Time for you to brew up a coffee. By the time you read the introduction, I'm hoping the caffeine will kick in and you can answer my question.

Many years ago there was a delicious news story in England about a Japanese man in Wales. To appreciate it, you perhaps need to know that there is a belief in England that, if you, as an Englishman, go into a pub in Wales where, as usual, they are speaking in English, as soon as they see you they switch to speaking in Welsh. I have no personal experience of this canard, but a close Welsh-speaking friend of mine says not many Welshmen in the pub would be able to speak Welsh anyway.

The story is that a Japanese professor walked into a pub in Wales one day, and they were all speaking Welsh. He then astonished them by addressing them in Welsh. But the real astonishment came when, as conversation ensued, they discovered he was not a professor of linguistics, as might reasonably be supposed, but a professor of knitting.

The apparent explanation of why such a thing existed was that the Japanese were producing knitting machines. Perhaps the professor was scouting out Wales to base a factory there. At any rate, Japanese factory investment in Wales later became very important to the principality, and in my days as an economics correspondent I sometimes had to cover stories about this. By all accounts it went pretty much to the satisfaction of both sides and so a warm feeling between Japan and Wales developed.

That sensitised me, and so I took a keen interest when I recently discovered that there is an organisation in Wales called Soroban Cymru (abacus board Wales). Actually, they appear to be more interested in a special use of the Japanese abacus (soroban) called anzan. I'm not well up on it, but I gather it's become a bit of a craze in Japan, with a tv show and a computer game (Flash Anzan). Although the abacus is rarely used in shops nowadays in Japan, many people still study it as means of brain training, and they even have national competitions and dan grades just like go.

Anzan is a special form of the skill because it is all done in the head, by visualising an abacus. People listen to numbers being dictated and do enormous calculations with them faster than using computers and calculators, simply because they've finished before a machine user has even entered the numbers. This echoes a well known story when the American occupation force settled into Japan just after World War II and tried to get Japanese business to use electric adding machines (i.e. buy them from American companies) instead of abacuses. The Japanese resisted, and showed why by easily outpacing the machine in competitions.

The method of playing anzan - someone dictates numbers while a group responds - also echoes the way 100 Poets and Iroha card games, or the shell-matching game, are played, usually at new year. I mention that just to show that anzan is not quite as weird as you may think at first.

Now, reading a bit about anzan, I learned that they have discovered that expert practitioners use a completely different part of the brain - a visuospatial one - for anzan than the area (the lingusitic processing one) used for ordinary arithmetic.

It seems that this parallels other stuff I've read about experts in as diverse a range of skills as tennis, music and chess. I gather that these experts stimulate and develop a part of the brain that has nothing to with understanding what they are doing. Indeed, understanding can interfere strongly with what they are trying to achieve. Apparently this is the cause of choking in sport. Their goal is rather to develop automaticity and they do this by constant repetition of tasks imposed on them by a coach. Obviously they glean a vague idea of what they are doing and why (e.g. they understand what top spin looks like, or that control of the centre is usually good), but only in a superficial way. If greater understanding is required, for example to correct a fault, that's the coach's job, and he comes up with another set of repetitions. It seems to be well established that ten thousand hours is required for mastery by this method, in any discipline. But what struck me was that experts in anzan - a recent fad - were very unlikely to have spent that amount of time. It's not even a profession.

And that brings me to my question, with the hope that the caffeine is working now. Whilst this is all very well for real experts, I think most of us would be satisfied with partial expertise, say 5-dan amateur, or 1-dan, or whatever, so: what is the best way for us to achieve that? Should we study and think, or should we just work out?

Before reading up about anzan, I was inclined to think that for us halfway housers study and thought were probably best. They would never make us real experts. We'd accept that x-dan amateur would be the upper limit anyone could achieve that way (and even then it would probably have included some repetition). But it looks like a less painful and more enjoyable process - buy a few books, maybe discuss them with friends or on L19, and if we get stuck, buy another book. The holy grail is always round the corner, in our world.

