E-Journal Managing Editor Chris Garlock recently said to me, "Myron, you've been doing the
Problem Of The Week for quite a while, why don't you send me some details for an E-Journal article. Oh, and make it interesting." Chris's last sentence scared me. The American Medical Association uses me as a treatment-of-last-resort for insomnia patients. As if that weren't bad enough, I'm in the half of go players who make the top half possible (You're welcome, dan players). But as a result, I probably have a good view of what makes a go problem interesting for most players. I volunteered in April 2004, when I noticed that no one was updating usgo.org's
Problem Of The Week (POTW). In a classic case of "Be careful what you ask for," I'm still doing the POTW after 11 years and
590 weekly problems. And no one seems willing to let me out of my volunteer contract. Over the years I've been very happy that some high-dan amateurs from different parts of the world have emailed corrections or improvements. But I enjoy hearing from anyone about what kind of problems to post. Based on unique IP address hits on the go problem for each week, hundreds of people seem to be finding something interesting. I do try hard to find just those problems that have something especially interesting, unique, or instructive. A few of the problems have been of my own making or based on interesting St. Louis Go Club games from my home club. But most of the problems are from the classic go problem collections, back issues of the American Go Journal and Go World magazines, or any other source which the AGA has permission to use. Your comments and suggestions are welcome: email me at
potw@usgo.org.