How to lower blunder rate?

marvin · #1

Hi!
Do you have any advice how to lower number of blunders? When game progreses I tend to make more and more blunders. Especialy when I am in the last byo yomi:P

Play more games? Contentrate more? Doing endgame problems? ???

Example(later in the game there are many blunders):

RobertJasiek · #2

Playing with more thinking time can help to some extent, unless you have to play with short thinking time. You can play games with serious thinking only. Play only when you are not tired; stop before you become tired.

However, decreasing one's blunder rate is hard. One needs to overcome the related psychological weakness of the mind's desire for taking occasional rests by means of forgetting about concentration at arbitrary moments.

It is pretty futile to plan for a safety procedure "no tactical mistake, no strategic mistake, no psychological mistake" before each move, because blunders occur when you have lost control of safety checks and fail to make them at all.

Apart from many years of effort of avoiding more and more blunders, what really helps is a permanent relaxed mood with two personalities, of which one plays go and the other (the imagined Big Brother behind your shoulders) watches whether you (the first, go playing personality) are still in the no-blunder mood. Listen to both personalities before making a move, or even better also while planning for a move.

EdLee · #3

marvin, very interesting question. I agree with what Robert said.

marvin wrote:

When game progreses I tend to make more and more blunders.

Have you figured out why? (Apart from the obvious: very difficult to make a blunder on :b1:

,
much more likely to make a blunder after 100+ stones on the board; getting tired, etc.)

Also, do you experience a 4-rank difference between Tygem and KGS (based on your KGS 2k and Tygem 2d) ?

Polama · #4

A lot of my blunders occur when I get too caught up in a local sequence. I might capture 3 stones and give my opponent beautiful thickness. Or going for the kill I might neglect a cut and die instead. I try to avoid these by stopping to survey the board every now and then: using some of my time not for reading but just to reconfirm I know what's going on: which groups are strong and weak, where the cutting points are, which big points are left, etc. Something about just refreshing that information seems to make my moves better.

The other major class of blunders is when I play on instinct. This can be a lapse in concentration or a time control thing. With those, I mostly just try to understand why my instincts were wrong afterwards. It's often the case that the position looks alot like a position where my move would have been good: A tesuji that actually helped the opponent, or a semai I was off by one on the liberty count for, or I poked out a group's third eye. I find it very helpful to look at the position for a bit, thinking "ah, I must've been imagining this. Now if this stone had been any of these locations, it still wouldn't have worked, would it?" I try to use those blunders as a tool to refine my instincts, so that when I do lapse into an automatic play, it's more likely to be the right one (or you know, right enough for an amateur

Bill Spight · #5

Everybody blunders. (Well, maybe not Go Seigen.

) We all make mistakes that we know better than to make.

I have two suggestions for reducing blunders. The first is overlearning. Of all the blunders that I have made, none have been overlooking a simple snapback. It's a three move tesuji. I know it, as they say, like the back of my hand. Throw-in, take, take back. I recognize it. I see it. I do not have to read it out. I have overlearned it. Some blunders you can classify, and then review and drill the position in which the blunder occurred, as well as similar positions. Go to the woodshed, as musicians say.

The second way to reduce blunders is to use protocols, or checklists. One recent blunder I made was to miscount the dame of a group of stones at the end of a short line of play. While, of course, I might have visualized the resulting position well enough to count the dame, I could have counted the dame at the start and made a dame count based on that. Hospitals use protocols to reduce blunders, such as leaving a sponge inside a surgery patient. (Do a sponge count!

)

Bill Spight · #6

Well, I decided to look at blunders and potential blunders late in the game. I started looking at the very end. Your opponent seems to be more careless and blunder prone than you.

Edit: You just made a bigger blunder.

Edit: I backed the game up a bit more and found your game losing blunder. Overlooking the White play is one thing. That position on the side is something that can be overlearned.