Now I'm wondering about the alternative way. If 10,000 hours would get me to 9-dan, and maybe 5,000 hours, to 1-dan pro, could I get to amateur x-dan with, say, 3,000 hours of playing over games and doing tsumego?

The answer's almost certainly yes, because the top experts in sport have had to go through these various stages themselves, and they are clearly already pretty good when they've done only a few thousand hours. But the big difference seems to be that they are already highly focused at that stage and are doing nothing but repetitions. They don't let trying to understand get in the way.

We less devoted souls, however, seem very prone to mixing up the methods. We might do a bit of repetition but then read a book for a change of pace. But is that actually harmful? Pure repetition can work. Pure study can work, although do a much more limited degree. But if we mix them, are we ending up with no, or reduced, benefits from either method?

This may be a two-coffee case, Watson, but I'd honestly prefer it if a more considered opinion was given than a no-coffee one. It's too late for me to benefit from a change of method myself (I'm a mixer, but with very little repetition), and I know a definitive answer is unlikely in the current state of knowledge, but I'd still like to know the likely answer.

I'm a 5 dan at Soroban and a 3 dan at Anzan, I took the courses when I was a kid and found that it gave me a huge boost over my peers at arithmetic.

And yes, it easily outstrips a calculator at basic operations until you get to multiplication by 3-4 digits. For sequences of adding and subtracting, a calculator is quite slower until you get to 7-8+ digits.

I guess it helped with the development of my visuospatial reasoning that's also used for Go.

Isn't there a study that said that professionals use parts of the brain similar to getting to know a person when they are considering an endgame position?

I do think there's a cumulative benefit to working on the same kind of problem for a while: it sticks deeper into your brain somehow. For example I think 2 hours of tsumego is probably more than twice as helpful as 1 hour. So maybe switching study types too much slows us down?

I managed to find instructions for addition and subtraction on the soroban: http://www.scribd.com/doc/3832726/Sorob ... tical-Tool

Can anyone point me at instructions for multiplication/division? It was surprisingly difficult to find anything...

And to attempt to contribute to the topic at hand: I and others often tell beginners to quickly play 100 or more 9x9 games against IgoWin, that their brain will pick up a few basic patterns faster than I could teach it to them...

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

This article is always apropos in such discussions:

To become a master of go is not easy, but became an amateur 5d or 6d it's not hard

(Article summary: do tsumego every waking moment for 3 years)

I think that pure repetition is maybe the most efficient way. But it takes a lot of work to do pure repetition for long periods of time every day. It is not easy.

_________________
be immersed

Isn't TMark a test case in go, at least? When he is entering all those thousands of game records into the data base I assume he isn't taking much time to think why a move was played.

I can only speak for myself but the one thing, which always made me stronger, was solving tons of Tsumego/Tesuji-problems. I went from 6-7k to 4k last year within one month by solving 30 to 50 Tsumego/Tesujis a day and now I steadily work towards 2k by doing the same (though a lesser amount per day).
The same goes for playing a lot. I always neglected playing because it is - compared to solving Tsumegos - very time-consuming (at least if you prefer to play by KGS slow settings). Now, I tend to play a lot of free 15 minutes games and through experiencing a lot of situations, I notice how I'm becoming more stable even if my opponent plays center-orientated (which I hate the most). Through try-and-error and reviews by stronger players (coaching? ; ) ) I now start to know how to work with this style; I get a feeling which Aji I can use in various situations after e.g. Josekis.

I can't claim I now "understand" more, I'd prefer to call it: I "see" more. (Fact is, a local Dan-player scolds me very often saying I gave away too much while following some plan, where I actually was very happy that I achieved what I had planed - he just sees more than I do)
As Go evolves a lot through shapes, many Tsumego/Tesuji-problems cover those. You just start to know, that there is something because you have solved a lot of problems with similiar shapes. I don't know the theory behind it or why the move really works, my brain just remembered the shape/pattern.

