What Is Tsumego and How Do You Practice It?

Tsumego is the Japanese term for Go problems that ask you to read out the status of a group — typically life-and-death situations where you must find the sequence that kills, lives, or connects. You practice by solving problems at your rank, reading every variation before you play, and reviewing the ones you get wrong. This works for any player from beginner to dan level, and the main requirement is a problem source organized by difficulty, such as the collections on GoProblems.com.

What counts as tsumego

Tsumego focuses on local fights over life and death. The question is usually narrow: can this group make two eyes, or can the surrounding stones kill it? That makes it different from other problem types you'll see in a Go problem database:

The line between tsumego and tesuji blurs in practice, because the killing move is often a tesuji. The distinction is intent: tsumego is about the life-and-death result, while a tesuji problem is about finding the sharpest move in a shape.

What tsumego actually trains

Solving life-and-death problems builds one core skill: reading. You learn to hold a sequence of moves in your head, branch into alternatives, and judge which branch ends with the group alive or dead. That skill transfers directly to real games, where the same shapes appear in corners and along the side.

GoProblems.com organizes its collections around exactly these recurring shapes, which tells you what you'll be drilling:

• Semeai / Capturing Race — 3091 problems
• Connect — 973
• Encyclopedia of Life and Death – Easy — 741
• Cutting — 707
• Local Choice — 583
• Snapback — 509
• Ladder — 487
• Squeeze Tesuji — 487
• GuanZiPu — 432
• Under the Stones — 373

Each collection isolates a pattern family, so you can target the shapes that keep costing you games rather than solving at random.

A practical practice routine

1. Start at your own level

GoProblems.com labels problems by rank, from 30 kyu up through dan level. The "Problems of the day" section shows a set per level — for example a 30 kyu beginner set, a 19 kyu easy set, a 9 kyu medium set, and a 1 dan hard set. Pick the level where you solve most problems but still miss some. If you solve everything instantly, move up; if you fail most attempts, move down.

2. Read before you play

The point of tsumego is the reading, not the answer. Before placing a stone, work out the full sequence in your head: your move, the opponent's best reply, your follow-up. Only then play. If you guess and check, you're training pattern recognition at best and memorization at worst.

3. Review every mistake

When you get a problem wrong, don't just look at the answer. Re-read the position and find where your reading broke down — did you miss the opponent's strongest reply, or stop one move too early? That gap is the thing worth fixing.

4. Use timed modes to test recall

GoProblems.com offers a Time Trial with 3-minute, 5-minute, and untimed modes, and shows a daily best for each. Timed solving pressures you to recognize shapes quickly, which is closer to how you need to read in a real game. Use untimed mode while learning a new pattern family and timed mode once you're comfortable.

Tracking progress and raising difficulty

Two signals tell you it's time to move up:

• Your accuracy at the current level is high and your solving is fast.
• The collections you've been working through feel automatic.

The site tracks "Collections progress," so you can see how far through a collection you are and which ones you've finished. The "Recommended problems" section also surfaces problems near your level, which is a low-effort way to keep difficulty matched to your current strength. As you improve, shift from easy life-and-death sets toward harder ones and toward pattern families you haven't drilled, like Under the Stones or Snapback.

Common mistakes

• Memorizing answers instead of reading. If you recognize a problem and recall the solution, you've learned nothing new. Read it out anyway.
• Solving only easy problems. Comfortable problems feel productive but don't stretch your reading. Keep some problems just beyond your level in the mix.
• Skipping the opponent's best reply. Many wrong answers come from assuming the opponent plays passively. Always ask what their strongest response is.
• Treating tsumego as separate from your games. The shapes you drill are the shapes that decide real fights. When a game reaches a life-and-death situation, slow down and read it the same way you read a problem.

If you want a starting point, open the "Problems of the day" set at your rank, solve it untimed while reading every variation, and review anything you miss before moving to the next set.