Antti, In-Seong, Alexandre & Svetlana have been here on multiple occasions, so this makes the quest hard already

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I have converted the cho-elementary SGF to an Anki deck (without solutions.) Get it here.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I am new to iOS, so I hadn't paid attention to the thread about EasyGo. For now, I'm trying out the light version but will probably upgrade next payday (along with buying some SmartGo books).

Yes for that reason, I personally prefer looking at the answers. When I say easy problems, what I mean are easy given average amount of time, in other words, if medium means 50% one minute time limit, and easy means 90% with the same time limit for each problem, lower the easy problem time limit so much that you only have 50% hit-rate, getting through the problems as fast, and quickly as you can possibly muster. Therefore, you want to see many, many answers that you may figure out in a minute, but not necessarily in 20 seconds. It's all about the subconscious, and while you may think you're learning nothing, in a game situation you'll suddenly surprise your opponent, or moreso, YOURSELF, from reading faster than you thought possible.

Now, I know for some, that disciplining yourself not to check the solutions prematurely is a hard task. Discipline is an important part of becoming good at Go-- or anything, for that matter. Because I don't that Skipping the Solu is an extremely big deal compared to actual reading practise, since harder problems solutions are for more specific shapes than easy problems solutions, Some may choose to start of by not looking at the answers at all until he/she is disciplined enough to begin looking at the answers. But I think that the answer could often expose you to new ideas.



Whew! And In-Seong is EGF 8th Dan, isn't he? Considering that EGF 6 fans only muster something like a 10% winning ratio against the EGF 8 Dan ex-insei from Korea, (two stones away from top pro level!), I certainly have an ambitious quest ahead of me!



Continuing From earlier, If we assume that KGS Ranks are approximately two stones weaker the EGF ranks, KGS 7 Dan is the only way to go for me. I think you suggested a good Idea, thanks it'd true that ever since I've started playing, in general, Moscow the time I have not been able to play many games-- not to say that I don't get periods where I am able to play more games, but the first time in my life I played a game with more than 30m main time was in the MK tournament-- over 2.5 years after learning the game. However, these days I've been able to play more, so hopefully I will add some links to the rating graphs and game records of all the servers I've joined.

A generalization by month is completely fine I turn 15 by late November. Surprisingly, it seems that 4ky is a little strong for a 15 year old, but as I've been playing for 3 years (started Oct 2011) my progress has been slow.

Maybe not-so-slow is the progress of my maths, I expect myself to score A's or A *'s in Maths, Chemistry, and Physics next summer I've recently started reading A-level math material. I don't put that down to me being genius or anything like that, unless we say that genius is interest-- I see little difference between taking a mock exam and playing a game of Go or playing a new racing game-- to me, what we call subjects-- let's say mathematics, for example-- is not a "subject" but an "Art, Skill, Discipline" just like playing Go, doing videotapes, walking on a tightrope up a hundred feet while trying not to die. Besides, my English is nowhere near thr level of my maths, and following Lee Hajin 3p's advice, "train you're strongest point and you're weakest point, I tend to do maths and English a tad more-- but you're weakest point keeps changing using that method. And math problems are tsumego, I use the above system. I hope this can tell you my "background" in a career sense


So, it may be youngsters naivety or just plain crazy, but "KGS 7d by November 2019, ~ EGF 5~6 Dan by November 2019". Well, better than pessimism!

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On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

IMO, easy problems -- and I may define them differently from you -- are not reading problems. With reading problems arguably the journey is more important than the destination. But with easy problems it is the solution that is important. So why not look?

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

For maths I've always encouraged my students (when I had) and my friends (when we studied together) to just make very fast runs of problems trying to find the "knot" that needs to be solved. Great training for exams, and also for just "knowing" what the hairiest issue is.

But for go, this has never worked for me. You can only go "that fast" when using paper-bound tsumego, and if you go too fast in digital tsumego, you are very likely to fall prey of shape-clicking. This is why I have problems in Anki: I can't click on them, nor can I see the solution.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I classify Cho Chikun's elementary problems set as easy. It is, I can solve them all (a couple though still get my brain blood flowing.) It's essentially shape-sense at this point "huh, I know this shape, I have read it already 6 times." But I'm finding it makes a deeper mark on my brain *not* having checked the solutions for them. In some cases I have been wrong 5 times, and I've found later (either by my own reading or because the problem appeared in an NGA assignment) and then, realising my folly, the impression I got from my own stupidity was stronger than just failing the problem, even if it was 5 or 6 times in a row, checking the solution afterwards.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

True. Unfortunately, early errors, particularly if they persist for some time, tend to become permanent. Not that they are not corrected, but they are not forgotten. They are repressed. Thus, they can resurface in times of stress or inattention. (The return of the repressed, as Freudians say. )

