I think there is no upper limit to Go skill. However, it is true that people can develop bad habits that are very very hard to get rid of. In addition, not understanding a fundamental concept will hold you back. If you can discover what you are misunderstanding/have not learned and address it you will improve. This will of course get harder to do as your mistakes become finer. e.g. necessary forcing move or aji keshi? This could create a final wall phenomena where the bad habits are so ingrained, or the mistakes are so hard to assess, that improving is near impossible. But in theory it is still doable, it just needs an insane amount of work.

I don't think you can really talk about being stuck at a wall unless you are doing 100 tsuemgo a day and are still not improving.

Sure you can.
If you improve rapidly from 7k to 2k, lets say, and then stop improving at all, you probably need a conceptual jump.
Solving hundreds of tsumego might help, but I seriously doubt it.

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- Bantari
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True, but then I wouldn't call that "stuck". I read "stuck" as implying you are working to get over the wall and failing. I sure miss those days as a kyu player where I could improve several stones by just learning a new idea and playing a few games without expending much effort, but when that stops happening I don't call that stuck, but the end of the honeymoon period and the start of needing to work hard to improve (and the level at which this happens varies for different people).

I don't think it is just a matter of needing a misunderstanding cleared up. At certain points you need repetition. It's one thing to know to play away from thickness, and another to know how far away to play from it, and how to handle all the varying degrees of thickness. It's one thing to know that patting-the-racoons-belly is a tesuji, and another to spot that you can create that situation 4 (then 5, then 6...) moves out.

I've played people with clearly tons of experience who were held back by poor understanding of the concepts of Go, and I've also played with people who have the right idea with all there moves but who can't seem to read far enough to back any of it up.

Well, might be a matter of definition then.

In my experience, pattern is like that: You advance, advance, advance... then you stop. You keep doing what you have been doing, but nothing. Like hitting the wall, thus the name. Then you do something, usually one small eye-opener (new idea, short vacation, epiphany) - and you advance advance advance again. Until you hit another wall.

I think what you are talking about is reaching this specific skill level at which you need to start working differently or more than before, or you will not improve. Usually it does not manifest itself as a sudden wall but more like gradual slowing down to a stop. Most of us never probably reach this leve, or if we do - this becomes our ultimate limit. Personally, I would not call that a wall, its more like 'reaching your max speed at given gear, now you need to switch gears'. But again - its just definition.

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- Bantari
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I guess I am reflecting my own experience too . I don't recall ever feeling I got stuck. There were only brief blips in the rise of my KGS rank graph from 30k to 1d over the first year or so I played, and since then I have only gone from 2d to weak 4d over 6 years or so. But I don't feel I am stuck as I am not working hard to improve by doing all the tsumego I know I need to do if I want to get stronger.

The 'short blips' might have been that 'walls' people are talking about, but you either had less problems overcoming them, or did not care enough to make as much fuss about it as many people do. Or both. In either case - good for you.

PS>
Interacting with kyu players, or even teaching - or even informal help - helps to understand what people are talking about here, if you are interested.

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- Bantari
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After a year and a half of regular play as a 3 dan, I felt like I had hit a wall. Then an insight into myself (not go) let me make 4 dan in 6 weeks.

Then I went into training (15 hrs. of study per week plus one or two play sessions) for two years. Result: 5 dan.

Then I stopped training.

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— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

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Lol... my pattern was different, since we are comparing:

Took about 9 months of 'just play around' to reach 5k, then stopped playing for a few years, but read some books.
Then when I got back to it, I was 1k suddenly... progressed to 2d by 'just playing around' then stopped for a few years, but read some books.
Then when I got back to it, I was 4d suddenly... some little study (3h weekly or so) and lots of serious playing (5 games per week or so) got me to 5d...
Then I stopped the study...
Then I stopped the serious play.

And so here we are, talking about kyu problems on L19 like we're experts.

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- Bantari
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Don't worry, be happy.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

These numbers may not be particularly informative by themselves, since they don't say anything about what I was doing off of KGS (or for that matter, about the quality of the games I was playing on KGS). But if a dozen more people would chip in, I think we would have some interesting data to draw inept inferences from.

Note two things - this lists games played, not time elapsed. I'm not sure why time elapsed is treated as a particularly interesting metric in these discussions. Also, I've listed the games cumulatively, as the total number of games played on KGS up to the point where a certain rank was held securely, and for more than one game.

14k - 8
13k - 9
12k - 14
11k - 50
10k - 61
9k - 71
8k - 86
7k - 100
6k - 127
5k - 158
4k - 231
3k - 409
2k - 504

Now, I'm going to resist the urge to over-interpret this. There are certain anomalies that I could connect to certain changes in how I was playing, or a specific low-odds win, or whatever. But the real utility of this will be if more people contribute and we can figure out something like an average ratio of (cumulative games at 10k):(cumulative games at 5k).

Interesting jts, mine is quite silly because I generally got at least 2-3 games a week in offline against much stronger opponents than me when I was a ddk and this contributed a lot to my progress I think. Also I played occasionally on other servers, especially turn based ones. So a large fistful of salt is needed. I was curious about the numbers though. Mostly I am posting this as a cautionary example of interpreting these numbers, according to mind one barely needs to play go to become a sdk.