That reminds me of another local Dan-player. He says, what made him a stronger player was memorising some hundreds (thousands) often reoccurring L&D-situations (and of course solving a lot more on the way).
Books about strategy and such weren't all that available at his prime.

Finally, since I'm a firm believer that hard-work outclasses talent and that you can achieve everything giving firstly the motivation and secondly the time, I think repetition is the only way to master something.
At least that's how my brain works ^^

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

It is too late to drink coffee now for me, but after a beer I would say:

Repetition is the key, but you should make sure that you exercise your muscles in the process, that is doing tsumego by reading not by guessing and also playing with reading not by wishful thinking. Otherwise even repetition leads you nowhere. When talking about repetition: Even a set of 200 or 1000 tsumego is easily learnt by heart if you repeat them (and have some sort of memory), that may be useful in its own right, but wasn't the reading exercise it is supposed to be.

Regarding book knowledge I think most amateur players (myself included) know too much already, while lacking the fundamentals. But I would not blame the books but the attitude, if you read fancy opening theories or chatty stuff about famous professional to escape the exercising (or write longish articles in L19 or SL to the same end), you will end up without sufficient reading muscles to put that knowledge to test. But unfortunately you need to learn quite a lot to see how bad and lacking your basic skills really are.

This page is nice: http://webhome.idirect.com/~totton/abacus/
It has basic instructions for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and also advanced techniques like certain shortcuts, square roots and so on...

I wrote up what I remembered about mental math, thinking that I had some point to make about training. Alas, I seem to have misplaced the point, but I still have all this text. Maybe the rest of you can sort out whether it supports, undermines, or is irrelevant to John's suggestions:

Back in college, I read a paper about Alexander Aitken, who was an exceptional human calculator. I recall thinking that the paper ("An Exceptional Talent for Calculative Thinking") was very interesting, though you will need a JSTOR subscription to access it. Here is a capsule version by the author of that piece: http://www.answers.com/topic/calculating-geniuses.

Aitken, like most Western calculators, learned a great many shortcuts and mathematical tidbits to develop his ability. The only one I can remember off the top of my head is that for adding or multiplying several digit numbers, you work from the left not the right. Working from right to left and carrying, as you do with paper, overtaxes working memory.

Most of these tricks are self-taught, and are often individually quite simple. Added together, they allow him to report 4/47 to 26 places in a matter of seconds. Aitken seemed to be distinguished in that he knew more of them than most, had practiced until both those tricks and individual calculations were lightning fast, and had an abnormally good memory even before studying calculation. He also was more willing or able to talk about how he did the calculations--eventually parts of the process do become automatic. He would say "In a flash I can get that 23 into 4,027 is 175 with remainder 2." Many calculators began learning as young children, and lacked insight into how they did the trick. Others were showmen who performed in carnivals, and were naturally quite secretive.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

After reading John's post, like a few others I looked at some instructions on the website Flovermind menitioned on how to use a soroban ("Japanese abacus," for those of you who are wondering, and "Japanese arithmetic board" for those who find "abacus" a bit uncommon), and by the time I woke up the next morning, I was able to add and subtract 3 digit numbers in my head.

The way a soroban works is purely mechanical. Once you learn the "trick" of using complementary numbers, you're just pushing beads up or down. The way anzan works, is that you visualize the positions of the beads on an imaginary soroban.

I have often mentioned my difficulties regarding the visualization of go stones, and I must say that while the visualization of a soroban has some similarities, it is also significantly simpler. For each rod, there are 10 possible positions which correlate to the very familiar numbers 0-9. The division of the rod into two sections further simplifies the visualization, as there are never more than 4 beads in a section to keep track of - and I have read somewhere that the mind is easily capable of instantly recognizing a quantity of less than 5 objects.

When doing arithmetic with a soroban, one manipulates at the most two rods at a time, so the greatest difficulty in visualizing the result is keeping track of previous operations. You might say that this is the same with go, that what we do when we visualize a sequence is that we keep track of previously placed stones. A go stone however, carries far more information with it than a soroban bead, and it is much easier to keep track of whether the information signifies a number between 0 and 9 or offers a mix of concrete information - the liberty counts of various and not consistently affected groups, as well as abstract information regarding the relative strengths and weaknesses of the stones involved.

