I think I have finally figured it out. Playing go online makes me a worse player. I started to play online again recently on kgs. I noticed that I had improved quite a bit from when I first stopped playing online. Yet, after playing online for awhile I have gotten worse, reading less, being frustrated more, and making bad decisions.

Before that I was playing over pro games but pros and people kept mentioning playing as much as you can. I think it is good to play a lot of games when you have decent players to play and having a teacher too would be even better. But I don't have that, I just have kgs and I play on a real board once a month.

Therefore for me studying pro games is better than playing SDK games on kgs. I hope this won't always be the case but right now playing online is hurting my game and not helping it. Hopefully when I hit low/mid dan level playing games online will become worth it.

For me KGS games were the key factor for the progression through SDK. I understand that not everyone learns the same way, but it is difficult for me to think of a scenario where even games on KGS would be detrimental to improvement.

I think it's rarely a problem with online Go itself but with the perception we have of a good Go game.

When I changed cities some years ago, I entered a Go-club where every player was stronger than me or at least equally as strong. I learnt a lot with every game and improved at a decent pace (often they reviewed the game afterwards). Now I mostly play on KGS because out of three possible stronger or euqally strong opponents in my Go club, I can - with luck - play one once a week.
And KGS, well, is special. You will often hear players claiming they play at least one stone weaker on KGS and I can somewhat relate to that. It's a bit like playing against bots, which also have a funny style. They will often play moves, which flabbergast me, they don't seem sensible but are very challenging psychologically and more often than not I will completely blunder soon afterwards. Of course in the end this just test your understanding of the game of Go. When you instinctively know this move shouldn't be played, how do you react as to profit from it?
Often there are these "simple things" like playing too close to thickness but when you attack and his group lives, you suddenly have cutting points all over and all your surrounding stones are on Dame. Another popular thing in my games is that I invade his position threatening to seperate his stones. There is one move to connect and from professional games I know, they play this one move most of the times. On KGS everybody plays anything but this one move and everything turn into one big, messy fight (where I often get the worse result).

It's annyoing as hell to lose against something like that, I know. But the important thing is to understand what mistakes you made and what made you do this mistakes. A stronger player helps with this of course.
You have to learn to cope with this sort of play. Professional games cannot teach you this.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I would like to hear why you think playing online is having an adverse effect on your go.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Like SoDesuNe mentioned, playing online can be annoying for all these reasons. I've had plenty of games I wanted to track the record of and delete it from their database. Salt and burn the ground, you know?

I always end up thinking "How did I end up playing so poorly?" and "How could I let my opponent get away with these moves?" Often it's simply a matter of not thinking in the right way or not thinking long enough. I can't really advise you on this except to say: take the time you need.

One paradigm shift that's really helped me is to realize that quite often a bad move is its own punishment. It's a very difficult idea to keep in mind in the heat of an online game. Often the move your opponent plays, the one you feel at the very core of your soul is a mistake, can't be taken advantage of right away. Or maybe it can, but it's complicated and you can't quite see how.

Unless it threatens a drastic shift in the game, I tend to ignore such moves (after reading of course) until the fault manifests itself through regular play. If it's an especially long slide, for example, they will have to reinforce at some point, making 6 or so points with two stones, in gote, as a gift to you. If it's a weird shimari you're unsure about, try to visualize their next 'building' move and see if you can't strengthen your own moyo and make it bigger.

I remember my opponent plopping a stone in-between two (relatively small) walls of mine. He was apparently scared I would turn it into territory. My first thought was "Man are you ever going to pay for that", and played on, ignoring the stone. Later, at the right time, I attacked with the fury of a god and made much profit out of closing off the middle.

It's hard to stay disciplined on a [insert Go server here] game. Keeping it simple is best. Of course when attachments or strange fighting moves or deviations from joseki are the order of the day, heavy reading is your only friend.

Always remember that playing more games absolutely cannot be detrimental to your Go in the long run.