30k-20k: 20 games
20k: 4 games
19k: 2 games
18k: 6 games
17k: 11 games (here I started my habit of playing games against stronger players at a reduced handicap, good for learning not so good for winning a lot and gaining rank in a small number of games, it's the same at 15k)
16k: 5 games
15k: 11 games
14k: 1 game
13k: 3 games
12k: 6 games
11k: 2 games
10k: 4 games (around here my health deteriorated and I started playing a lot less online)
9k: 1 game
8k (?): 22 games (as in 22 games played on KGS on 19x19 since I had a stable rank of 8k and stable for me is just won a couple of games at that rank given I play so little. My rank has bounced between 5k? and 9k?, is currently 7k? and has been pretty much meaningless for a good while now)

Overall take home lesson for me looking at the above is that is a really miserable total of 19x19 games on KGS for a year's playing. If I restrict it to ranked games only it's a mere 74 games played. I didn't choose this for the numbers above because the free games I played, be they teaching games or friendly games should be counted I think. If I counted only ranked I'd be only having 2 games played at 15k which doesn't represent how much I was playing at all. Overall my numbers of games per rank are low because of KGS's rank inflation and me playing games offline and neglecting online play for periods. So I'd come back after not playing a ranked game for a couple of weeks but having been doing tsumego and playing offline games I had improved so often my rank would have inflated to say 14k from 15k and I'd play one game and progress to 13k, not play for a bit, play one or two games and hit 12k and so on. My KGS strength and my real world strength are not that well correlated most of the time, it both under and over estimates me depending on what I've been doing since I last played. However I think if you took out the KGS inflation and had something like the IGS or wBaduk systems you'd still have weird numbers from people who primarily play offline. Double promotions being more common for them and whatnot.

I can't agree strongly enough with earlier advice. If you hit a wall, have a significantly stronger player review your games. Trust me, you are making 10+ mistakes per game. Identifying and eliminating just a few of them will shatter the wall.

And if that doesn't work, time off works wonders, too.

(Finally, don't be discouraged by those who never ran into a wall before gaining dan. They talk a good game, but you can catch them.)

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

Good point.



I have had the experience of getting better while not playing. (Not that it was voluntary, it was through moving to somewhere without go players. Before online go, OC. ) It is interesting to see that others have had similar experiences.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I've talked about this before on another thread, but I beat (read: obliterated) the vice-captain of my school's Chess team at a point where I was feeling more comfortable with Go.

The part that struck me in retrospect is that I have hardly played a dozen games of Chess in my lifetime! I had enough experience with competitive activities though to say that he was definitely a strong player. I remember John Fairbairn (I believe...) reporting a similar experience in another thread.

It's odd how there seems to be a level of synergy between fractionally related activities. I think the way of the future for competitors in mental games (in every sense!) will involve cross-training regimens of the sort. Once we figure out what's really going on backstage of course.

Edit: I had recently worked on my mental calculation around the same time. I could tell you the solution to a quadratic problem in seven seconds flat. Maybe some weird neurological combination? A branching of neural pathways? Who knows!

This reminds me of my favorite Go quote.

"A dan rank is the number of moves you make between each mistake.
A kyu rank is the number of mistakes you make each move."

I forget the exact words but this was the idea.

I just skimmed the answers and don't think this was suggested, so:

Play on another Go server.

I got beyond the KGS 5k "wall" by playing on Tygem.

I'm sure that you are correct in saying that those of us facing a wall are regularly making mistakes (and as Unusedname points out, per move), but I'm not so sure that you're conclusion is always valid. The question for me revolves around eliminating mistakes. I've certainly identified a buttload of them, but aside from playing on the first line in the opening, I doubt that there are many that I would never make, so it comes down to what causes me to make them.

I won't go so far as to say that I've hit my last wall at 5k, but in my world I see a few passersby, but also quite a few regulars who like me have been slugging it out at this level for a year or more. In order to shatter a wall, one needs to start consistently beating players who are a stone or two stronger, and I suspect that the reason stuck people don't is that they don't believe they can.

In other words, the mortar that holds the bricks together can be psychological.

I keep telling myself for example that under pressure, I get easily flustered and my already modest reading abilities are reduced to the point where the probability of one game losing mistake or another is large enough to keep me from advancing.

I dunno, maybe I'm just spouting BS, but then again, it's not through lack of examining my mistakes that I haven't gotten stronger. I just keep making them.

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Patience, grasshopper.

On IGS, I am about 5kyu, it does seem that there is a bit of a wall.

I don't necessarily know the answer, but some things I have tossed around are.

A) Need to be smarter, not just have better style.
B) The informational materials on strategy aren't comprehensive enough for higher levels. The books I have say something like this should be good up to about 1 dan, which was a 1 dan like 50 years ago.
C) Learn the standard sequences more thoroughly. At this level people seem to know the correct Joseki better, and also know how to punish the ones they use better. Which is a shame, because I just figured out how to punish the deviations for the ones I know.
D) Practice counting, I wish there were tsumego like problems for counting, because I find this skill doesn't develop in parallel with tsumego.

I have looked around there are number of books "Breaking through to shodan", "Raising to shodan", they all seem to be oriented towards Joseki sequences.