is the
Japanese term for a type of
go problem based on
life-and-death. The term likely comes from , as means
checkmating in
shogi
, also known as Japanese chess, is a Strategy game, strategy board game for two players. It is one of the most popular board games in Japan and is in the same family of games as chess, Western chess, chaturanga, xiangqi, Indian chess, and janggi. ...
but has different meanings in go. ''Tsumego'' problems are common in newspaper columns.
''Tsumego'' problems have been found in Chinese books dating back to around the 13th century. They were presumably composed and collected from actual games much earlier. They range from situations that occur quite commonly, which every strong player ought to be familiar with, to deliberately difficult puzzles. Some books of the latter type are still used for professional training.
Several conventions are used in the problems. The objective is to kill a group or prevent it from being killed. Problems do not specify how many plays are in the solution (as would be usual in a
chess problem
A chess problem, also called a chess composition, is a puzzle created by the composer using chess pieces on a chessboard, which presents the solver with a particular task. For instance, a position may be given with the instruction that White is t ...
), because the goal of the problem is rarely to capture stones; as soon as the correct first move is played, the threatened group can be considered alive (or dead). Solution diagrams will either show the most tenacious resistance that the opponent can offer, or lines that require interesting or tricky tactics. If only part of the board is shown, as is usually the case, the rest of the board can be assumed to be empty. The modern convention is that well composed problems do not allow the threatened group to escape into empty areas of the board (this is one way in which such problems differ from real games), although escape and recapture was a theme in classical problems.
See also
*
Nobuaki Maeda
*
Yilun Yang
*
Igo Hatsuyōron
External links
Sensei's Library: TsumegoSensei's Library: Tsumego conventions
{{Go (game)
Go strategy and tactics