But the play you actually chose was a dame. And you played a dame later. And you both missed the Black one point sente at the end. Those are matters of inattention or carelessness. To cure that you need to know what was happening with you.

Go to move 299 for variations and comments.

marvin · #7

Thanks for all the comments

I had no idea there are so many blunders after move 310. (Maybe I should study endgame someday:P) blunder that i find very stupid is move 299, instead of connecting the two stones...

Checklist might help, especialy when I have enough time.
EdLee:
I think I make more blunders later because moves are not that interesting and
I have already made many moves. And I lose concentration.(Which is odd because I have very good concentration for physics, math but I find that different kind of concentration somehow)
(Difference in ranks is not 4 stones(more like 2), my ranks have not convergated(just made the Tygem acc))

I kind of expected that playing many games under time pressure will help but nobody suggested that so sloving this problem is apperently not so easy.

So I will try to save some time for endgame and think about moves and ask myself: is it a blunder?

Another thing i must try is if I make more/less mistakes if I try to play seriously/ not so seriously

bayu · #8

My blunder rate dropped, when I stopped holding the mouse (when online) or a stone (when over the board) while thinking. It helps to focus on the game and it still works as a safety feature when I already lost control of mental safety checks, like Robert put it.

Sometimes it happens that I figured where I wanted to put the stone, take it from the bowl and then suddenly think that I overlooked something. I always put the stone back into the bowl to think about the overlooked variation. It became a reflex I'm very happy about.

Bill Spight · #9

marvin wrote:

Thanks for all the comments

I had no idea there are so many blunders after move 310. (Maybe I should study endgame someday:P) blunder that i find very stupid is move 299, instead of connecting the two stones...

Checklist might help, especialy when I have enough time.
EdLee:
I think I make more blunders later because moves are not that interesting and
I have already made many moves. And I lose concentration.(Which is odd because I have very good concentration for physics, math but I find that different kind of concentration somehow)
(Difference in ranks is not 4 stones(more like 2), my ranks have not convergated(just made the Tygem acc))

I kind of expected that playing many games under time pressure will help but nobody suggested that so sloving this problem is apperently not so easy.

So I will try to save some time for endgame and think about moves and ask myself: is it a blunder?

Another thing i must try is if I make more/less mistakes if I try to play seriously/ not so seriously

I made a couple of edits. Nothing you were not aware of after the game, I am sure.

Fatigue can be a problem. It might help to eat a power bar or something.

Mental fatigue can be cured by a brief rest. Even a matter of seconds can help. Do you get tense when you play? Relaxation, as Robert said, can help.

You might enjoy studying the endgame. Lots of things you can overlearn.

I don't know if asking yourself if your play is a blunder is such a good idea. It shows a negative mindset. Better to ask yourself what your move accomplishes. (Endgame study can help you answer that question quickly and reliably.

) As Kotov suggests, ask yourself what your candidate moves are. That question will help you to avoid overlooking a play.

Something that helped me, both with relaxation and with not overlooking something, was to take a second or two before making my play and just look at the whole board. In that relaxed state of mind I could sometimes see good moves that I had missed while focused on reading a small region of the board.

snorri · **#10**

In the future, it may be possible to purchase an EEG-like device you can wear on your head which will warn you of an increased probability of blunders. See Using EEG to Scan the Brain for Impending Error.

There are other examples you can find, because fatigue-related errors are an active area of research.

From a practical point of view, I think there would be some kinks to be worked out before using this in an OTB go game. The normal implementation, such as flashing a light or playing an alert sound, would not be desirable as it would be the worst tell ever. I can imagine wearing one of those things in a game and then, when the alarm goes off, my opponent would immediately smile and start making overplays...

I suppose it could be helpful for online games, though.

On a more serious note, I think it's great that the term "blunder" seems to have a clear usage in this thread. I think it's important to distinguish blunders, i.e., mistakes far beneath the players expected strength, from ordinary mistakes. I agree with others that there are no easy fixes. Trying to hard to avoid mistakes might make one's play too conservative, which itself can be a mistake depending on the position. Even for mistakes that are fairly below our level, some will slip through simply due to time constraints.