The skill set for using a soroban is largely mechanical proficiency, and as such, repetition is a highly appropriate training method. The more you practice, the faster you become, and getting faster is practically the only goal, because there is nothing more accurate than a correct answer.

Aside from streamlining hand movements when using an actual soroban (as opposed to doing the motions mentally), there is nothing comparable to the intricacies of a golf swing or a tennis serve. Although there have apparently been developments over the last 100 years regarding techniques of division for example, I strongly doubt that the possibility of increasing one's anzan skill with "study" as opposed to repetitive practice exists.

In short, we are comparing apples to oranges.

This is not to say that the comparison is impossible, just that it seems to throw little light on how best to improve at go. The problem is that with anzan, it is obvious that repetition hones a narrowly defined skill, whereas with go, the skillset is huge. I recently purchased volume 2 of Fujisawa Shukos Dictionary of Basic Tesuji, and the table of contents shows eleven distinct aspects alone for defending stones, and the book concludes with examples of brilliant tesujis from classic games. There is nothing more brilliant about using a soroban than about operating a calculator.

While the closest comparison to repetitive anzan practice would be tsumego, it must be noted, that when we practice anzan we are actually performing the required task, and when we do tsumego, we are practicing but an element of the game. Furthermore, tsumego is never the sole method of study. One must also invariably learn by playing games.

While I also doubt that my preferred study method (mish-mash) is the most effective, I also doubt that x hours of tsumego would necessarily bring about x ranks of improvement. The wonderful thing about the soroban is that with practice, it becomes a simple and as natural as walking. While some professionals speak of "natural" moves, they never play them unquestioningly. Go is never like walking; it is never mechanical. It is always like thinking - although also like sensing. While repetition allows an athlete, performer or soldier to perform a particular task perfectly, unthinkingly and automatically, this option does not exist in go because every move is a decision. Deciding where to place a stone is radically different than making a decision in the middle of a golf swing.

It is probably also the case however, that good go (or good chess for that matter) requires excellent right brain activity, and that repetition might free up enough of the left brain's resources to allow one's creative side to be effective, but, but, but... I like to read go books!

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

One thing that I'm noticing when practicing anzan, is that despite making the finger movements, the mental image of the beads evaporates fairly quickly, and try to compensate by verbalizing the number that each rod currently represents. I suppose that anyone highly skilled at anzan doesn't do this. Perhaps there's more to the visualization similarity than I thought, but in any case, these numerical placeholders also get drowned out fairly quickly due to the mental noise of further numbers.

What interests me about all this at the moment, is that I'm also noticing a descriptive commentary in my brain that bears some similarity to what I say to myself when I'm trying to read in go. When adding 17+ 16 for example, I make the 17 while moving my hand and saying "Tock. Tock." to myself. Then when adding the 14 I say: "Tock," mentally adding one bead to the tens column,(at this stage, I don't need to say "2,"), then, recognizing that a ten needs to be carried, "tock, 3" and then "the complement of 6 is 4, take away the 5 (from the ones column) and add a 1, 33."

Particularly, as in this example, I have trouble when I need to do something with the complement of 5, and surely repetitive practice will make me better, but for a moment, I'd like to compare this to my go inner dialogue.

For quite some time, I've been saying something like: "I go here, he goes here, I go here...etc." Recently, somewhat inspired by this thread about reading shortage of liberties and this one about envisioning a go game as a conversation, I've been trying to impart my inner dialogue with a bit more useful information, and have been saying for example: "I go here, black has 4 liberties, white has 2, he goes here, we both have 3 liberties, etc."

With both go and anzan, I find myself struggling to support my visual memory by verbalizing the actions of the stones and beads. Does everybody do this?

