Anyway, I wasn't even aware there was any real debate over what the best training method is. I thought pros/strong amateurs unilaterally agreed that it's doing tsumego and playing games.

There's a problem with this, and it is that no-one is made equal. My raw, untrained forte may be strategy (it is not, I think, but bear with me in the example) whereas yours may be tactics. If I focus on tsumego for training and ignore everything else I may improve very slowly (since I'm playing against my natural inclinations,) but if you focus on tsumego you are playing with your strengths and would rise faster. Of course, as soon as the natural abilities plateau arrives you need to switch to another training focus. The thing is, that a training study like this would need:

Untrained forte strategy? How could that even be possible. Anyway you should focus on your weaknesses. So if somebody has already solved a lot of tsumego it might not be as useful to do that even more. So maybe participants should also tell us how they have trained previously.

It's easily possible, having natural aptitude for something is the rule, not the exception. I am a very slow runner, but have very good muscle endurance. So I won't run sprints, I may run a 10k. I may train sprints to improve my speed, but devoting all my time to becoming a sprinter would ruin my real ability of long running.

Possible ways of training:
1. Briefly look at pro games with no mind. Ask John Fairbairn for more information. I would like to know myself how fast one should exactly go over one game.

Running is a different thing. Also training for month in a different way doesn't hurt any amateur. It could actually be totally opposite and prevent a possible injury. And hey nobody is forced to participate in any of these test anyway.

Running is not a different thing, since we are basically talking about training regimes. I could have used chess, soccer or acing exams. All apply as well as anything else.

I agree that changing regimes for a month should not be a problem, but I actually use all three methods, daily if I can. While also playing some serious games in the NGA. What is helping me? Everything. I know tactics is my biggest blind spot (as well as deciding where to push my reading further and when to refrain,) and my shapes are sometimes too flimsy. But I don't want to focus on just tsumego (even if previous experience showed I get an edge when doing tons) or just pro games (for shape.) I try to fill all holes slowly, while improving also where my more or less natural good points are (it used to be the opening directions, but looks like that would only take me to 5k and now I need to work on it a little better.)

I guess standardised tests for a lot of people are pointless, and would rather suggest each person try their own regime and if possible, A/B test against himself (kind of.)

That "standardized test" will be next to meaningless. As RBerenguel pointed out, to draw any meaningful conclusions from the data gathered you need at least a reasonably long timeframe and a reasonably large samplesize. (Those are the two major dealbreakers, but there are others.)


Anyway, I wasn't even aware there was any real debate over what the best training method is. I thought pros/strong amateurs unilaterally agreed that it's doing tsumego and playing games.

Not sure how successful you'll be looking for JF to answer all your questions. I doubt he has the time or interest in helping you train this way. Now if you were to hire someone like RJ as a teacher, I'm sure he'd be able to offer you a lot of detailed information

A classic series of books aimed at kyu players is Sakata's Killer of Go series, which is still in print, last I checked. It has five volumes. The first is "The Killer of Go", then Go no Tesuji to Zokusuji (Tesuji and Anti-suji), then a volume on the fuseki, then one on joseki, then one on yose and tsumego. Tsumego does not even get a whole volume.

Several years ago for its New Year's issue Kido magazine had all (or almost all) of the Nihon Kiin pros give a word of advice to amateurs on how to get stronger. As I recall, the main advice was to play go. Some pros just said to play a lot. Some said to get a rival. Some said to play against stronger players. (Taking three stones was the usual advice of this kind.) Some said to play thickly. (I guess that belongs in this category.) Some advised doing problems. Some specified tsumego problems.

There are many skills in go. I find the current emphasis on tsumego interesting, but curious.

It is necessary to cultivate one's skill at solving questions at a glance, in other words, life and death problems (tsumego). It is recommended that amateurs assimilate the "Gokyo Shumyo" (...). It was published more than 150 years ago, but it contains basic life and death shapes, and is invaluable in game situations. Unless one first fixes the complete Shumyo collection in mind, one will not attain the qualifications to make one feared as a "killer". However, even a fairly strong amateur will have trouble solving all of the problems in the Shumyo correctly on the spot. If not, that's quite all right. After some days pass, one must take up the challenge again, and then yet again later, until in the end one masters the whole anthology.

"Killer fo Go" and "Tesuji and Anti-Suji of Go" are available through SmartGoBooks (http://gobooks.com/). Other Go books from Sakata translated to English are the two volume "Modern Joseki and Fuseki" (maybe a rearrangement of the japanese books on Fuseki and Joseki?) and "The Middle Game of Go", which is a follow-up on "Modern Joseki and Fuseki". The last three books can still be obtained through amazon.com for instance.

There's a problem with this, and it is that no-one is made equal. My raw, untrained forte may be strategy (it is not, I think, but bear with me in the example) whereas yours may be tactics.

Not the strategy vs. tactics straw man again. Fundamentally, choosing what tactics to train on is a strategic decision, since if you are studying one set of tactics, you can't very well simultaneously study another set of tactics.

Why are you equating strategy in selecting your training method with strategy in a game of Go? These are obviously not interchangeable. You could be good at one but not the other.

Additionally, the strategy/tactics distinction as I understand it is basically a global/local distinction. Surely, then, it takes tactics to choose which tactics to study over a short period, but strategy to coordinate which tactics you study and in what ways across a great period of time. Also it's unclear whether you are arguing that the two aren't distinct or that strategy is always more fundamental than tactics.

Finally, how is anything in RBerenguel's post a straw-man? Who is he misrepresenting?