I learned the rules of Go about 2 years ago but I didn't really start playing until a year ago. I dragged myself to around 18k pretty miserably, feeling sluggish and uncomfortable with the moves I played. I then picked up Opening Theory Made Easy and Lessons in the Fundamentals and powered myself to 10k in the last 3-4 months. It was exhilarating to grow so much so quickly and I finally feel like I have some idea of what I'm doing even if still rudimentary. It's leaps and bounds above what I felt while playing before. But now I find myself somewhat at a loss of where to go from here to improve. I've heard that this is where the game begins to take much more serious effort. I'm okay with that. Does anyone have a general idea of a study plan on a road to 5k? And shodan and beyond eventually but smaller goals first.

Congratulations on your rapid progress!

Since your study of the opening paid off, maybe you can build on that by studying the middle game. How about Attack and Defense? For starters.

Good luck!

_________________
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I second this. If you can get yourself a copy of Attack and Defense, then you will almost certainly improve, and the concepts can be built on throughout your Go studies.

Otherwise, there's only one diret way that seems to work for most to improve: playing against opponent two or three stones stronger. It's just enough of a difference that you can rapidly learn what they're doing better than you and integrate new ideas into your game, and not so big of a difference that you have no idea what they're doing.

Aside from that, I'd suggest posting games and asking questions. Sensei's Library, while dreadfully incomplete and slack, is a fantastic place to go if anything Go-related comes to mind. I find myself searching diagrams on a sudden, obsessive thought about a shape or technique.

One last piece of advice: always try different styles of play. Down the line, you'll always be stronger for having experimented.

Keep going strong!

Thank you both! That sounds like a great idea for a book to get Attacking is one of my weaker points in the game. I play about 5 games a week and go over them myself afterward. I'll focus my attention on games to people a couple stones stronger. Do you think I should play even or with the handicap stones? Most of my time I spend just thinking about problems and reading and such. I got the books and I read through each twice back to back. I would read through it the first time to learn the concepts and then the second time was to solidify the information. Of course I have no doubt that I'll get more from these books for years to come as I learn more! I'll make Attack and Defense my next book priority and keep working forward!

just keep playing. at your level more experience is enough to improve

review your own games as well

Getting to single digit kyu means you're already stronger than most amateurs, even if it doesn't look or feel like that. There are A LOT of people who play Go and never get past 10kyu. Congratulations for getting there!

However, don't misunderstand. At 10kyu you really haven't grasped the basics of the game just yet. You know what you are doing and you have an aim behind most of your moves, but more often than not, the idea behind your moves are still not correct. This feeling that you have that you're starting to feel like you know what you're doing, it will come back when you start moving towards dan level. It's very rewarding to know that you're steadily improving, and that feeling comes back every time you learn to apply something new in the games you play.

Be warned though, from here on out, progress will be a lot slower. But please don't let that discourage you. At your level, it's important to study a lot of life & death problems so that you can execute the moves that you feel are correct (eventhough to a stronger player they aren't) and back them up with strong reading and fighting.

Once you feel comfortable with your reading abilities, you should start learning how to count and analyse the board. Study good and bad shapes as well as direction of play.

A really good book to start reading between 10kyu and 1kyu is one of my all time favorite which helped me get from 5kyu to 2kyu in a fairly short amount of time is "Positional Judgment, High-Speed Game Analysis" by Cho Chikun (who is a very very impressive player, google him).

Good luck in your future studies!

For what it's worth, I also think this book is great, but a word of warning: it's hard. That doesn't mean it's inappropriate for your level, as such, but don't expect to understand it entirely on first reading, or second, or third. (This is normal, and good, and means that the book will last a long time - but you should be aware of it before you get stuck early on and throw it in the bin!)

Nah not at all I expect that from go books. I don't believe I've gotten everything there is to get out of the other 2 books I have by any means. I actually want to read Opening Theory for a third time as I feel I've gotten a little to complacent in my opening. I also think there'll be more for me to get from it now that I'm stronger at the fundamentals. That makes me glad to hear that it will have lasting value.

and @foe - Thank you

That's the vibe I get. I feel good just having an aim at my moves but you're right that there's still a long way to go. I've heard that about SDK ranks. I'll check out that book after I get Attacking and Defending I do Cho's go tsumego so I know the name. I haven't seen a game of his though. I'll check him out

If you get complacent in the opening, take a gander at Gu Li's games. He's always very creative, and his opening skills are unmatched (read:Godly).

To answer your earlier question, I would try both types of games. The idea behind handicap games is that in compensation for the difference in strength, you get a few stones. Since you're probably no better in most areas of Go, your hope is to use these stones to their full potential, as best you can. This, in turn, will teach you about influence as well as planning and maximizing each of your plays.

There's a lot more to Go, but efficiency is a huge factor. So you can really learn from both approaches.

The cherry on top is when you start to keep track of your progress as you balance different activities. This will help your confidence while you find out what helps -you- the most, personally.

Lastly, paraphrasing foeZ, always do tsumego. It's the foundation of your Go. Every aspect of your game can only improve by doing problems and keeping your reading skills sharp.