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

Good thread; I feel it's encouraging me to open up in some fundamental way. From nibbling tsumego to swallowing them wholesale and becoming what I eat. I'm trying to think now what has prevented me from 'becoming' tsumego, maybe a fear of losing my identity. It might sound silly but for me it's an anxiety-point and now I feel inclined to test it. Maybe if I'm not afraid of it then something productive will happen.



It's amazing for me to find him mentioned here, I'm a descendant of Aitken on my father's mother's side. I don't have any of his calculation talent or knack for simplifying numbers. I tend to go in the exact opposite direction.

This topic is one that I have touched on before. See http://senseis.xmp.net/?BillSpight%2Fimprovement , in particular the go savant section.

One thing that I have not noticed in the comments so far is the question of the differences between adults and children. Their brains are different.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

That's way too complicated. The point of Anzan is that you shouldn't have to do this explicit calculation. What you should be thinking when adding 6 is: "move 1 and 5 up, carry 1".

There are basically 3 ways to add 6: "move 1 up, 5 down" (direct), "move 4 down, carry 1" (10-complement), "move 1 up, 5 up, carry 1" (5-complement). You shouldn't have to think about that (I know, that's easier said than done ).
Which one should you use? The only one that works. E.g., when you don't have a 1 to move up, you move 4 down, carry 1.


The operations with 5-complement can be remembered with this little trick:
Add 5 == 5 up, carry one
Add 6 == 1 up, 5 up, carry one
Add 7 == 2 up, 5 up, carry one
Add 8 == 3 up, 5 up, carry one
Add 9 == 4 up, 5 up, carry one

You just move the amount "up" that you want to add, and carry one. The same trick works with subtraction, just move the amount "down".




I must confess that I have never tried that, but I think carrying that much extra information around would make it harder for me to actually remember the position of the stones. Usually, when I read, I just "see" that e.g. a move is atari. When I fail to see it (or wrongly see it), it is usually because I completely miss some stone, not because I can't count the liberties mentally.

The only exception to this is ladders and similar positions (e.g. lose ladders). I usually focus on a narrow area of the board when reading, and when one group goes beyond this area, I abstractly remember the status of this group (alive, one extra liberty, no extra liberty, lots of liberties, ...).



In Anzan, I just verbalize the digit I'm currently adding. For your example, that would be "one, seven, one, six, carry one". But, I haven't really solved my problem of forgetting the position in longer operations, three digits is pretty much the limit of what I'm able to do in my head. Probably I should practice on the Soroban a bit more, I still have to think too much for the individual operations, and thinking about the operations is the main obstacle to remembering the board

With Go, I don't really verbalize much while reading, just the obligatory "tack, tack, tack, tack, dead"

I don't think that we can draw that conclusion. Unless by understanding you mean the ability to verbalize what one knows.



Shades of one mind and no mind in Zen.



Very interesting.



IMHO, we do not know the best go pedagogy for amateurs. It is an area that I would like to do research in. I doubt if we can simply transfer the traditional training methods for pros.



Part of go is very much like math. For instance, to solve a tsumego is to construct a proof. But skill at math is not a matter of repetition. Understanding matters. (Even if it cannot be readily verbalized.) My girlfriend tells about, when she was in grade school, to multiply 18 by 5, she multiplied 5 by 20 to get 100, then multiplied 5 by 2 to get 10, and subtracted to get 90. Now, that was real math. It showed understanding.

Unfortunately, she told the teacher what she was doing. The teacher, no mathematician, told her that she was doing it wrong. (!) Instead, she was supposed to go through the rote algorithm of multiplying 5 by 8, getting 40, writing down the 0, carrying the 4, then multiplying 5 by 1, getting 5, adding it to the 4 to get 9, and writing the 9 beside the 0 to get 90. (BTW, when I was learning arithmetic, nobody explained why that algorithm gets the right answer. ) Instead, our class



Even for kids, arithmetic did not make sense. No wonder so many hated math or developed math anxiety. (Pavlov developed neuroses in dogs by giving them tasks that were beyond their ability.)



Mixing methods is probably a good idea. Go requires a number of different skills, and it is unlikely that they can all be best developed in the same way. Besides, there is likely to be a positive interaction between methods, IMO.