I remember a lecture Janice Kim gave on KGS. Frankly, she hadn't prepared much for it---she's a lot more organized these days. In any case, she selected a random 1d game from the records of one of the players who was joined to the lecture. The game ended very early with a life and death problem that could only be considered a blunder at that level. So she said, "uh okay. Yes, of course if this were a problem in a book you wouldn't play this way, but since it's in a game you made this kind of mistake. So really, for everyone, no matter what your level, run out and buy Graded Go Problems for Beginners..."

Whether Janice prepared or not, that was one of the most informative lectures I've ever seen.

Bill Spight · **#11**

snorri wrote:

In the future, it may be possible to purchase an EEG-like device you can wear on your head which will warn you of an increased probability of blunders. See Using EEG to Scan the Brain for Impending Error.

There are other examples you can find, because fatigue-related errors are an active area of research.

From a practical point of view, I think there would be some kinks to be worked out before using this in an OTB go game. The normal implementation, such as flashing a light or playing an alert sound, would not be desirable as it would be the worst tell ever. I can imagine wearing one of those things in a game and then, when the alarm goes off, my opponent would immediately smile and start making overplays...

I suppose it could be helpful for online games, though.

One nice thing about feedback is that, very often, you can learn to monitor your own state without the external device. Or, using feedback, you can learn to control your mental state.

One low-tech feedback device for stress that violinists have used is a wine cork held between the teeth. Often players are surprised when they bite through the cork.

ez4u · **#12**

Bill Spight wrote:

...

One low-tech feedback device for stress that violinists have used is a wine cork held between the teeth. Often players are surprised when they bite through the cork.

And preparing your equipment is so much fun (bad for your Go of course :blackeye:

)!

Splatted · **#13**

It's hard to say if it's really working, but I feel like working through a problem book that doesn't provide the answers has been good for the reliability of my reading. It forces me to read to to make sure I have the right answer, instead of just reading to find it.

Mage · **#14**

Bill Spight wrote:

One low-tech feedback device for stress that violinists have used is a wine cork held between the teeth. Often players are surprised when they bite through the cork.

Does the same work with stones instead of a wine cork ? :lol:

skydyr · **#15**

Mage wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:

One low-tech feedback device for stress that violinists have used is a wine cork held between the teeth. Often players are surprised when they bite through the cork.

Does the same work with stones instead of a wine cork ? :lol:

Yes, but it's your teeth that surprise you when they break.

cdybeijing · **#16**

Bill Spight wrote:

marvin wrote:

Thanks for all the comments

I had no idea there are so many blunders after move 310. (Maybe I should study endgame someday:P) blunder that i find very stupid is move 299, instead of connecting the two stones...

Checklist might help, especialy when I have enough time.
EdLee:
I think I make more blunders later because moves are not that interesting and
I have already made many moves. And I lose concentration.(Which is odd because I have very good concentration for physics, math but I find that different kind of concentration somehow)
(Difference in ranks is not 4 stones(more like 2), my ranks have not convergated(just made the Tygem acc))

I kind of expected that playing many games under time pressure will help but nobody suggested that so sloving this problem is apperently not so easy.

So I will try to save some time for endgame and think about moves and ask myself: is it a blunder?

Another thing i must try is if I make more/less mistakes if I try to play seriously/ not so seriously

I made a couple of edits. Nothing you were not aware of after the game, I am sure.

Fatigue can be a problem. It might help to eat a power bar or something.

Mental fatigue can be cured by a brief rest. Even a matter of seconds can help. Do you get tense when you play? Relaxation, as Robert said, can help.

You might enjoy studying the endgame. Lots of things you can overlearn.

