A propos recent and not so recent discussions here about the relative superiority of study by grind and repetition and study by attempting to understand general principles (all the reading I have done since confirms my strong belief in the former for go), I was amused by a line from a play:

Schoolmaster: Someone once said, Rumbold, that education is what is left when you have forgotten all you have ever learned.

He then added: You appear to be trying to circumvent the process by learning as little as possible.

I fear too many of us go students are Rumbolds.

I tend to share the suspicion that learning by principle is a like a shortcut that leads you over the river and through the woods when Grandmother's house was just next door - but... the view is nicer. After all, who would read your books, and for that matter most go books, if all we did was grind and repeat?

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Patience, grasshopper.

I've a more cynical view. If go books, in small quantities, were a quick and easy path to strength in go there wouldn't be much of a go book industry.

It's true that a certain type of go book, or even just having too many of any type, gets in the way of learning. But, in my case I have always tried not to teach but to motivate. By exploring the histories or personalities of people who have achieved go nirvana, I have always hoped to inspire others whose grind and repetition I can then watch, sharing their eventual success vicariously from the bed of nails that is my sofa.

Peel me a grape, 5-kyu!

Personally, your books have made go even more interesting for me more than anything else, and really I could not ask for anything more than that from any go book. Thanks.

Not sure I agree with that, if I understand you correctly.

Certain things are can be understood/applied easier and faster studying a general principles rather than grinding. For example: the general concept of life and death. You can grind for a long time to cover all the situations, or until the light finally goes on in your head and you will 'get it'... or somebody can explain to you that two eyes live and why - and you can stop that grinding and maybe go do some more advanced grinding instead.

I think that grinding helps you achieve two things: better reading and expanded shape/position database. If we were perfect calculating machines, this would be sufficient, and indeed possibly the best way to achieve success. However - we are not, and most of us will possibly never be any good without at least some general principles guiding our moves.

I also think that the higher your level the more the reading and database (i.e. grinding) trumps general principles. Thus the pros might sometimes have hard time explain things in terms we, mere mortals, can understand - they just think differently. Alas, for us, mere mortals, there will probably always be a balance necessary with general principles being the crutch we have to lean on.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

The more I study pro games, amateur games or go theory, the more I recognise general principles, whose average becomes increasingly fundamental and simple. However, go theory does not converge to triviality. There also is room for complex tactics, complex strategy, increasingly precise judgement calculations and advanced, detailed generalisation defying simplification. E.g., greatest efficiency can demand choosing a complex fight, whose fate depends mainly on reading of complex tactics involving principle-sparse life and death reading.

Professional players often have a hard time to explain things in terms of general, fundamental, simple principles, because it requires meticulous, long research to discover them or recognise them amidst unorganised or subconscious knowledge.



There are a couple of books, of which each equals an improvement of ca. 2 ranks. However, 1) there are countless of books without this potential, 2) this great potential ends somewhere between 5k and 1k, 3) not everybody is able to profit (fully) from such books' potential and 4) other factors can prevent realisation of that potential. In particular, weak tactical reading can prevent it. Players magically already having a good tactical reading ability and not being stopped by (3) can reach EGF 5 kyu by just a few books.

Starting from EGF 5 kyu, the amount of necessary go theory explodes exponentially. A few players are able to explore it by hard work. Others can explore it by books. While you dismiss that as "industry", a significant number of books is required to describe all the go theory useful beyond 5 kyu. The Western literature still covers only a fraction of it.

Beyond 3 dan, another boundary occurs: available relevant knowledge in the literature is sparse and in the world go population's verbal heritage is hard to access. Players gifted and willing to learn are confronted with having to have luck / great effort to discover or be accidentally told such mostly hidden knowledge.

Therefore, IMO, it is unfair to blame everybody for laziness. It can be an important factor, but a learner can run also into one of the mentioned or implied other factors of missing talent (ability to read deeply at all, ability to prioritise and order great amounts of relevant and irrelevant knowledge), misleading inefficient literature (and a missing talent to distinguish good from bad book recommendations), missing time to overcome the effort-aspects such as reading, running into the still hidden knowledge land without having accidental access to relevant verbal heritage.

This sort of player should probably grind and repeat more, but maybe they are too lazy for that. Reading a go book to combat insomnia is a time honored Rumboldian principle.

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Patience, grasshopper.

It seems to me that grind and repetition vs. general principles is a false dichotomy. IMHO go is a very conceptual game, and concepts play a role in both aforementioned approaches to study. Go has concepts of different sorts at different levels.



These five positions illustrate eight go concepts (at least). All of them illustrate the concept of two eyes for independent life.

The position in the top left illustrates the concept of capture and the related concept of atari.

The position in the top right illustrates the higher concept of the snapback.

The position in the bottom right illustrates an even higher concept than the snapback. AFAIK, this concept has no name.

The position in the bottom left illustrates an even higher noname concept, which is an exception to the concept in the bottom right.

Armed only with the concepts of capture and two eyes for life, a player could read out all four of these positions, and, with repetition, could learn to do so quickly and reliably. I submit, however, that, as a human being, the player would also learn at least the concepts embodied in the first three positions, so that if confronted by those positions and similar positions in a game, would understand them and play them correctly without having to read them out.

The position in the center illustrates a particular nakade concept, as well as the concept of almost filling and subsidiary nakade concepts. What player who understands this nakade concept bothers to read the position out?

