Is it alive? Is it dead? Should I protect my territory, or try to kill straight out? Am I secure enough to press forward, or do I have to swallow a bitter gote move? Can I make this a ko? Will this become a ko at a point when I can't afford to lose?
Like many poets, writers and philosophers over the ages, Go players are troubled and frustrated by the questions of life and death. In my everlasting mental trek along the lines of the go board, my broad goals are both stern and creative play. Step by step, I've been trying to grind blatant weakness and insecurity out of my play.
Life and death has always been a severe weakness for me. As games are growing steadily more complicated and more competitive, and my opponents know more and more about what they're doing, poor training in the language of life and death seeds growing insecurity. Soon, the time will come when I'll have to make the complicated kill without missing a step, or I'll have to find the difficult path to life in order to save a game. A lack of experience with life and death no longer seems like a luxury I want to afford myself.
Now, certainly, that's all well and good. But what am I going to change my current inexperience? I've always hated life and death problems. Out of all the go books I've taken up, life and death books are practically the only ones that I never finish. The responses are so unknown for many problems-- the ways of life and death are eternally shrouded in a deep mist. Suddenly, however, I discovered myself accidentally enjoying a new life and death book that I purchased for cheap. Just a small pocket-sized book, "Life and Death: Intermediate Level Problems" by Maeda Nobuaki 9 dan, available at Slate and Shell (http://www.slateandshell.com/SSGR005) has been steadily guiding me down a path to some semblance of understanding.
I reached the last page this morning after a week of randomly selecting starting points in the book, so that I did several problems multiple times. When I finish the last two problems, I plan on starting over and going through one more time. If someone is searching for a tidy little handbook, I would certainly suggest this one.
As I progressed, I found that I was starting to get a hand for spotting the starting move on site, without really having a preset idea of where I had to go, but finding my way nonetheless. Because understanding how to start can be really crucial, this is a source of comfort for me. Ultimately, it's been an enjoyable experience.
However, I have two things that I'm curious about. . .
I'm genuinely uncertain why I suddenly found life and death problems not only something I could tolerate and kind of understand, but actually enjoy. Perhaps it was my relative strength growth-- that I'm finally capable of reading out the possibilities. Or perhaps my desire to erradicate the weakness just grew powerful enough to change my taste. In anycase, I wish that I had started focusing on life and death earlier. I feel certain that if weaker players could find it in themselves to seriously study life and death, they would be much stronger. It's often in games against weaker players that they let living structures die, or, like myself, kill their own structures by being unobservant.
My second question is, "where should I go from here?" I've never done any research on life and death books. Is there a harder intermediate series than the one I just solved, or will I move to some so-called "advanced" set of problems?
If anyone has more experience with life and death, please let me know. I'm also curious when you started studying life and death, or if perhaps you're still struggling with the same frustrations that I experienced until just recently.
Keeping eating wisdom, and fighting for your vision of the go board.
-Zack