I don't know if asking yourself if your play is a blunder is such a good idea. It shows a negative mindset. Better to ask yourself what your move accomplishes. (Endgame study can help you answer that question quickly and reliably.

) As Kotov suggests, ask yourself what your candidate moves are. That question will help you to avoid overlooking a play.

Something that helped me, both with relaxation and with not overlooking something, was to take a second or two before making my play and just look at the whole board. In that relaxed state of mind I could sometimes see good moves that I had missed while focused on reading a small region of the board.

This is a really great thread. Bill,I noticed that you referenced Kotov here. I assume you mean his chess classic Think Like a Grandmaster. When I was an expert player back in high school I always wanted to read this work because I felt as though it was the psychological element that was holding me back in chess. I no longer play chess but suffice it to say that I am of a similar strength in go and I still face some of the same psychological challenges. Would you recommend this work for a go player?

Splatted · **#17**

Something else that might be worth mentioning, though it's really just food for thought and not actual advice, is that it's pretty much common knowledge among musicians that if you want to be able play something reliably then practicing till you get it right is not good enough. You must instead practice getting it right. For a musician it's usually pretty obvious how to do this, but it's harder with go. Once I've solved a go problem it feels natural to move on to new one, but I'd feel like I was wasting my time if I approached my double bass practice in the same way.

I think this may be what Bill's getting at when he talks about overlearning, and it seems like good advice (unsurprising given the source), but I'm not sure that's the best way of thinking about it. To me, overlearning implies that you should throw bucket loads of time at it until it becomes so ingrained you can't possibly get it wrong, but practicing getting it right is more about the quality of the time you do spend on it. It's about instilling good habits by repeating good behaviours/thoughts/whatevers, and is a necessary part of overlearning, but should be the aim of every moment of practice regardless of quantity.

ez4u · **#18**

snorri wrote:

...
On a more serious note, I think it's great that the term "blunder" seems to have a clear usage in this thread. I think it's important to distinguish blunders, i.e., mistakes far beneath the players expected strength, from ordinary mistakes. I agree with others that there are no easy fixes. Trying to hard to avoid mistakes might make one's play too conservative, which itself can be a mistake depending on the position. Even for mistakes that are fairly below our level, some will slip through simply due to time constraints.
...

I am rather on the opposite side of this idea. Distinguishing 'blunders' from 'ordinary' mistakes can take our eye off the importance of those ordinary mistakes. The blunder at 299 represents a failure to see three moves ahead. But what about 285? That is a failure to count to three (as in 1, 2, 3).

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Wc The game sequence - 4 a blunder? $$ --------------------------------------- $$ | . O O X X X X X . O X 2 X X O . . . . | $$ | O . O X O X O X . . O X O 6 4 O X O . | $$ | O O O O O O O X X . O X O O O X . X . | $$ | O X X O . O X O . , O X O X X X X . . | $$ | X . . X O X X O X X O X X 1 3 . X . . | $$ | . X X X X X X X . O . O 5 X . O X . . | $$ | . . . O . . O X X O . O . . X O O X . | $$ | . X X . X . O O O . . O . . . O . . . | $$ | X . . X X O . . . O . O . O . . . X . | $$ | . X X O O O O O O , . O . . O O O O . | $$ | O X X O X O O . O O . O X X O X X O . | $$ | . O X O X X O . . . O . . O X . . . . | $$ | . O X X X O . . O O . . . O . X . O . | $$ | X O O O O O O O X X O . . . . X O . . | $$ | X X X O . O . X X O . . . O . X X O . | $$ | O . X O . O X . X , O . O . . X O O O | $$ | . X X O O X X X . X O O X O . X X O . | $$ | X . X O X X . . . X X O X X X . X X O | $$ | . O X O . . X X X O O O X . . . X O . | $$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Wc Alternative 1 - Black wins in a walk, 3 liberties to 2 $$ --------------------------------------- $$ | . O O X X X X X . O X 2 X X O . 6 . . | $$ | O . O X O X O X . a O X O . 5 O X O . | $$ | O O O O O O O X X . O X O O O X . X . | $$ | O X X O . O X O . , O X O X X X X . . | $$ | X . . X O X X O X X O X X 1 3 . X . . | $$ | . X X X X X X X . O . O 4 X . O X . . | $$ | . . . O . . O X X O . O . . X O O X . | $$ | . X X . X . O O O . . O . . . O . . . | $$ | X . . X X O . . . O . O . O . . . X . | $$ | . X X O O O O O O , . O . . O O O O . | $$ | O X X O X O O . O O . O X X O X X O . | $$ | . O X O X X O . . . O . . O X . . . . | $$ | . O X X X O . . O O . . . O . X . O . | $$ | X O O O O O O O X X O . . . . X O . . | $$ | X X X O . O . X X O . . . O . X X O . | $$ | O . X O . O X . X , O . O . . X O O O | $$ | . X X O O X X X . X O O X O . X X O . | $$ | X . X O X X . . . X X O X X X . X X O | $$ | . O X O . . X X X O O O X . . . X O . | $$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

