We've talked about 10,000 hours a few times here.

The following link updates some of the story and also provides a chess angle that will probably make sense to go players.

http://www.chessvibes.com/gladwell-on-c ... e%E2%80%99

I think this also somewhat relates to the recent death of an intern at a bank because of working excessive hours doing work that wasn't even essential. In my opinion "busy work" doesn't count, though some are attracted to mindless inefficient repetitive behaviors, because they can't know that something is true without deriving all of the details.

I think those articles quoted use term like "deep training" or "intentional". It has to repetitive, immediate feedback, done in full concentration. So what we usually do is to play a another 20min/30secs game Go, which will not help, playing 30 000 games like that you probably are better than before but not much. But it will take 10 000 hours easily

In chess it is well known and measurable. If a relative beginner does half an hour tactics puzzles a day for abut year he will 200-400 elo points stronger. I do doubt if doing that amount of tsumego would as big effect but probably a dash smaller. Vague larger scale issues nee to be trained as well. Just accurate feedback is harder to come by.

A couple of Saturdays ago we (the usual suspects from the Saturday amateur group that I play in at the Nihon Kiin) were out after a hard day's work with Kawai Shoji 5p (btw, the 3rd generation pro mentioned by TMark in this post). He plays frequently online. He prefers 20-second byo yomi. I asked him what he thinks about during those twenty seconds. He said that he uses those online games only to exercise his pattern recognition. He immediately chooses candidate moves based on his memorized patterns and then has to validate their applicability to the current situation within the time limits.

He also said that he can tell amateurs from pros by the moves that they choose. Even very strong amateurs choose different moves than pros. It is not that the pros always choose better moves. Rather they have accumulated similar types of moves in their available "inventory" of choices through their professional studies/playing careers.

Kawai sensei, another fan of Japanese sake...

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

@ez4u:
You seem so lucky to have access to discussions with so many pros.

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be immersed