go and than that. But I don't think that this problem is at all useless for players at its level of difficulty.

The problem I see indeed never comes up. But elements of it do. My guess is that this may be around a 7 kyu problem. To be sure, it has a depth of 7, but most people, I think, would regard the solution as a one lane road. It seems to me that it contains at least three lessons for players in the 10 kyu to 7 kyu range.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Yes, it's a one way road. But note the solution is the corner, the shape is very irregular.

It's got some lessons for sure, but I doubt real life strength improves quickly studying strange problems like this. First of all, you are likely to spend longer as a beginner verifying the solution is kō and also the best kō you can get.

This can be a lot of time spent on a problem. In real life it's not necessary to read out a situation completely. You only need to find the best next move. So I disagree that you need to solve the problem by staring at it, although I often do. But it's quite useful to play the only correct first move to get a bit of visibility.

In reality, you'll play the first move anyway. So the video approach I am not a fan of for problems with obvious first moves.

In general, I suspect playing skills benefit from being able to get to the correct solution one step at a time in difficult situations rather than being able to see all the variations of a simple problem.

I need to be warned about kō in a problem beforehand before I spend too much time doing the "explore every possible variation" solution. It's just a practical thing, you only have so much time to spend on problems, a single shape shouldn't take most of your study time.

My perfect problem regiment would involve all the common shapes you see in real life, tell you what to do (do you want to live in the best way possible? Best shape? Best kō?), then mix all of them and show it to you in order of progressing difficulty. Then it would repeat them according to spaced repetition algorithms.

You only need maybe a few levels, since at some point easy tsumego are too easy so you move on to medium and hard. But the point is you just know exactly what to do vs. an L+1 group or what the carpenter's square ends up as.

That's an interesting question. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a lot of research on go pedagogy. We don't really know what works best for most people. As I recall, the question of familiarity was addressed by de Groot for chess many years ago. First, he found that chess masters performed much better than beginners on regular chess problems. But then he did not find that the masters performed better than beginners on problems that had been generated randomly. IOW, the idea that solving chess problems developed players' abilities to calculate variations was false. The beginners were just as good at calculating variations as the masters on the random problems. The advantage of the masters on regular problems lay elsewhere, with their knowledge and understanding of normal, familiar chess positions.

Here is an experiment that I have proposed. Take a group of 30 people who want to learn go and have already learned how to capture and the ko rule and divide them into two groups of 15. Give one group a set of 10 beginner level problems to work on in their heads for 15 minutes. Give the other group the same problems with solution and failure diagrams and have them read the material for 15 minutes. Then test the whole group on another set of 10 problems at the same level, giving them 15 minutes to find the solutions. My guess is that the readers will beat the solvers on the test.

Based on de Groot's research, let's take a look at the problem you linked to.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Black to play
$$ --------------
$$ | . O . O . O .
$$ | . X X O X O .
$$ | O O X X O O .
$$ | X X X O . . .
$$ | O O O O . . .
$$ | . . . . . . .[/go]

My guess is that amateur dan players would have a pronounced advantage over DDKs on this problem. The dan players would solve this in a few seconds. They would even understand that the ko is an approach ko. And that means that, despite its strangeness, it incorporates enough go knowledge that the dan players can make use of. And that go knowledge is worth learning.


Who says that this is a beginner problem?


Training is different from actual play. And in actual play it make take reading to some depth and breadth to find the best next move. Or even a good move.


Me, too. I recommend playing around with go positions on the board.

To quote myself quoting myself:




If you can't read a simple problem to depth 11, how can you read a difficult problem to depth 11?



If it shouldn't, then why does it? In his regimen of study, Botvinnik addressed the question of time. A position that takes you a lot of time (unless it is too difficult for you) is one that you don't understand very well, and therefore one that you should study, one that you should take time on.



There are many roads up the mountain.

Let me address one assumption you seem to be making. The first move in the above problem is indeed obvious, and each subsequent play is obvious, as well. That being the case, and strangeness aside, you seem to think that there is little utility in reading the problem out. Why bother?

Well, for the sake of argument, suppose that you face this position in a real game. When is the right time to make the first move in it, for either side? That depends upon the fact that the ko is an approach ko. How do you know that it is an approach ko, and therefore whether to play in that corner, unless you have read or seen to the end?

