How do you improve your fighting strength and invasions etc

By counting liberties and getting a firm grasp at the basics.


For example if you are 13k with the Bruce Wilcox Go Dojo contact fights software.

By fighting and invading.

Also, what Gomoto said.

Also, play against stronger players. At 13 kyu, that's SDKs and even 9 stones games from dan players. If you are taking 5 or more stones, try to kill.

Good luck!

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

is the bruce wilcox go dojo contact fights software really that impressive?

i didnt know taking 9 stones from dan players helps fighting, thanks for the advice!

Hi Glummie,

Before you posted the question ( which is an excellent question ),
what did you guess would be helpful ? Any ideas ?I probably improved about 1-2 stones after Contact Fights.

It helps fighting if you use the handicap stones for fighting. Then, facing a superior fighter, you can learn something. If, however, you play passively and try to make and hang on to territory, you can get ripped to shreds and not know why.

Or even lose without getting ripped to shreds. I remember once giving nine stones to a DDK and winning without killing one group. My opponent was astonished.

Here is a post with a couple of good examples of using 9 stones to fight.
forum/viewtopic.php?p=175437#p175437

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hi Glummie,

Before you posted the question ( which is an excellent question ),
what did you guess would be helpful ? Any ideas ?

I was guessing tesuji and tsumego

Hi Glummie,



Improving reading strength has got to have benefit, it also teaches some things about what groups are weak/strong, can be cut off etc.

I found playing against people who like to fight/invade and overplay has helped. Tygem in the DDK's can be pretty eye opening if you haven't played there before.

I really liked Yilun Yang's "Choosing the direction of attack", from The Workshop Lectures Volume 1.
He says there are three fundamental concerns; things that you should think about at each attacking move.

1. Where is my own weakness, or potential weakness? Lest you end up under attack yourself
2. Where to go benefit; territory, influence, increased potential, decrease opponents potential, kill. Actually killing is hard, so usually the aim is the benefit from the threat of killing, not in the killing itself.
3. How do I attack severely? From this or that side, from the outside?

taking a slightly paraphrased example from Yilun Yang;



Now, if someone could tell me how to make myself actually stop and think at each move instead of having KILL KILL KILL ringing in my ears, that would be appreciated.

All the best,

Zac

EDIT: To the best of my knowledge, reproducing a small paraphrased example from copyrighted material doesn't fall foul of any laws, if it is deemed inappropriate I apologise and am happy to remove it/have it removed.

Yeah, it is. It is actually the only go software I've seen that actually teaches.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

Although tactically way over my head, I found "Killer of Go" truly inspirational.

Idea:

Play 10 games where you focus on surrounding. If the opponent plays elsewhere after being surrounded, kill.
Play 10 games where you go for big points all the time. When surrounded, play elsewhere. When the opponent goes out to kill you, try to live.

I agree that it is really good! Some things to be aware of:

• The UI is pretty old-school. People here are probably less likely to care than others, but it's worth noting in case that's a turn-off for you.
• It's very long, largely because it is not limited by paper constraints. This is mostly a good thing but you might find it a little tedious if you expect to zoom through it ("I get it, I get it, bring on chapter 2 already!").
• Wilcox looks at go in a pretty different way from most players, partially because a lot of his teaching work began by trying to teach computers, so his ways of evaluating positions and fights are very quantitative and sometimes rather mechanical. This can both be a good thing (it's nice to be exposed to new ways of looking at go; mechanical rules give you a place to start when you're not sure how to evaluate a position) and a bad thing (fewer shared concepts with most other go works; thinking mechanically can obscure the big picture).

For stronger players, the answer would be much more advanced. For beginners, fighting strength is twofold: improve your reading and apply the fundamentals, such as
- defend your and attack the opponent's weak important strings,
- defense / attack is about cut / connection, life / death, stability / instability, development potential,
- defending / attacking weak strings also means not defending / attacking strong strings,
- defending / attacking important strings also means not defending / attacking unimportant strings,
- get at least as much new as the opponent: new territory, reduced territory, new influence, reduced influence, new attacking potential, reduced attacking potential or a balance of such aspects,
- fulfil good aims: defend your weak important strings, make territory, make influence, build attacking potential, seek development potential, maintain your earlier major territories, seek sente.

Fighting is not a purpose in itself. Keep it simple! If simple play is good, there is no need to choose complex fighting, with which you do not know for sure if the outcome will be good. During fighting, choose the earliest way to keep it simple as soon as the outcome is good or else fair. Otherwise, you do nothing but giving your opponent the chance to do so for himself. Therefore, defend your weak important strings and maintain your major territories. For beginners, the purpose of fighting ought to be keeping things as simple as possible. Only fight what you can verify by reading and justify by good aims before starting a fight. Otherwise, you only give your opponent the chance to be more reasonable and therefore successful than you.

How do you cope with opponents that fight for its own sake? See above. Keep it simple as early as possible. Watch them destroying themselves. If you find yourself in a hopelessly complicated fight without escape, you have made earlier mistakes of not defending your weak important groups or your major territories. Swallow the pill, learn from it and do it better in your next game.

What's working for me to improve my skills is to alternate between playing against Igowin, and learning from BWD. Yes, the Bruce Wilcox Contact Fights Dojo is that good. If you don't have it, get it. I've been asking here for a few days, and no one has yet suggested an alternative for BEGINNERS that's better than BWD.

I had exactly the "OK, OK, I get it!" response that dfan describes, in all of my previous attempts to learn from BWD. The problem was that I DIDN'T get it, even though I thought I did.

Now, I'm going through it in a more methodical manner, and it's going to take as long as it takes. I'm currently on page 164 of...a bazillion! I was an IT project manager for decades, but the sense I get is that it's a mistake to set out a specific learning schedule, and try to force march to it. It'll come as it comes. Of course, YMMV!

daal: BWD is the only SW that teaches?? Really?

How has that come to pass? I only spent a small amount of time learning the "Go culture", but it strikes me that this might be influenced by that.

Overall, my recommendation is to alternate between studying and playing (with humans when you can find them, and machines when you can't), and let the knowledge come as it comes. If you get stuck on a specific thing...you have the perfect forum here to ask about it!