To return to the analogy with math, there is a new approach to math pedagogy which seems to hold great promise, called JUMP. I have only just heard about it, and know very little, but a few things are familiar. One thing that JUMP does is to identify a number of math skills and to develop each of them. An example is, if a kid has trouble subtracting 7 from 5, to ask the kid, suppose that you were playing a betting game, and won $5 and then lost $7, would that be good or bad? JUMP does incorporate repetitive practice, but not of poorly or superficially understood concepts. Both repetition and understanding are required.

Perhaps the number of skills in go is fairly large, in the dozens. Certainly the number of concepts in quite large, as the size of go terminology indicates. I expect that a sufficiently detailed course of study could be devised that would take most players to amateur dan level within a year or two.

A couple of years ago I did a small study of elementary tsumego to try to identify some concepts of life and death. I made some headway, but not enough to write a book. I do think that a concept based approach to tsumego would be effective.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Actually, Bill, I meant to comment on the article that your Improvements page is based on. For those who haven't read it, Bill's page is at http://senseis.xmp.net/?BillSpight%2Fimprovement, and a working link for the article is http://www.duke.edu/~meb26/The%20Expert%20Mind.html.

For me, the biggest surprise was that the article seems to discourage playing as the primary source for improvement, though I'm a bit confused because in spite of the author stating this directly, the article makes several references to Capablanca's claims to not have actually studied chess and that he fluked out of university because he spent all his time playing chess. Is this a misunderstanding on my part?

There is also talk about "effortful effort", but I'm not clear what that actually is. The article mentions "proper training", but doesn't actually seem to state what "proper training" is. From the memory-related study results, it would seem that memorization without deeper understanding trumps "figuring out how to do it on your own". Imitation instead of understanding. I might agree with this, because it's much closer to how children and animals learn. It seems illogical to me that it should necessarily be different for just one species, and only for the adults of said species.

But how does this translate to Go? And did Capablanca really mean that he didn't "study the game"? What, then, did he do to become as strong as he was? No analysis of his own games or those of others? That would be study, in my opinion. If not, what does constitute study? For Go, if reading out variations is not the way to go, then what is? Do we memorize josekis, pro games do tsumego, then just play by feel (intuition)? Or does it simply mean we do all this and then just "prune" extremely well so that the actual reading that's needed *when playing* is minimal? (Differently put, do we read when we study, but less so when we play?)

And what does it mean for doing tsumego? That we try a little and then quickly look up the solution, committing it to memory without really having working it out on our own? This would probably be sufficient to improve at tsumego, but not easy to do, but how well would it translate to other aspects of the game? And if it doesn't, what's the "memorizing" way of improving at those? I will say that when doing tsumego, for me the main benefit is not necessarily that I learn to better read, but that I recognise pattern and shapes better and then don't have to read the next time I see the same position -- which may support the studies mentioned. Hmm, I was going to say that the initial reading is still required, but at a second thought, that's not necessarily true. It might be enough to "know" (have memorized) the vital points and to memorize the shape. Then again, memorizing something without understanding (or here: having it read/figured out at least once) is much harder. (Or is that only a matter of practice and the fact that we're used to "learning by understanding"? Is it possible to re-learn how we learn, even on such a fundamental level?)

As often with articles of this kind, I feel it offers very little practical, pragmatic value and leaves it to the reader to figure out what the "proper way" is. It does talk about tackling increasingly more difficult challenges, but it doesn't give examples for how to do it in the context of empathizing a stronger focus on memorization, repetition based way of learning rather than "working it out" -- how do you do tsumego, strategy study, etc. without "working it out", understanding it and thus "studying" in the way we understand "studying"?



What is "sufficiently detailed"? That's much like the "proper study" in the article. What, specifically, would such a course consist of? What would the a possible training program or study plan look like? How many hours a day? Would it be self-"study" or taught?