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

This feels to me like such a weird thing to say that I wonder if I am misunderstanding you.

Locally, if I know I am going to play in this area, all I have to do is find the best move and play it.

But to decide what area to play in, I need to know the status of every area. It matters a great deal whether the best local move kills a group, or makes it fight a ko for life, or is just a sente endgame sequence, or is a lot of points in gote.

I don't find the problem weird. Or, if you do insist on calling it that, once you've been round the block a few times you have to accept that weird positions come up in games all the time. Either way, studying them is practical. It may not be the most efficient use of your time if you have gaps in even more basic knowledge, but these weird positions should still be on your list to work though eventually.

But there is a more fundamental question to address. Are you studying tsumego for entertainment or to become a pro? Or as an in-betweener? As the latter, you are prepared to study hard to see how far you can get, but you don't really expect to reach pro level. Or are you a rank beginner?

Each category merits its own type of tsumego collection. Beginners get fed a diet of very easy problems, always practical, and the only "entertainment" provided is a pat on the head or some other warm, fuzzy feedback. The equivalent of cheese for rats in mazes.

By far the biggest category is for in-betweeners. The usual serving is a large dollop of practical problems but with a generous helping of sauce made up of a cocktail of "weird" classical problems such as under-the-stones gems. The psychology seems to be that studying the practical problems is hard work, so we need to have some relaxation. Seeing the crown jewels happens also to have the bonus of their beauty providing inspiration and motivation. This category is not just the largest but is also by far the most popular. Various such collections are set at various grades of course, so there is something for everyone.

The category of tsumego collections for entertainment only is rather small. Quite a lot of what is available does offer "weird" problems and they tend to be rather hard. It is actually the fact that such problems are outliers that makes them interesting to many people. Some composers try to entertain in quite different ways, of course, but entertainment is still at the heart of the collection. For example, Hashimoto Utaro produced a famous collection in which he composed a problem for each path on Basho's Journey to the Far North. There wasn't much connection between Basho, his poems or go (though he did stop off at one place named after go stones), but it's easy to imagine Hashimoto's readers recalling Basho's haiku at each point, taking a sip of sake as they ponder whether depth-first is best, sip, or is width-first best, sip, or is there a clue in the name of the place visited, hic.

As far as I can recall, that type of book is almost non-existent in English, and the only example I can think of, sip, is Gateway To All Marvels where I explain in depth the names of all the problems. But it's huge, and if you try to sip your way through that too quickly, you may end up needing rehab.

The final category of books for becoming a pro the "pure" ten million reps in the gym way is small but does exist, though mostly at lower levels. Some Korean series in particular fall into this category. But they don't really take you very far - at least not as far as all your hard work leads you to expect. What happens beyond these books in real pro life is that you have to change your whole modus operandi. Typically you become a member of a sort of clique. At pro level, the most common - maybe the only way - way of studying tsumego is to compose problems and to share them with fellow pros. You take your latest offering to the next study group session and challenge your pro mates (in the old days teachers would challenge their pupils). Nowadays you don't even have to wait for the next session - you just pop your creation into your smartphone app and "send to all". Recall, for example, that Cho U used to send his compositions to Kobayashi Izumi when courting her. This has even been made into a major Hollywood film called Romancing the Stone.

The point about composing your own problems is that is how you really learn to "frame" them. Take any two (or three) themes at random and see whether you can combine them into an organic whole. That way you don't think in terms of reading moves out. You just do the problem like a jigsaw puzzle - fitting the pieces, i.e. themes, together. Of course you can throw in lots of blue sky or make the joins deceptively similar, but still you are "chunking" more than reading.

Not every pro composes problems, though those who don't tend to stay near the bottom of the pecking order. And of course being good at jigsaws doesn't automatically make you good at Lego and is probably no help at all in learning to play the banjo. So some pros prefer to study josekis, fusekis, tesujis or whatever. Each to his own, and amateurs make similar choices.

But if tsumego is your shtick, wherever you lie on the spectrum you really do first have to decide which category you want to belong to, and then adapt your study to that category.

