Showing posts tagged: sunday-problem


Sunday Problem #91

This is one of the harder problems in Gokyō Shūmyō.

Black to play.


Sunday Problem #90

This is a variant of Sunday Problem #89.

Black to play and be a cockroach.

Solution
Solution
The attachment of black 1 is correct. The sequence here shows what happens if White waits until the last to fight the kō in the middle; in reality, White will fight it from the start, using the other moves as threats.
Black will have a hard time living, but the group still cannot be called unconditionally dead.

Sunday Problem #89

I arranged this problem from one of my teaching games.

Black to play.

Solution
Failure
Black doesn’t quite have enough space to live with a normal move such as black 1 here. White simply reduces Black’s eye space with 2 and 4, and there is no way for Black to form her second eye.
Solution
The cockroachy moves of black 1 and 3 are the necessary tesuji to form life in this problem. After black 3, White has no choice but to fight a kō in order to kill Black.

Sunday Problem #88

This is a classic tesuji problem.

Black to play.

Solution
Solution
Black’s correct sequence is to block White’s escape with 1, and, after White cuts black with 2, to jump down to 3.
After 3, Black simultaneously aims to link up to the right with the monkey jump of ‘a’ and to capture White’s cutting stone of 2 with ‘b–f’. Because of this double threat, White has no way to avoid capture.

Sunday Problem #87

This is a rather amusing problem from the Celestial Dragon Diagrams.

Black to play.

Solution
Solution
The gist of this problem is about the atari at ‘a’ which White intends to play at the most annoying timing. Black’s only way to work around it is to start with the atari of 1, followed by the ‘reverse monkey jump’ of 3.

Sunday Problem #86

This problem is less about the moves and more about figuring out what exactly is going on. When should the players switch elsewhere?

Black to play.

Solution
‘Solution’
Black 1 is the correct starting move, and White’s strongest resistance is 2. (If instead of 2 White plays at 3, Black 2 starts a direct kō fight.)
After black 3, the …

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Sunday Problem #85

This is an original problem arranged from a shape that appeared in a training game.

Black to play.

Solution
Failure
Black can kill White locally in the corner with 1–6, and then by connecting at ‘a’. Unfortunately for Black, however, his right-side group will then fail a capturing race, and so instead of connecting at ‘a’ Black has to start …

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Sunday Problem #84

This is a relatively simpler problem, arranged from a shape that occurred in a league game.

Black to play.

Solution
Solution
Several different move orders work to kill White in this problem. The most straightforward one might be for Black to start reducing White’s eye space from the outside with 1–6, and then finally attack from the inside with 7.

Sunday Problem #83

This is an interesting problem from the Celestial Dragon Diagrams (Tenryū-Zu). The correct solution may change depending on whether this problem is treated as a life-and-death problem or as an endgame problem.

Black to play.

Solution
Life-and-death solution
Black can live unconditionally with 1. White has various possible responses, but 2–7 gives him the most territorial profit.
Ultimately, White has …

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Sunday Problem #82

Continued from Sunday Problem #81, which tackled one of the main candidate solutions for this problem.

Black to play.

Solution
Solution
With so much eye space, one would think this white group should surely be alive; but, after Black simply descends with 1, White has a surprising amount of difficulty trying to form eyes. The natural-looking resistance of 2 fails straightforwardly to Black’s prodding with 3–11.