I Have Fallen Into the Life and Death Rabbit Hole

 Last week during my lesson with Clossius, I was advised to increase my Tsumego practice using the site 101weiqi.com. I think I have a Tsumego addiction now. With only four days into the week I have already spent over five hours on 101weiqi.com.

 During my lesson I was given two specific links by Clossius leading to the problem sets Connect and Cut off.

Above you can see some of the categories offered. This is only a partial screen capture of the many types of problems available on the web site. 

I was advised to work through these two sets of problems three times. I have enjoyed doing these and I know that I have completed Connect at least once. I did many of the problems in Cut Off, but I have not been entirely systematic in my approach in completing these sets. I’m going to need to set up tabs in Chrome for each of these sets and keep track of what I have accomplished. A Tsumego Journal in Evernote might be in order.

While posting the above screen capture to a Discord server, and singing the praises of 101weiqi.com, I got distracted by the category Basic Life and Death. There are 1995 problems in that category, and I had to take a look. That is when I fell down the Tsumego Rabbit Hole. It was late last night and I did 100 problems from the L&D set. Then I prepared to retire. Then I did over 50 more problems and reluctantly put the iPad down. 

I woke up this morning with a hankering for L&D. I’ve spent over an hour today on the L&D category, and I am up to problem 270. I’m keeping an L&D tab open on Chrome so I can get back to where I left off on these. The site is hard to navigate with so little English even in Chrome.

I can really see the value of these simple problems. I love how I can visualize the stones because there are so few places to play in these problems. I can see the obvious right answer, but I am taking the time to see each stone in the continuation. I am asking myself what white needs to live and how black can take that away. The right first move is then obvious because any other move gives white what they need to live. However, rather than playing that first move and letting the solution flow from there, I challenge myself to see every single move up to the end. This is where the reading practice comes in. Why did I not know this before?

I will go back to the Connect and Cut Off problems, but the L&D Rabbit Hole is very tempting and reassuring.

All during my many years of go study I have been told to do easy L&D problems, but I never knew where they were. Now I know.