I'm also in the position whereI get to play Go in person very rarely.
It does seem like online games progress differently. Maybe that's the effect of not being face to face with your opponent.
Do you review your online games? It may be easy to pick up bad habbits online if you don't.
And reviewing your own games is just as important as reviewing pro games.

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You do not need much territory if your opponent has none.

I think when I play I start to worry more about winning then playing a good game. I start to play out of frustration and don't read.

There are a lot of players who rely on not letting your opponent get any territory at all and just try to complicate things as much as possible to hopefully come out on top. Those players flabbergast me to no end because even though I know they are playing bad or inefficient moves I don't have the strength to know how exactly to cash in on their mistake. Not having a teacher to help show me what I should do just exemplifies the situation.

What happened is that for awhile I was just studying pro games and then I decided I will substitute my pro games for playing online. When I study pro games I think I absorb a lot more. When I play online I just pick up bad habits and care more about having that little number next to my name go up instead of really improving.

So all in all I will focus on studying more pro games and occasionally play online. This is of course in conjunction with doing tsumego and reading books.

Something I find is that after too much solo study, one can get complacent. Replaying pro games, the viability of their moves never gets materially tested in all or nothing, early, unreasonable seeming ways.

Really, how powerful the moves are in your own hands is the test of what you have learned.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

The problem is playing the game is a skill in and of itself. You can study tsumego, pro games, and reading books. However, if you don't play, your skill at playing games will decrease.

That one is a mental block or bad habit that needs to be overcome. There are lots of recommendations. Free games, for example.



Inefficient moves are generally self-punishing. There is often nothing more that needs to be done. Other types of bad moves may require immediate punishment to refute them, otherwise they might turn out to be good moves. The problem with studying only pro games is that they don't provide examples of how to punish many amateur mistakes because the pros don't play those in the first place. So in the mix you might include pro reviews of amateur games, at least. Otherwise when you come back to playing, you'll be a little stronger, but your opponents moves will look even worse. So unfortunately I'm saying the problem you are complaining about will get worse. You'll see moves everywhere and think (perhaps correctly) that no pro would ever play them, but you won't know if they are 1 point worse than pro play or 20 points worse without playing experience or at least some study of amateur mistakes.

For that, the IGS Pandanet Mail Magazine, for about 500 Yen a month, is good. Maybe reading some of the GTL Reviews (free) is a possible supplement. But it's a supplement, and like vitamins is not a long-term substitute for real food.

Sakata's Suji and Anti-Suji of Go warns about attempts to become stronger in secret. He also warns us to "avoid a meaningless adherence to a theory of perfection." I wish I could quote the full 1 page blurb on it, but it's still under copyright. Anyway, there's some wisdom in there.

I understand exactly how you feel. I don't like playing online nearly as much as playing in person. I much prefer to study books and pro games and playing with friends to playing random folks on the KGS. And playing on the KGS has become a lot about winning because the KGS is where I get my rank from.

However, you will be able to learn a lot more from KGS games than from playing the same few people.

When I started playing on the KGS and studying regularly in March I rapidly moved from long-time second best player in my club who had lost to the third best player in an even match to undisputed best player. Part of it came from watching YouTube lectures and studying pro games, but part of it came from getting in that game experience on the KGS. Why did it matter? Because these players played moves I had never seen before - that no one at my club played. I got beaten, sometimes badly, and it only made my game better.

I don't think you will lose ranks by playing SDKs on the KGS. Sure, they are sometimes overly aggressive. You can look at some of my game records to see the headaches I've been given by random players who take two corners and then seem to attack non-stop. It is frustrating, no doubt.

I saw a couple of gbay99 videos on how to not die and how to not go on losing streaks in League of Legends. League of Legends is a very different game from go, but the principles he gives apply to any strategy game. One of the main things he talks about is the principle of charity. Here is the definition from Wikipedia.
In other words, when your opponent seems to be only attacking you and playing aggressively don't assume it's because they don't know what they are doing. Assume it is because they have a plan. They want to break up your framework because by playing 2 star point stones you implied that you were building a moyo and they know moyos can give a lot of points so they want to prevent this. It is unlikely they are trying to win by placing stones randomly and hoping you make a mistake because you've never seen the pattern. How they go about it may be incorrect from a pros standpoint, but they do have a plan and they do know what they are doing - after all, they are the same rank as you.