How do you keep track of improvement? It seems kinda abstract to me o.0

Also, I'll give Gu Li's games a look And will do for the playing handicap games

Same way you track anything. Make distinctions and track them over time. You would need a regimen for this, and it's not necessarily for everyone. I hate the idea of having to 'study' Go for X amount of time or do Y number of tsumego.

But once you decide these kinds of things, you can keep track of a few factors, the most significant of which are your winning ratio and rank progression. If those go up, good! Keep doing the same thing your are. If either of those slow down or worse, then change the frequency, length, or even approach of your Go-related activities.

Other factors might be how well you use your time, how accurately you judge the final score ahead of time, how often you get surprised by an opponent's move, how long you can get an average attack going on a group, how fast you can solve tsumego, how well you manage your time, etc.

Honestly, at your level simply learning new ideas and going out of your way to use them and really understand why you're doing what you're doing, you will keep improving. Keep revising your fundamentals as well and there's no real limit to what you can do.

Most of all, have fun! If Go becomes tedious, not only will progress be more difficult, you won't even appreciate it when it comes. And worst of all, you'll have lost interest in the world's greatest game.

So take my 'training' advice with a grain of salt. If you follow everyone's advice except to knuckle down and make yourself a system, you will still improve for a long time to come.

To be honest, don't get to caught upon tracking improvement. It will only get you stressed out about your rank. It's good that you want to get past 10 kyu, but keep in mind that if you obsess over your game to much then that energy you once used to get better will just turn into added stress. At your level, you can probably just play a bunch of games (against stronger players if possible, but really anyone will do). That will be enough to get you to your goal of 5 kyu I think. Seeing as how you already have Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go and Opening Theory Made Easy, I think that when it comes to studying, your focus should be almost entirely on tsumego and tesuji problems. The things those books taught you will be enough to get you to 5 kyu if you follow them. However, if you don't focus on reading, don't expect to get past 10 kyu. Once you get to 5 kyu though, then you should probably revisit the areas covered in those two books and try to introduce yourself to newer and more complex versions of those ideas. But remember, opening theory and fundamentals don't change no matter what rank you are, but your ability to put those principles to practice will depend on how well you can read the board. Hope this helps =).

Hi mate,
If you want to improve faster, there are 3 things that will help a lot : 1) Do Tsumego (go problems), 2) Play against stronger players (no handicap!) 3) Find someone who can help you to spot your weaknesses & strengths and reviews your games. If you like to I can assist you with point 3, just text me on KGS (Backpack1).

Congrats on sdk

If I would start over I would just do only tsumego and play games on TYGEM.

At your level I think the lee chang ho tesuji and life and death set could be doable.
At least the first books, when you get better the later ones also.
If you finish them you'll get at least 5k.

I'll include a link to the two series:

http://senseis.xmp.net/?LiChangHoJingjiangWeiqiShoujin

http://senseis.xmp.net/?LiChangHoJingjiangWeiqiSihuo

And last but not least a little ryhme: Keep your head to the sky, never ever give up nor let your dragons die

Enjoy
Otenki

I think my big improvement around your rank was realizing which stones I didn't need to connect. And which stones I could sacrifice.

sometimes you don't need to connect your stones because both sides are strong and you can just focus on limiting your opponents space/tenuki.

sometimes stones have no value to the life of your group/your opponent gaining strength doesn't matter so you can treat their move as gote and take the initiative elsewhere.

Also if it has a name learn it. For example boshi, keima, elephants eye, ogeima. They have names because they are common moves so try using them in your games.

Try to think about the connection/strength of your stones as you play your next few games.

(Though I'm not sure if you already do this. You at 10kyu could be very different from me at 10kyu)

Also there's not a set path to 5kyu.

Learning any of things things in any order could potentially raise your strength by one stone.

edit: oh oh and tesuji tesumego problems!
each new tesuji you learn to see and then apply could easily be worth a stone of strength.

haha so many ways to gain strength ^_^

The above post is absolutely correct, there is no one path through the sdk ranks. Some people swear by tsumego, some people reach dan without touching them (they do however have to play a ton of games to do this normally).


It's pretty hard to improve without at least sometimes playing stronger players though.

I think one key is to get new ideas from somewhere. Stronger players are probably the best way to do this, but not the only way.

My plan, if you can call it that, which has got me to 6k and hopefully 5k soon is to read a bit of everything just to get a general idea, and then make sure my fuseki is good enough to not be behind from the get go combined with lots of tsumego to win as many fights as possible.

Downside to this is outside these categories I am playing smaller moves than my opponents more often than not.

Before I tried to improve using tsumego I "stalled" at 8k, though others have told me it wasn't long enough to consider it stalling.

PeterN

If you guys play on KGS, then you can you kgs.gosquares.net to track your statistics. It does win-loss. It tracks how you do against players stronger, even, and weaker, as well as handicaps. It's so useful.

Hope it helps you guys.

1. Play
2. do tsumego
3. find a source of information (teacher, book, pro game)
4. review your games (with someone stronger if possible)

The tsumego part is tricky. It doesn't immediately or tangibly improve your strength in games. Therefore, do it as an activity on its own and track your solution rate as a separate mechanism for positive feedback.

The other three are related. Play and deliberately try out things you got from your source. Review if it worked out. Find out weaknesses and work on those in the next game. Play to improve, rank is secondary (this is hard!)

And yes, Attack & Defence is the best choice for a lifetime source of information.