Doing Tsumego with a pro

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Today once again I went to the Nihon-kiin to study Go. As I said before I am currently focussing on tsumego. When I have trouble finding the correct solution I sometimes ask professionals for help, but it's kinda depressing if you ask me, for the pros find all the correct solutions instantly. I'll just give you two examples:


Problem 1:

It was still early in the morning (11 am =P) when I entered the room at the 7th floor of the kiin, which is reserved for insei and professionals. I saw a pro who also gave me a hand for the joseki research presented in the last post sitting all alone reading the new issue of "Go weekly". I said my "konnichiwa" and sit down next to him, starting to do tsumego. When I laid the stones for my first problem (the one to the right) down on the board he had a short glimpse at it, immediately said "easy" (one of the few English words he knows) and then continued to read his newspaper.

Actually I found the problem not easy at all. Please try for yourself. It's black to kill.


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Solution 1:

After like 6-7 min I still could not find the correct answer and felt quite bad, because the pro obviously read it all out in an instant. I did one more attempt and after I failed again I asked the sensei to help me out. He asked for my best way and claimed that the first two moves where correct, then leaned back again to read the Go news.













After another few minutes I started to ask myself how pathetic it could get, but even though I asked one more time the pro just answered that it was too easy for him to help me.
When I finally did it I had spent more than 10 min on this problem though it is really not particularly difficult.

The pro smiled.










Problem 2:

Seeing the huge gap in out reading abilities I decided to test him with the most difficult tsumego I had in mind. I remembered that even a group of E and F-class Insei could not solve it. It took a C-class level Insei to finally do so.

If you don't have something else to spend your time on you can go and try for yourself without looking at the solution.







Solution 2:

I was happy, that he did not answer instantly.
When he stoped reading and leaned back, closing his eyes and thinking hard I was actually smiling, remembering all the trouble I had with this problem -especially finding the first move.












Unfortunately my happyness did not even last one minute, when the pro said: Ko.
And what shall I say other than: Yes he is correct.

What we can learn from this: Don't challenge a professional for a tsumego-match.








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The idea of 9 sacrificing as many as six stones seemed amazing to me, but the pro did not even falter for a second when showing me his solution.











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It ends in a ko.

The final comment of the pro, when he learned that it was one of the most difficult tsumego I have in mind: Chotto muzukashi. (A little bit difficult)