When I took this mindset into my most recent game of go on the KGS, I didn't get frustrated when my opponent seemed to randomly invade my territory. I looked and saw that there was some potential aji if I didn't defend correctly, so I defended that, played solidly, and managed to make things work out fine. If I had assumed my opponent was just being stupid because he thought he was losing I might have ended up making a critical mistake.

Just try one game on the KGS using the principle of charity, never underestimating your opponent. It is honestly eye opening. You will see that your opponent makes some good moves you wouldn't have considered and sometimes you will see a mistake, but when you do it will be an actual mistake and not a "mistake" that is baiting you into doing what your opponent wants.

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"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Lots of lovely advice here <3

Always, always remember: The only gauge of "is this move good right now" is "does it win". Being proper or beautiful doesn't have anything to do with it. You try to kill me with a beautiful sword stroke, well sorry, you're just as dead if I hit you in the head with a hammer.
If he wins doing what he does, it is good for him. You can get 7 dan on Tygem by opening on Tengen. No doubt a good amount of Tengen-guy's wins come from people being angry and not playing properly, from wanting to flip the board because his play is so outrageous.

As already mentioned, one good thing to resource-based strategy games like Go, Starcraft or Magic is that bad moves are often their own punishment. If you play solid, the opponent playing bad moves will just get left behind by his own inefficiency.

There are also many situations which are interesting and challenging, but ask players to improve at different points.

Bunker rushing in Starcraft is easy: Make Marines, make a Bunker at opponent's base, put Marines in Bunker, watch opponent die.
The complication comes from an opponent who knows how to fight back. Bunker rush naively against a competent opponent and you just end up massively behind to the point you often might as well concede. But the defender had to be good first. Now the game is asking the attacker to improve if he doesn't want to be brutally crushed in executing his all-in play. Once he does, a beautiful, if short, dance unfolds. This dance is what we see at the pro level. But first, players have to move from putting Marines in Bunkers and from flailing around in panic.

Could you elaborate: Does it win... what ?

If you mean "does it win the game?" -- unless the move is a huge blunder (game-over move) or
a super tesuji (game-winning move), many games are not won or lost by just one move.
Nobody plays a perfect game, not even pros --
some moves gain some advantage, other moves lose some advantage --
and over the course of 100- to 300+ moves, trading back and forth, the game is decided.
Many games are decided by many moves, not by only a few.

If you mean "does it win locally?", sure, this may be easier to evaluate. But we all know
you can win all the battles and still lose the game in Go. So merely winning locally is not enough.

If you mean "does it gain an advantage both locally and globally?", that is nice, too,
but we also know that just because one side is leading (both locally and globally),
it does not necessarily guarantee a win. So even if a move gains both locally and globally,
it is still not enough.

For joseki moves, locally the result is equal, so nobody is "winning" locally.
Globally, that's another story.

For the very difficult josekis like large avalanche, magic sword, and taisha,
the fights are so complicated that many end up with an "unclear" result.

So what do you mean by "does it win" ?

Good points. Communicated myself badly, too. Playstyle was more what I was after. What I was trying to get at is that things have different strength at different levels of play. Starting Tengen may be a bad idea at the pro level, but we're not pros. Likewise, in lower-level Starcraft, people can make Voidrays. The Voidray builds are actually bad, but if no one at our level has the control to just beat them, well, then they win. And winning is the object of the game and the only objective way of measuring what is good play.

It's never been a bad idea at the pro level. It's just uncommon.

Maybe not the same but, not playing makes me better. apparently.

Ever since I stopped playing as much, I noticed my rating graph keeps sloping up on the days I don't play lol...