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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.

Just to add another case. I don't do tsumego as a habit, but wouldn't claim to have done zero like Bantari (really? you never did the play in the middle of a 3 space eye to kill problem as a beginner?). I guess over my ~10 year Go life I've probably done ~2000 tsumego. I suppose I've replayed more pro games, and that number is increasing faster. If I did more tsumego I would be stronger.

I disagree with most of Bill's post, which is a bit worrying, but this statement in particular I think deserves further scrutiny. Bill, you're stating this as a fact, rather than an opinion (even if intended as such), but on what do you base this fact/opinion?

My view, admittedly that of a weak dan, is that while strategic elements might be critical to separate the absolute elite from the merely very strong, it is tactical ability (reading strength) that makes up the overwhelming majority of go ability. Yes, strategic awareness can help compensate for tactical weaknesses, but ultimately, you're going to get involved in games where your opponent will create problems where no degree of sacrifice or exchange is going to help you. You have to be able to outread them to win.

I would suggest that these pros you referred to in the survey were either being kind to their readers who found tsumego too boring, or had forgotten or discounted their efforts to achieve strong reading, and were thinking more about what it took to reach elite strength (strategy).

@quantumf:

I think you might be on to something. Most go players I know would call tsumego very dull. I learned very quickly that people might like to play the game, but doing problems was usually seen as off-putting. It's likely that people trying to promote the game would want to advertise the sweet parts and not the bitter pill.

Sorry. In editing an earlier statement I left out the IMO. But when I was learning go, the opinion that go was much more strategic than chess was what I heard from different knowledgeable sources and seemed to be generally held. I started off believing that, and I still do.



As for reading, it is not just about tsumego. Tsumego has the advantage that the goal is fairly clear, even when not stated (which, as a rule, it is). But, as Sakata made a point of saying, reading in general requires judgement to assess the resulting positions. It also requires the ability to choose candidate moves, to prune the tree and to include good options. Tsumego does not develop judgement, and the choice of moves is also more restricted that in general in a game.

As a 4 kyu, about the only thing I was at all good at was sacrifice, in addition to whatever unnamed skills I had developed. My life and death sucked, my tesuji was almost non-existent, as was my shape. I knew nothing of opening theory and had picked up only a little joseki. I had a feel for sente and gote, and for the whole board. (As it turned out, I also had a feel for the size of endgame plays, but that had not been tested by problems yet.) Still, if we take 30 kyu as the floor, I had advanced some 26 stones. Since then I have advanced only 8 stones. That despite studying and practicing the usual things. As I said, I would like to credit tsumego with 4 stones of that, but that's too much.

As for your opinion, I expect that it accords with your experience. My experience is different. To be sure, you must have some tactical skill to back up your strategy, but it is easier to win a won game than to come back from a losing position.

I recall when, as a 4 dan, I took 3 stones from the US champion. In the open corner we played a large joseki in which he took the corner at the expense of getting some floating stones in the center. That left me with an easy strategically won game. Near the end he found some tactical probes that surprised me. But, since I was good at sacrificing, I gave up a few stones or points and held on to the win. (He was not happy about the loss. A friend told me that he gave the local 4 dans 4 stones. ) He was about the tactically strongest amateur that I have ever faced.

When I was a weak 3 dan I took 2 stones from a 5 dan. I made a wall in the top right corner. In the bottom left corner he also ended up with some floating stones. This game was not so easy, strategically. I attacked his floating group and built up frameworks. Which he invaded, and proved that I was no killer. In fact, a couple of times I felt like he was insulting me by his invasions, but he managed to live in each case. He definitely outplayed me tactically. OC, I took sente and renewed my attack. In the end his group ran into my wall and died a glorious death for the fatherland. I was lucky to win, I suppose, especially since I was on the borderline of 2 dan. But this game is about the purest example of strategy vs. tactics that I have played.

Edit: Another game I recall, from a few year ago. My opponent, a strong player, invaded my corner at the end of the middle game. I could have let him make small life, but I thought that I could kill. The game proceeded as I had read, but when the time came for me to make the key play, I saw that I could not, because of damezumari. How embarrassing! Not only did he live, but he captured a number of my stones. OC, I took sente and made some territory in the center. I only won by 10 points.

OC, none of this proves the superiority of anything. But that is my point.