I was fortunate in that in my first year of play my weakest opponent was 5 kyu (approximately 4 kyu AGA today, I guess). That means that I did not pick up a lot of bad habits, and most of my errors were quickly punished. In addition, many of them were pointed out in postmortems. Better to avoid folly in the first place.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Important point. If you go so fast that you are relying upon recognizing shapes, you can get the right answer, but to the wrong shape. Oh, it's a shape that is part of the problem, all right, but it leaves out key features. Then, in a real game you may think that you know the right play, but you don't.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Well, I guess I have the advantage of having played "a lot" and done "a lot" of tsumego. So, what I'm learning now (even if it is used to clean up the basics) is not first instinct any more, so they are not early errors any more, but systematic errors. It's like hitting your finger each time with the hammer

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Hm... I'm not sure if I can follow. Solving problems with very short time constraints and with "50% hit rate" sounds like you are mainly training for blitz games. Even there, I would recommend to strive rather for a 90%+ hit rate. I'm currently trying a mixture of medium grade tsumego (e. g. "1001 life & death problems") combined with easy ones for the subconscious - e. g. "sandbagging" on http://www.goproblems.com by deleting all cookies (=> starting over at 30k and advancing towards sdk or dan as quickly as possible...) .

Well - even for apparently easy problems it maybe a good idea to look at the answers after being sure to have found the solution. If the answer was different it is important not to click further to the next problem but to analyze why the own answer fails (it's similar with lost games, analyzing one's own mistakes may feel annoying but it seems to help).

That's how it should work in theory ...

I have thought about this a little more, and, while there is no hard and fast distinction between easy and hard problems, I think it is important how often plays come up in games. For instance, if the problem is not too deep and everything is obvious but an eye stealing tesuji, which is the point of the problem, then looking is good. OTOH, if the problem is a one lane road 23 moves deep, the point is reading. Looking spoils the point.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I interpret things differently. There is a well known principle of learning and training that, as a task becomes easier, it is good to make the task more intrinsically difficult, to maintain the level of difficulty. (And a level of difficulty of 50% is a good one.) Reducing the time limit is one way of making a problem more difficult.

I remember the talk where I first heard that idea. The example given was learning to fly a helicopter. The first task was to keep the copter over a 1 acre field. When the student could do that, the next task was to keep the copter over the field while chewing gum.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Yup, I remember whee you introduced this. Loading, isn't it?

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I suppose you may as well set your sights high. After a glance at the profiles of the current KGS 7ds ( at least the ones that have English) it looks like you're trying to join the ranks of Pavol Lisy (EGF 1p) & Singapore's WSMG/WAGC representative. Looking at those who barely miss the cut, the strongest identifiable KGS 6d appears to also be a French 6d.

Antti is 7d KGS (or was last time I checked) 7d EGF, miao is (IIRC) 6d KGS and I guess he just got stable 6d EGF, Namii, even if just blitzing on KGS hovers from 6d KGS to 7-8, 6d EGF. Sample from people I see enough online to remember both EGF and KGS ranks

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Just to clarify, 4 kyu is strong for a 15 year old in the _UK_ (which is something I'm unhappy about. Think about it-- if an 11y old making snailpace progress for about 3 years is enough to make you one of the top 10 Juniour Tennis players in the UK, it would make the future of tennis look... so-so )

Okay, I just want to show:

"...Later I saw him replaying a pro game from a record at blitz speed: learning by osmosis/patterns rather than conscious thought..."

"...So in the morning I would do life and death problems and replay games. They way they replay games is not like the European way, where we replay from books very slowly, reading the commentaries. They would replay the game really fast. Sometimes it would take them only fifteen minutes to replay a game. So sometimes I replayed ten or fifteen games a day..."

Now, I am not saying that deliberating for a long time over a masterpiece doesn't have its place. All I'm saying is that we should take a leaf or two, three, four or maybe more from Korea and China, considering they are the best Baduk/WeiQi playing nations (something which I intend to elaborate on further in the future.)

Why do we replay through pro games? Why is it that replaying pro games is the main form of study by so many pros? We have to ask ourselves these questions before jumping to conclusions, it is the most dangerous exercise.

After much contemplation, thought, deliberation-- well, okay, you should probably take this with a catious pinch if salt, but it's safe to say that I have a few "pro game pointers":

--It is widely believed that pro games only become more useful the stronger you get. But one thing I notice is that people say that you should only do this when you are x-rank, as if replaying pro games is one, single activity. Look, there was a time when we tbought that the ATOM was indivisible, even though the evidence did not completely support this claim-- it was just the thinking of the time.

One thing I wish I did more of as a beginner 3 years ago was to replay through lots of pro games at "level 1". I found many of my old games last month! Yes! Err, when you see them, you would understand what I mean. At the same time, I managed to get to 10th kyu like that, and it was about that time (Jan 2013) I started replaying through more pro games more quickly. A year later, my play was unrecognisable. Yet my rank did not change but two ranks. But now I understand. I used to think it was a wasted year in terms of Go-improvement for me. But now, I realise how important it was, so that I can fight against 1-dans on IGS, and almost beat 3 kyus on WBaduk yet another year after.