I found the link to the Philip Ross very interesting, thank you. It seems to confirm most of what is said above where practice, practice, practice is the way to mastery in competitive activities or areas where quick decisions are required, and thinking/study/intelligence in the usual senses are largely irrelevant.

I came across a good example yesterday in the blanket pre-game coverage here of the Man Utd-Barcelona Cup Final. Sir Bobby Charlton was talking about home advantage (not in relation to this game). It's usually assumed that the home fans gee up the home team with their noise and passion. I'd always been a bit sceptical of that. Noise can inspire the away team just as much, and in the modern game the home-team players are rarely hometown boys, so they don't feel any special passion for the local city. Sir Bobby didn't put much store in the fans' contribution either. His explanation was that by playing at the same venue over and over again a player attunes himself to landmarks. In his day it was things like factory chimneys on the skyline. Today it's more likely to be things like the way a grandstand roof swoops down, he said. When running at high speed and being harassed by an opponent, seeing these landmarks in your peripheral vision enables you to know instantly where you are, he said, which translates into the ability to judge the direction or weight of a shot a pass or a cross more quickly and more finely than your opponents.

That sounds much more convincing to me. And what follows from it is that even if Lionel Messi went to Old Trafford and studied the skyline for hours, he would not be able to replicate that fine judgement in his first game. He too would need to practise, practise, practise in the same venue. In addition, any analysis or study he made of the skyline would be irrelevant even during that practice. It might even get in the way. If he is running down the wing and thinking "Am I opposite the glue factory yet?" those microseconds of delay will turn him into a duff player. He does not learn his orientation consciously. His brain takes over and does it for him.

That (and many other things) lead me to think that we are too easily misled by certain phrases. For example, in the Ross article there is a reference to experts relying on "structured knowledge". I certainly don't think Ross has been misled, but I do think a lot of readers could fall into the trap of thinking this means well organised and academic-style study/tuiton by ourselves leading both to understanding and to committing as many items as possible to memory: looking at the skyline, measuring the chimneys and memorising the location of the stacks, and adding "intelligent" insights such as "remember they may look different when smoke is coming out of them, or on a cloudy day". I think what it means is simply that during practice, practice, practice your brain takes over and does all this work for you. It structures the knowledge on the basis that (a) it includes only what you encounter and therefore need and (b) it includes each item exactly in proportion as you meet it. So, if your football ground is in an area of manufacturing decline, smoke will rarely come out of the stacks and so the "intelligent" insight is relegated to the dustbin automatically.

The point I still have difficulty with is the need for "effortful study". I echo Mivo on this. I think the important first step is to accept that study here does not mean reading books or going to classes. Mivo does this by rephrasing as "effortful effort". That's probably a useful trick. The next step is to focus on what is meant by "effortful". The Ross article (and others) seem to point to two different strands. One is motivation. If you are motivated and work hard, while there may be some inefficiencies on the way, you will probably make a lot of progress. The other strand, more directly related to "effortful" perhaps, is that you have to keep stretching yourself by attempting things you can't yet do. Settling for a certain level and then working hard but not stretching yourself apparently just leads to ticking over at the same old level.

It's easy to understand, I think, how a child with an uncluttered brain and uncluttered life can often do this much more easily than an adult. It's also easy to understand why busy adults chase the chimera of shortcuts.

I'm inclined to believe that for adults (and children) shortcuts just don't exist. The two factors of motivation and stretching oneself remain the twin pillars. Still, for a busy adult, even if they don't represent significant shortcuts would most of us benefit from books or teachers?

As with Messi and the skyline, reading a book and "understanding" something does not of itself have much value. However, the glow of satisfaction can motivate one to do some workouts. That's possibly where the real value comes. But it does not even have to be a technical book. An autobiography of a famous player, say, might lead you to want to emulate him. A coach with a whip probably works, too.

