iopq wrote:
It's got some lessons for sure, but I doubt real life strength improves quickly studying strange problems like this.
That's an interesting question.
To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a lot of research on go pedagogy. We don't really know what works best for most people. As I recall, the question of familiarity was addressed by de Groot for chess many years ago. First, he found that chess masters performed much better than beginners on regular chess problems. But then he did not find that the masters performed better than beginners on problems that had been generated randomly. IOW, the idea that solving chess problems developed players' abilities to calculate variations was false. The beginners were just as good at calculating variations as the masters on the random problems. The advantage of the masters on regular problems lay elsewhere, with their knowledge and understanding of normal, familiar chess positions.
Here is an experiment that I have proposed. Take a group of 30 people who want to learn go and have already learned how to capture and the ko rule and divide them into two groups of 15. Give one group a set of 10 beginner level problems to work on in their heads for 15 minutes. Give the other group the same problems with solution and failure diagrams and have them read the material for 15 minutes. Then test the whole group on another set of 10 problems at the same level, giving them 15 minutes to find the solutions. My guess is that the readers will beat the solvers on the test.
Based on de Groot's research, let's take a look at the problem you linked to.
- Click Here To Show Diagram Code
[go]$$Bc Black to play
$$ --------------
$$ | . O . O . O .
$$ | . X X O X O .
$$ | O O X X O O .
$$ | X X X O . . .
$$ | O O O O . . .
$$ | . . . . . . .[/go]
My guess is that amateur dan players would have a pronounced advantage over DDKs on this problem.
The dan players would solve this in a few seconds. They would even understand that the ko is an approach ko. And that means that, despite its strangeness, it incorporates enough go knowledge that the dan players can make use of. And that go knowledge is worth learning.
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First of all, you are likely to spend longer as a beginner verifying the solution is kō and also the best kō you can get.
Who says that this is a beginner problem?
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In real life it's not necessary to read out a situation completely. You only need to find the best next move.
Training is different from actual play. And in actual play it make take reading to some depth and breadth to find the best next move. Or even a good move.
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So I disagree that you need to solve the problem by staring at it, although I often do.
Me, too. I recommend playing around with go positions on the board.
To quote myself quoting myself:
Bill Spight wrote:
To quote myself from
http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... 47#p204147Bill Spight wrote:
I especially encourage beginners to do as I did, to play around with positions from their own games. They can learn a lot by doing so.
Finally, let me end with this quotation from chess grandmaster Nigel Davies:
Nigel Davies wrote:
It really doesn’t matter what you study, the important thing is to use this as a training ground for thinking rather than trying to assimilate a mind-numbing amount of information. In these days of a zillion different chess products this message seems to be quite lost, and indeed most people seem to want books that tell them what to do. The reality is that you’ve got to move the pieces around the board and play with the position. Who does that? Amateurs don’t, GMs do.
(Emphasis mine) From
http://rlpchessblog.blogspot.com/2011/0 ... rtesy.htmlEdit: Also this, from here:
http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... 75#p101175Bill Spight wrote:
Here is what Segoe Kensaku, one of the world's top players in the 20th century, recommended. First, try to solve the problem by looking only at the diagram. If you cannot, then set up the problem with a real board and stones, and try to solve it in your head. (My hint: Try to set up the problem from memory, looking at the original only to check.) If you cannot, then play the problem out to solve it. If you still cannot, then look at the answer.
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But it's quite useful to play the only correct first move to get a bit of visibility.
In reality, you'll play the first move anyway. So the video approach I am not a fan of for problems with obvious first moves.
In general, I suspect playing skills benefit from being able to get to the correct solution one step at a time in difficult situations rather than being able to see all the variations of a simple problem.
If you can't read a simple problem to depth 11, how can you read a difficult problem to depth 11?
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First of all, you are likely to spend longer as a beginner verifying the solution is kō and also the best kō you can get. . . .
It's just a practical thing, you only have so much time to spend on problems, a single shape shouldn't take most of your study time.
If it shouldn't, then why does it? In his regimen of study, Botvinnik addressed the question of time. A position that takes you a lot of time (unless it is too difficult for you) is one that you don't understand very well, and therefore one that you should study, one that you should take time on.
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My perfect problem regiment would involve all the common shapes you see in real life, tell you what to do (do you want to live in the best way possible? Best shape? Best kō?), then mix all of them and show it to you in order of progressing difficulty. Then it would repeat them according to spaced repetition algorithms.
You only need maybe a few levels, since at some point easy tsumego are too easy so you move on to medium and hard. But the point is you just know exactly what to do vs. an L+1 group or what the carpenter's square ends up as.
There are many roads up the mountain.
Let me address one assumption you seem to be making. The first move in the above problem is indeed obvious, and each subsequent play is obvious, as well. That being the case, and strangeness aside, you seem to think that there is little utility in reading the problem out. Why bother?
Well, for the sake of argument, suppose that you face this position in a real game. When is the right time to make the first move in it, for either side? That depends upon the fact that the ko is an approach ko. How do you know that it is an approach ko, and therefore whether to play in that corner, unless you have read or seen to the end?