Well, we are talking about nearly all of the Nihon Kiin pros at the time. I have heard tsumego proposed as the one true path only in recent years, and mostly by amateurs, but I am sure that a number of pros stress it, as well.

I have played contract bridge professionally -- best results, winning a nationally rated charity game and 11th overall in national pairs event -- and I would give similar advice to that given by the go pros. Play against stronger players.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

There's probably selection bias going on there I think. If you're a Nihon Kiin pro you got to devote a lot more of your time to playing games than any amateur could and you also from a fairly young age had ready access to extremely strong opponents. Tsumego may not be needed if you can play very strong players a lot but this might be an impossible condition for most amateurs.

Idle thought.

Almost all of those who proposed playing against stronger opponents suggested three stone games. For DDKs I would suggest 5 stone to 9 stone games. It's not too hard to find players in that range online until you get really good.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

True.

When reading this I thought of an analogy in mathematics. Learning one's multiplication tables is a chore for many, much like tsumego. But those who master them at an early age find mathematics much easier later in life.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I think nearly everyone I know sees maths as 100% bitter pill, without any sweet parts.

One of the most useful skills I have though.

Bill, I do not buy it that you did not learn anything about tactics during your first 26 rank improvements. You make a strong point for strategy, but I think it is fairer to say that neither strategy nor tactics can live without the other, or without judgement. (Yes, reading includes the more specialised tsumego.)

I did not claim to have learned no tactics, but my life and death was terrible. (The Maeda 8-10 kyu problems were easy. And it takes tactics to sacrifice stones.) My tesuji consisted of the snapback and the net. I know how bad I was because, aside from the Maeda, I bought some small Nihon Kiin beginner books, so small that you could almost call them pamphlets, Basic Life and Death, Basic Tesuji, Basic Joseki, and maybe one or two others in the series. 10 kyu or DDK level. Almost every page was a revelation.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Smoke some marijuana and check out Euclid.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Tsumego are a great way to fit some go practice into moments that are too short for a game, if nothing else. That's especially true in the age of smartphones, when I can have a nice collection of problems with me everywhere I go. They don't do a whole lot for improvement unless I'm also actively playing games, though, so I can see why that's the main point of emphasis in professional advice.

Sure, I played in the middle of 3 space eye to kill - in a game. I have also had it explained by a stronger player. Same for many other standard shapes. Most of my learning was like that. Which is one of the reasons I will never pay nor charge for Go lessons.

When and where I learned Go, we did not have Go books, and specifically no problem books. Every now and then I got my hand on some photocopy with half-faded and mostly unreadable diagrams, and treated it like a treasure for the week the owner let me have it. But none of them were really tsumego books. I remember Kageyama and two Davieses... which I still think are by far the best DDK books to be had.

I know it is very hard to understand these days, but trust me - in a communist country like Poland in the 70's - there were no Go books to be had. Ditto - no problem books. At least - I did not have access to any, maybe others did.

And, of course, there was no internet, no Go databases, no GoGoDs, none of that stuff. When we wanted to learn, we had to get together and try to figure things out, not just look it up and memorize. Thus - my approach to "studying" Go is a little different from what you might care to imagine.

You kids are spoiled, and assume it was always that easy. Heh...

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Really? I think I found the multiplication tables a bit of a chore, and I found the more esoteric aspects of Real Analysis a bit unpleasant in my final year at University, but pretty much everything else was fun. I'm sure I'm not unique

Bill, I advanced to about 2k with essentially no tsumego, so I agree that one can advance through many of the levels with proxies for reading (proverbs or strategy or judgement). If we take all the progression levels as being equal (i.e. going from 6k to 5k is as valid as going from 4d to 5d), then my statement about reading being critical is absolutely not true.

But I do not regard all the level progressions as equivalent And I think you'll agree that at some point you're going to hit a limit that will only be overcome by improving your reading.

Sure, tsumego is not the only way, but it's the only well-defined way. Practicing/pushing your reading in tough games against stronger players is possibly a better and certainly a more enjoyable way, but its very unclear how you would describe the discipline of this process, or even to know if you were doing it.

Correct. If taught some ways, math, like many other subjects, is great fun.
( Even the multiplication table was no chore for me; it was fun. )

Why do some people feel this way about math ?

I frequently get my freshman college students telling me that for the first time I made mathematics fun and understandable. The problem was that they did not have good high school teachers,

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).