Hi, long time since I've posted, (first on this site) but I suddenly find myself really enjoying go, and one of the biggest reasons is a download of Shygost's lessons. I'm finding them incredibly interesting and helpful. Some people have a way of putting things that simplifies and clarifies really murky topics and he clearly has the knack. Is Shygost still around? Does he still teach?

Even if he doesn't, I feel I owe him something, so if someone knows how to get in touch with the fellow, please let me know.

Thanks,

bleep

He does. He has a room called LGD, for Lance's Go Dojo on KGS, where he runs collectively supported weekly lessons that are open to the public. He also teaches individuals.

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Occupy Babel!

What good news, thanks.

Off to find him...

Bleep: you mentioned a download of Shygost's lesson. The only place I'm aware of where to find them is http://tengen.bur.st, but it's rather old and there are only 10 or so.
Is there any other archive out there?

I have 44 of his lessons on my HD.
Dates range from early 2006 to halfway into 2009
I watched a handful of them. The video quality is not great, but decent enough.

Problem is that I have no idea where I got them from, but they must be out there on the net somewhere.

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Laurens
Go school: freegame's Teaching School
Author of: The Next Move a book for 15-3kyu players.

I have a whole bunch of them which I got from the torrent below. I found that shygost definitely helped me improve by telling me to focus on the weak groups on the board. I don't like how dogmatic he is about some things, but overall he's helpful.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Thanks DE, I've no idea where I downloaded them. I've got just under 40, and as someone said earlier, the video quality isn't great but it's watchable. If the torrent doesn't work, and you know of a way to transfer just under a gig, give me a shout...

I have 30+ hours worth and found most of them on the internet archive:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query ... publicdate

They are in a variety of formats and quality levels and can be watched online or downloaded. I found it more convenient to download and watch at my leisure, not depending on a fast internet connection. Media Player Classic with CCCP play all the different formats for me.

I also just found this collection, but have not downloaded or even compared to see if they are repeats of the other collection:
http://www.esnips.com/web/Shygosts-Go-Lessons

Good to know he is still out there, I want to contribute also. These lessons are fantastic for me.

Libertad

May I ask what program your using to replay these files?

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Where've you been? Zatoichi could slice the board in half, put it back together again and rearrange the position so fast that no-one even knew he'd drawn his sword - and he was blind. ~ John Fairbairn

This one here...

http://www.divx.com/en/software/divx-plus

VLC and WMP seemed to battle for some reason.

Amazing stuff I feel stronger already

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standing still means going backwards

I feel like I have to let people know...

Many times, several strong players(AGA 6.0-9.0 rating and above) and I sat in on Shygost's lectures to see what all the fuss was about.

And yes, he is incredibly dogmatic. While he boasts a (6 dan level), I'd estimate him more like AGA 4d. Many of the things he says are either pointless anecdotes that waste quite a chunk of time of his $50 1 hour lessons, or are overly broad statements that aren't applicable many of the times he uses them.

Many times, his emphasis on not having to read makes some of the moves he demonstrates pretty ridiculous. Some of his good looking and good feeling moves simply don't stand up to even a little bit of tactical scrutiny, something which he often implies is unnecessary with his lessons.

Most of his students don't improve beyond the single digit kyu level, something which I think can be attributed to his teaching style. To be honest, I think it makes you feel like you're learning a lot, but you've actually just picked up different bad habits.

Whenever he reviews games, he's overly critical whenever the players are weaker than he is, and not critical at all when the players are stronger than he is. They're heavily subjective and usually it looks like he chooses whether or not a move is good or bad first, and then comes up with the proverb to support his argument. I think this method of review can be very harmful to a learning player.

To those of you currently using his lectures right now, my recommendations are:

1. Continue working on your reading(try to spot where in Shygost's lectures that he made a simple a reading mistake).

2. His opening rules of thumb are decent and worth remembering, but I would advise learning what to do when opponents do not follow them, because kyu players rarely do.

3. Always keep in mind that it's easy to look like you're giving excellent advice when you're the strongest player in the room, and when something sounds right, take it with a grain of salt and try it out in your own games first.


When it comes to lessons for kyu players, my personal two favorites are Maeda Ryo and Guo Juan. They're both very informative and stand up to reading scrutiny.

Now, Guo Juan's lectures aren't free, but they're a euro a piece, which is pretty cheap. For those who can afford them, I would definitely recommend them over shygost lectures, which, though they have their merits, are quite full of fluff and misinformation.

http://internetgoschool.com/

I'd definitely say good things about Maeda, but I didn't know he lectured or taught outside of his yearly visit to the go congress. Can you fix my ignorance?

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Occupy Babel!

He gives lectures on a Japanese server, but I forgot where that is.

I'm sure he'll inform you if you ask him next Congress, though.

i see Guo Juan offers A route from 30k to 5d (English lectures) thats very interesting I'm going to check it out, it looks pretty affordable too

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standing still means going backwards

Hi Violence,

I'm certainly not qualified to comment on what you have said, so I won't go into that. I must point out in his defence though that he has been nothing but helpful to me, even to the point of randomly helping me out when we bump into eachother on KGS. And for no reason other than to help! I may or may not be picking up bad habits, but if I can play with bad habits and get to 4 dan, I'm in!

I think the clarity that he explains things with is impressive.

All imho.

Cheers

Bleep

I would have to agree with Violence on pretty much every point. At the same time though, it's not his or my place to tell people how to learn or where to learn from. If beginners find his teaching helpful and they're happy with it, then they can learn from him all they want until they get to the point where they find flaws in their play and/or shygost's teachings and work on it in whatever way works best for them. Of course if they're happy with where they get from what they learned from him and don't want to get stronger that's fine too. As long as we're talking about people's flaws, nobody should worry about replying or even reading what Violence has to say because he's been known to just surround himself with strong players, and in effect believe himself to be one of the the strongest players with a great ego and needs to read "Get Strong at Making Excuses" because he's quite lacking in that field if he's trying to be convincing.

In summary: most kyus can learn from shygost in some way or another and shouldn't worry about any criticism towards his teaching as long as they're happy with what they're getting from it.

~The Masked Fighter

The post above by tengenator seems rather interesting. At first the post seems to be quite objective (and I mostly agree with the point that as long as the players are enjoying themselves strength is not that relevant), but then it suddenly starts attacking violence for no real reason. I do not see why the information offered by violence warranted the comments.

To disclose my own partiality - my very limited personal observations (parts of 2 public lectures) from about a year ago agree with violence's remarks.

I would love to read that book.

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"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

Welcome to the forums Tengenator. Have you read the forum rules? Because if you had, then you'd know that personal attacks against L19 members are not tolerated here. The last sentence of your post is nothing but hateful garbage against Violence that is clearly in violation of the rule.

Consider this a warning.