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On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

The main forms of studying from pros I've seen in order...

play and review
tsumego
reviewing professional games

There are many pros who study by reviewing professional games more than anything else, but of course, not necessarily when they where an insei. And of course, there are also many other pros who mainly do L&D problems. It depends largely on the pro. But what does reviewing pro games do for them? Is it the same for us amateurs? That is the question...

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I'm coming to developing a theory, but it's scattered about in my brain, so I can't quite put it alltogether in one text yet. But now I can say, that: go problems may fall into two main wide categories. Closed Problems, which are life&death and endgame score counting puzzles. Open problems, although these probably shouldnt be classed as 'problems' as such. Extending this to the Shogi, Chess and Xjianggqi, it seems that Open are those that occur generally in the earlier stages, while closed problems consist of tactics, capture or mating. Therefore, it seems inappropriate to consider problems as either tesuji or life&death. It seems that All problems are either open problems, or closed problems which are either Life&Death/Tactics&Capture or Counting Endgame/Mate. And then in addition to these, it could also be a tesuji problem. I've also made an astounding revelation a few weeks ago. Ever since. but when I trying using inuition more than calculation when solving life&death, suddenly life&death becomes much easier. It seems it was endgame problem I should have taken a more calculating attitude. More on that later, but to me I think this is on of the three major key attitudes that's been holding me back, when discounting health issues since 2017 and especially 2019 to today, so it applies from autumn 2011 all the way to most of 2016, so it's pretty major. I haven't started playing go again but when I see to my health properly and then get back to playing more go and then get to the same level I was at in 2016, I'll likely improve much faster from that level.

The main tool I'll use would be a thing I share with a top pro. I've always loved reviewing games, like Ylee Seedtol. Play games or Re play, view games. I'll just replay slash review that have already been played, and these could be my own games or others' games, but if they're others' games they'll usually be pro-level games with pro-commentary. Then, Reverse-reviewing games after I've reviewed a game. In fact, when I play a game, in real life or online, if I immediately review the game on the spot at the end, it must be a reverse review from the last lay to the first. It's more effecient this way since the game gets more 'closed' towards the end, meaning there are more defininte answers you can find on your own. Anyone can figure out the best play for the last 10 moves of endgame if they try hard enough. Then, if one looks at the game again with a stronger player they can start at the beginning to look at the more open problems that require pro intuition. The main aspect here is the purity of the training. I'll be training like AlphaGo.

The goal is euler 1 dan by January 1st 2023, which is about equivalent I guess to about EGF 3 dan to 4 dan, around the level you can remember your games from memory well. Let's set the second-best player in the world at having e^10 skill points . . . A skill level equivalent to winning 1/(e+1) game against that player is having e^9 skill points. Repeat the process all they down to e^1 skill points, so e skill points. The range of skill points between e^0 and e^1 is considered 1 dan, and those between e^0 and e^-1 are 1kyu. I would extend this further to say that if I made a pro professional system, I would set the criteria so, although of course most pros would already then be at 4p; the pro examinations would take enough people so that so that all those Euler 4 dan or above will have the chance to be pro through skill level. There wouldn't be any female-only pro exams, however; instead, female amateurs would be invited to play in the preliminary stages of professional tournaments more often. There would be a few players who do not qualify based on their skill level being Euler 4 dan or above, instead needing only to be at least Euler 1 dan but one of a few selected to become pro because they are either extremely good at teaching, or by having other skillsets that would be very useful to running the organisation, such as a degree in maybe logistics, or perhaps advertising and psychology and biology, or any other skillset useful to the pro organisation. A degree is good but a PhD is even better. Or a person could just be really, really good at recording pro games at the beginning stages of tournaments, in which case there are too many to record without a dedicated pro type.

I set a high school diploma at 1 kyu (although I am at about John Fairbairn's level at understanding the american education system), Bachelors degree at 1/2 kyu, Masters at 1/4 kyu, PhD and Qualifying through medical school at 1 dan, and every 6 years of speciality training as an extra dan for doctors (although I invented my own system for training junior doctors into consultants, despite having (sadly) no experience in the field). So these would be a way to view those other skills. The solar system operates on timescales of 3 years and the universe operates on ratios of 3/4.

Back to the purity of training, I think that teaching Joseki to anyone is absolutely useless until about euler 1 dan. I will now never even tell beginners first corners, second sides, third centre. I'll tell them 'can you figure out what the best opening plays are, on your own'. This is something they can figure out on they're own if they're prompted that a basic concept of opening. Stuck on a Joseki during a game? Tough. Use your knowledge of basic principles to figure out what the best moves are, and if you can't try a simpler joseki next time or just be happy with simply trying to find good moves in the sequence. Until euler 1 dan, I'd say only do closed problems or review games, including pro-level games with commentary, but not texts about open concepts should be kept to proverbs and real games, in the form of pro-game commentaries. Then at the dan level one can start focusing more on deep study of joseki, and open concepts and problems such as fuseki problems.