Mastering The Basics - Complete Series

Mastering the Basics Series

Along with playing games, practice is essential for mastering go technique, namely, practice in analyzing positions and reading out all their variations. However, the practice players get from their games is limited, whereas problem books can give the amateur go player a vast variety of positions that might occur in their games. Practice also keeps the mind sharp and in top form. This is the reason professionals are always solving problems.
Practice must also include repetition if it is to be effective. If you have to find the same kind of tesuji in similar patterns over and over again, spotting that tesuji in a game will become second nature.
It is the purpose of this series to provide a vast number and a large variety of problems -- in every phase of go, from the opening to the endgame -- for amateur players to practice their go technique. To accommodate so many problems, the explanations are minimal and limited to either illustrating a fundamental principle or a tesuji.
The problems are not hard; they range from very easy to moderately difficult. A dan player should be able to solve them within a minute, sometimes on sight, but it may take a bit longer for kyu-level players. But even if you are a dan player, solving these problem will keep your go sharp and give you the competive edge needed to win your games.