How Long Should You Think About a Tsume Shogi Problem Before Looking at the Answer?
Hiroki Obara · Developer
You open a tsume shogi book and spend thirty minutes on one problem. The answer is right there on the next page, but looking feels like giving up, so you keep staring. Many people who start tsume shogi end up in this state at least once.
In Does Tsume Shogi Make You Stronger?, I wrote that it is fine to look at the answer if a few minutes of thought get you nowhere. This post makes those “few minutes” a little more concrete, and covers how to look at the answer and what to do afterwards.
Two common views
There are two long-standing views on how to solve tsume shogi.
One is to solve many short problems quickly. Seeing many mating patterns lets you “see” them without thinking. Endgames in real games are played under time pressure, so this kind of seeing pays off.
The other is to read long problems slowly and carefully. The ability to build positions many moves ahead in your head only develops when you spend time thinking.
Both have a point. They train different things. The first trains pattern memory, the second trains reading. How long you spend can depend on which one you are practising.
A guide by move count
With that in mind, here is a guide. It is only a guide, not a number with research behind it.
- 3-move problems: 5 minutes
- 5-move problems: 10 minutes
- 7-move problems: 15 to 20 minutes
- 9 moves or more: 30 minutes
Five minutes for a 3-move problem is enough to go through the candidate first moves and check the defender’s replies to each. From 5 moves on, the number of lines to check jumps, so the time doubles.
As you get stronger, you can shorten these. When you are just starting, 10 minutes on a 3-move problem is nothing unusual. Adjust the guide gradually as you work through books at your level.
Telling when you have stalled
Whether your reading is still moving can matter more than the clock.
When it is moving, you are finding new candidate moves or looking again at a move you dropped, for a different reason. In that state, it is fine to keep going past the guide time.
When it has stalled, you play the same move in your head again and again and get stuck in the same place. Nothing new comes, and only the time passes. That is your cue to look at the answer, even if time is left.
Another check is to put your reading into words. If you can say it to the end, “first a gold drop, the king escapes, and then I have nothing,” your reading is moving. If you cannot say what you were thinking, it has stalled.
How to look at the answer
You do not have to look at the whole answer at once.
Look at the first move only. Most of the time, you get stuck because you cannot see the first move. Once you know it, you can often read the rest yourself.
Look at the final position only. If you know which shape the mate ends in, you can work backwards from there. I wrote about the shapes in Basic Checkmate Shapes in Shogi.
Compare with your own answer. If you have an answer of your own, settle on it before you look. Then you can see exactly where you went wrong. The rules that are easy to miss are in The Finer Rules of Tsume Shogi.
After looking, solve it again
There is more you can do with a problem you looked up.
First, set the answer out on a board or follow it in your head from start to finish. Why is the move you did not consider correct? Why did the move you chose fail? If you understand those two things, looking at the answer was worth it.
Then solve it again a few days later. Even after seeing the answer once, you will forget more than you expect. If you can solve it on your own then, the pattern is yours.
Looking is not losing
Many people feel guilty about looking at the answer. There is a view that looking is not losing but part of the practice.
An answer you look at after a few minutes of your own thought is completely different from one you look at without thinking. You know where you got lost, so the meaning of the correct move is clear. Rather than staying stuck in the same place for half an hour, looking and moving on means you meet more patterns.
Every tsume shogi book prints its answers. Looking at them is a use the authors expected.
How this works in Shogi365
Shogi365 is a tsume shogi app with 1,000 puzzles each of 3-, 5-, 7- and 9-move tsume. It has no page that shows the whole solution. Instead, the hint does something close to “look at the first move only.”
Using one hint lights up the piece and the destination square of the next correct move. You still play it yourself. If seeing the light makes it click, you can read on from there. If not, you can use another hint on the next move. You start with 10 hints and get one more each time you solve the daily puzzle, or by watching an ad.
Any check can be played, right or wrong, and the defender replies automatically. If there is no mate within the move count, it is a failure, and you can retry up to three times. After the last retry it is Game Over, and watching an ad restores your retries. After solving, Review lets you step through the correct line one move at a time.
The game screen has a timer, and Stats shows your average time for each difficulty. That tells you how long you usually take, which helps when setting your own guide. If you stop in the middle, Continue brings you back, so you can step away and look again later with fresh eyes.
The app is free with ads, and a one-time purchase removes them. How to combine it with books is in How to Choose Your First Tsume Shogi Book.