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Iterative snapback.

Auf Englisch that means a series of snapbacks.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

No, Robert I'm talking about the similarities between the Eastern, specifically Japanese, go book industry and the Western, primarily English, chess book industry. Both seem to year on year produce many, many books aimed at adult learners of the game and year on year we have the same adult players bemoaning their lack of progress. Are great books created? Sure. Are some people able to improve significantly in both using the books available? Sure. Does it seem to work with most people with most books published? No. I don't think it's deliberate or anything, that chess or go writers withold the secrets so they can sell more books, just that go and chess aren't the kind of things that you can sum up in a small number (10 or so) of books for most players. No slight was implied to writers or readers of such.

For go and up to EGF 5k, it is possible. Above 5k: no.

Bill Spight said

It may be but it's not the dichotomy I referred to. I used the phrase "understanding general principles". I accept that may be as woolly as "grind and repetition" but I think this forum by now is aware of the references. There are some people who believe they have to understand something before they find it useful. Others pick up the concepts subconsciously through grind and repetition. Both sets of people can end up with the general concepts embedded. The former may find it easier to pass on those concepts to other people but will probably not be as fluent in using them in their own games. The latter type may not be able to explain to others how they know what they know but will be able to use it in game situations faster and more creatively.

It's an informed guess, but I think the different performance level comes about because the G&R type, through the very same process of letting the brain take care of all the neural networking, allows the brain to make many more useful and faster connections between different concepts and applicable to more situations. The jigsaw has already been done inside the brain. The UGP type tries to take away control from the subconscious brain and ends up with what is possibly an illusion of understanding but certainly only one jigsaw piece which he has to match with other jigsaw pieces (which may be missing) under time pressure.

But what has all this to do with a joke?

I see no evidence for these statements.

I, personally, learn pretty well from books when it comes to higher level concepts. In the opening of the game, for example, I was going nowhere fast. I studied pro game records and examined fusekis and played games but my opening was always a failure. I then read The Direction of Play and now my opening is one of the strongest parts of my game when facing players of a similar rank.

Another example is shape. How am I supposed to figure out that the table shape is good on my own? And even if I realize in a game that a move leading the the table shape is good in one position, how am I going to figure out that the shape is good in a lot of situations? Learning about shapes and when they are used and what they are good at has improved my game tremendously.

The double hane is something that I never used until I learned how to use it from books and videos. I thought being cuttable, with an instant atari forcing move no less, made the move fundamentally bad. When I saw it used in books and then watched video lectures where it was featured I started to see the potential power of this move. On my own I never read deeply enough to play it and was always satisfied to simply hane at the head of two stones. No one at my club played it either so there was no way I would have learned it without study beyond playing go. Now, I suppose I could have learned this in game if other players used it against me, so I guess if I'd hopped on the KGS I could have learned it pretty fast, but I didn't.

Now, when it comes to learning in-game reading, that is strictly a repetition thing for me. A great example of this is how I learned to deal with this common position:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ Save the cutting stones, a or b?
$$ . . . . . .
$$ . . a b . .
$$ . . . . O .
$$ . O X X O O
$$ . . O O X X
$$ . . . . X .[/go]

I could never understand, from a conceptual level, why b was correct. I thought: "I'm trying to run away, I need to put my stones farther from my opponents. So a must be correct!" After I was punished about 6 times in games, I learned and started playing the correct move. This, however, I could have learned from a book if I just tried to memorize it, but no book ever taught me this.

And when it comes to building walls I learned about what not to do from having my position cut apart. I got so good at defending my own walls that I learned how to cut apart my opponent's walls when I saw the mistakes I used to make (and that is why my screen name is moyoaji). This now, I could never see learning from a book. There would be so much memorization involved that it would take probably thousands of pages of diagrams to match the 100+ games I've learned from.

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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

I see no evidence for this statement.

Why? Cutting apart walls is just a matter of connection, life and whether the result of a cut made at a particular moment is favourable for the attacker. Why would a book need 100s or 1000s of diagrams? A book should explain this much faster than your 100+ games.

Sorry, John. I was using a shorthand style. I actually meant the dichotomy you referred to.




There is an analogy between being a native speaker and someone who learns a foreign language as an adult. The native speaker will in nearly all cases be more fluent than the adult learner. That does not mean, however, that the adult learner should try to pick up the language in the same manner as a child does.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

My wife plays Go for fun, with no interest in tsumego or studying or reading books. Last night during a game she exclaimed "ugh! Stop it! You keep putting me in tacos!" By which, it turns out, she meant:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . .
$$ . O X X O .
$$ . . O O . .
$$ . . . . . .[/go]

Hane on both sides of 2 stones. She figured out on her own that was a bad enough shape that it needed a name. It certainly helps to have people point out strong shapes, especially unusual ones you might not have come up with, but a sense of shape does arise naturally just playing lots of games. I learned a lot about good shapes just through endgame play: it's satisfying when your opponent pushes as hard as they can at the gaps in your position, and wherever a cut might have been problematic a stone is already in place protecting that.



C (I added it) is sometimes the correct move (I lost a game last week playing b). But the black stones are captured almost immediately after a: this strikes me as an example where being able to visualize continuations is far more important then either memorizing the position or having a conceptual theory for why b must be right.