Likewise a book (even a biography) or a teacher can help with the stretching side, though you still need to find motivation to practise. I'm sure that having a book or a teacher or a coach point out a weakness is valuable and sometimes crucial. Nevertheless, I'm not too sure that it's required very often. I think, in go, the old and oft ignored advice to play over 1,000 pro games is more often valuable in stimulating stretching. At least I find, when looking at games (I don't study but I look at an awful lot of games when putting them in the database), I very often, say things like "Gulp, I didn't know you could that" or "Wow, must try that in my next game!" I think that probably constitutes stretching. This is of course self-teaching without book or teacher.

I am not, however, saying you can dispense with either. There are several sports, for example, in which you are required to start with a stance with your feet a shoulders' width apart. Apart from those who are already sporty and have already got over this initial hump, it seems that almost invariably a beginner has a self image of himself, even if fat, where he thinks he is quite slim, with the result that he takes up a stance with feet far too close together, and as a result he has wooden movements. My experience is that the self-image is so important that you need a coach (or a friend, or a book at a pinch) to tell such beginners that the feet need to be moved further part and angled just so. That alone is often enough to create vast improvement and some coaches leave it there. He may, however, for psychological reasons, choose also to point out that a wider and properly angled stance leads to flexion of the knees, a lower centre of gravity and more stability and fluidity. That "insight" may thrill the student but its only real relevance is if it motivates him to practise, practise, practise, in his new stance.

I'm not sure what the equivalent of that is in go. Or even if there is one. There are very many stories of future pros learning to play by watching adults play. I have always dismissed that as folklore. But maybe it's true. Maybe the unconscious brain works at that level, too. And look at the example of the young Go Seigen. It's easy to say, "But he was a prodigy", though writers like Ross often make the point that we tend to confuse precocity with talent and overlook the thousand of hours put in. Go put in more hours than his brothers and became stronger than them. Yet they also put in many hours and became reasonably strong (Wu Huan would be about 7-dan or 8-dan amateur now). None of them had a teacher of any note. Go's father was only about 2-dan amateur and at times seemed more concerned with keeping the right to the white stones than teaching his children go (he was much more concerned with teaching them the Confucian classics). Go did have books (or magazines) but as they were mostly in Japanese he couldn't read them. He just did his repetitive drill of playing over game after game - probably many more than 1,000. He had no outside teacher. Even when he went to Japan to live with Segoe, he had no tuition from him. So there we have an example of a player reaching the top with no study books and no coach. While an extreme case, my impression is that this is still close to the norm for pros.

But even if you accept that just playing over games or problems is mostly sufficient to provide stretching or "effortful effort", what is usually lacking in accounts of pros is what motivated them. They seem rarely to have been motivated by books or people or hunger. As far as I can tell, most often it's just a fascination with the patterns on the board.

If playing were the way to improve, we should all be pros.

Capablanca's never studying chess reminds me of statements by two other greats. Bridge champion Boris Shapiro said that he had never read a bridge book. (And another great: my grandmother. When she was in her early twenties, a friend recruited her to play as her partner in a local auction bridge tournament, and taught her to play the afternoon before the tournament. They won. My grandmother never took up bridge. Too easy, she said. ) The other great is Mozart. One of his aristocratic composition students chafed at the idea of writing short compositions only several bars long. He protested that Mozart had written his first symphony at age six. Yes, replied Mozart, but nobody had to show me how to do it.

I know that there is the advice to play your first 100 games quickly. And, to be sure, you can learn a lot in the beginning just by playing. But in this era of online play, I think that it is not such good advice. The reason is that most of those games will be against other weak players, and you will start to develop bad habits. Bad habits are rarely fully overcome. They can emerge under stress.

Take the snapback. It is possible to learn it on your own during your first 100 games, but my guess is that most people don't. Suppose that it occurs 40 times during those games, and neither players sees it. Instead of making a throw-in, they simply atari. Later you learn about the snapback, but when you encounter a snapback position in a game, what is your first impulse going to be (even if unconsciously)? The atari. It may take you a fraction of a second to overcome that impulse, but it will still be there. OTOH, suppose that in your early games you play against a 7 kyu, and a snapback position occurs. She will either play it herself, or show it to you after the game. Before you have a chance to develop a bad habit.

More later. Gotta run.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.