In the Game

On the last game I played (i.e. a couple of weeks ago) against Mr. Mk, I was pressing from all sides one of his floating groups till he made it live. As you may have noticed, when you press from all sides, you usually create a few weak connections or stones or even groups.

Another bad habit I suffer is my lack of time management. I don't use as much time as I would need on important spots and leave it for the the endgame, where there are little amounts of points to be played, and therefore I sometimes find myself commiting suicide in the middle-game.

On the left side you can already see what happened. I was playing white here and managed to get 2 empty triangles in an incredible small space... For some reason, by opponnent failed to see the way to punish the white move at A10.

Can you see it?

I'm pretty sure that you are able to kill white from this position, mainly because white has commited suicide. But... What would have happened if white had played properly?

White lives. Yes, white makes it and manages to live. In fact, I've been studying this tsumego for a while and I'm pretty sure that white can't be killed if black starts attacking at A9.

On the other hand... if Black starts his attack by playing at A8, white is dead... or not?

At the "continue reading" you have Zgo with this tsumego loaded. You can explore some branchs starting with the attack at A9 and A8. By the way, thank you to xed_over, who commented on a mistake I made on one of the branches.

Though it all started as a joke, there is a topic in Godiscussions.com about the "ultimate tsumego". You might think that an empty board with the clue "black to win" is a joke. I do too... if it wasn't, Go would have been solved.

Amazingly enough, there are a couple of tsumegos with an astonishing level of complexity. Personally, I think there is nothing else I can say, but to show you the image and offer you some resouces to enjoy this awesome piece of art.

From the "Igo Hatsuyoron" and believed to be written by Dosetsu Inseki (1646-1719) and kept as a secret to all but a few of his students. Though this specific problem was believed to be lost for centuries due to a fire which took place during the Edo period, a copy of the first edition of the book (which included them all) was recovered and republished in 1982 with the commentaries of Fujisawa Shuko.

You can find more information about his special tsumego HERE, though it's in French, you'll find a copy of the SGF file and the sollution. You'll find more information, as well, as the whole collection of tsumegos in the book "Igo Hatsuyoron" at the appropiate section in Sensei's Library.