After 4 White can only reduce Black to at best three liberties. Meanwhile White can not achieve more than two. Here 5 and 6 are miai, Black will always win by playing whichever White does not try. More to the point, Black can simply cut at "a", that stone also has only 2 liberties.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Wc Five points better than the game? $$ --------------------------------------- $$ | . O O X X X X X 6 O X 2 X X O . . . . | $$ | O . O X O X O X . 4 O X O . . O X O . | $$ | O O O O O O O X X . O X O O O X . X . | $$ | O X X O . O X O . , O X O X X X X . . | $$ | X . . X O X X O X X O X X 1 3 . X . . | $$ | . X X X X X X X . O . O 5 X . O X . . | $$ | . . . O . . O X X O . O . . X O O X . | $$ | . X X . X . O O O . . O . . . O . . . | $$ | X . . X X O . . . O . O . O . . . X . | $$ | . X X O O O O O O , . O . . O O O O . | $$ | O X X O X O O . O O . O X X O X X O . | $$ | . O X O X X O . . . O . . O X . . . . | $$ | . O X X X O . . O O . . . O . X . O . | $$ | X O O O O O O O X X O . . . . X O . . | $$ | X X X O . O . X X O . . . O . X X O . | $$ | O . X O . O X . X , O . O . . X O O O | $$ | . X X O O X X X . X O O X O . X X O . | $$ | X . X O X X . . . X X O X X X . X X O | $$ | . O X O . . X X X O O O X . . . X O . | $$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Even if Black does not think he can connect, the other cut is worth five points more than the game?

I think that it is wrong to emphasize studying basic shapes to avoid 'blunders' like the miss at 299. It can cause us to take our eyes of other fundamental issues that we equally need in order to improve. Bill said it best in another post above, 'blunders' has a negative connotation that can limit our thinking. We should keep our minds open to all kinds of improvements.

marvin · **#19**

285 and 299 are for me same kind of blunders. And there are more of them

Uberdude · **#20**

marvin wrote:

How to lower blunder rate?

Play for years. Play blitz?

I'm quite a blunder-prone player, but over the last year or so I seem to have managed to reduce my blunder rate quite significantly. It's not something I expressly set out to do, and I'm not quite sure how it happened. Over that time period my European rank has increased about 1 stone (http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Pl ... y=14337147) and whilst I think my peak strength has increased a bit, I feel a large part of this is down to my reduced blundering and actually managing to win all those games I was winning at move 150 but used to throw away with blunders, often in byo-yomi. I am still a slow player but cope better with the pressure of overtime now. Also I have been playing more real-time go again instead of just turn-based OGS and whilst this is fairly mindless blitz on KGS that doesn't really improve my understanding of Go it has quite possibly helped me reduce blundering by training my high-speed reading/decision-making.

How to lower blunder rate?

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