Exactly how you study within each category is an open, and possibly entirely subjective, question. But if you fancy yourself as part of the "wannabe pro" or "as good as I can get" sets, it seems to me that there is enough information out there already (from games other than go and from activities other than games) to make some generalisations. I would say that the most important traps to avoid are to stare (or glare) at a problem or to pretend to yourself that you can read out variations to infinity. These are deceptive traps because quite often with such effort you can successfully do a problem. But what you are practising is not really solving (i.e. understanding or analysing) a tsumego position. You are practising concentration, self discipline or masochism. All, except perhaps the latter, very useful even in real life, but it's still like analysing a rock sample by glaring at it and smashing it with a hammer instead of using reagents and a chromatograph. The elements (or chunks) that make it up need to be identified. In go, it seems to me, both from simple observations and reading about what existing pros do, composing thematic problems is the way be sure you are identifying the graph peaks properly. That's the way to achieve warp speed in analysis. It may even prove to be the way to achieve DeepTsume.

Another movie (and novel) with an allusion to Go, is Cutting for Stone

Yes, sometimes that's useful, but in a tsumego context I need to know if I'm eating my time or not. Often I'll spend way too long searching for a miracle solution. In a game I have a time limit so I'll just check if I can play a kō or not. How often do I need a perfect answer? Once every thousand games?

I'm actually very interested in the "beginner to online player" amount of learning. There's a gap between "knows the rules" and "can legitimately have fun playing against other beginners online and get a ranking"

So basically a collection of all the basic shapes, tesuji, endgame, life and death, opening on a small board.

But how do people learn go? Is it enough to memorize as many of these as possible? Let's say you simply use a spaced repetition approach. You solve for like a second, then memorize the solution. So on and so forth, for several thousand of these.

Check by giving a timed test. Schedule reviews on failed problems. Does this make a 10k player from a beginner?

No, because you also have to learn the similar positions where the plays you have memorized do not work. Otherwise you will make mistakes in such positions. Relying solely upon memory and recognition is brittle. That's why you have the advice not to learn (i.e., memorize) joseki. When your opponent makes a mistake, what do you do? What do you do when the joseki you have memorized is not right for the occasion?

You can learn such positions by being thorough and taking your time when you study. You can also learn a lot by playing with positions, as Nigel Davies says.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

But who said the training data doesn't have those positions already? Or who said they actually come up enough? For example, a player who misses under the stones tesuji can be 1d, a player who can see them but misses nets probably has difficulty breaking into SDK.

But let's take another view, doesn't a beginner miss a lot of important tesuji that experienced players can see anyway? What's the difference if it's because of not memorizing them or because of not seeing them enough?

I see zero downside of memorizing the exact moves of the tombstone tesuji. If you know them by heart, you can see if the resulting shape will win the semeai or not. This is not the same as memorizing joseki. All of the moves are forced. If the opponent goes off the move order you just capture their stones that are in atari.

Current collections do not include them, as they are of little interest. E. g., Black to play and White lives anyway.



I imagine that non-tesuji positions are more common than tesuji positions.



The problems with memorization come from what you do not memorize and from overspecialization. You have to be able to handle novel situations, and you should not neglect any go skills.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

OK, you've memorised the moves of the tombstone tesuji. Do this easy tombstone problem. Black to play.



Prince Hamlet dressed in black holding the white skull. I suspect poor Yorick didn't think much of being remembered.

I guess the difference is the same with learning stuff in general.

For the beginner the problem is often not missing a tesuji per se, but missing the problem's problem. Ie tomb-stone tesuji is involved in a liberty race, if you can't figure out the liberty race or maybe you don't even see a liberty race happening, the knowledge of the sequence of the tomb-stone tesuji is of not much use.

That's why it is better to learn how to tackle problems, learning how to figure stuff out instead of learning solutions to problems. In go that means (on a basic level) being able to count liberties, visualise stones in your head (read) and knowing defects in shapes (candidate moves).

A really advanced idea, concerning liberty races, is presented in the last game of AlphaGo vs Yi Se-tol. AlphaGo "botched" that liberty race because he sacrificed stones he could have saved. But it wasn't at all about winning that liberty race but judging that gaining sente moves on the outside is better for the overall game. My (old) LZ still agreess with this decision (over 300k playouts).

Memorisation will never give you this idea.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go