Don't (mentally) talk to yourself when you try to read. Instead of "I move here, then he plays there, and where was my first stone?" you end up with just visualizing the added stones (on top of the board). This already helps a lot (although not perfect for under-the-stone sequences), I guess because the "verbalizing" distracts from the actual reading.

A perfect illustration is in Hikaru no Go anime the first real game Hikaru and Akira play when Hikaru is visualizing a sequence and upon seeing what happens he responds both correctly and quick (Akira thinks "He is as strong as a strong professional." upon noticing it.). I am not sure whether it was intended or whether this visual thing was just natural in an anime, but I started reading much better in games when I consciously tried to stop "verbalizing" when reading.

As I started Go, sadly I was pointed towards Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go and Kageyama tells in his first chapter to read out ladders like Black-White-Black-White-Black-.... I followed his advice.
It might have helped me then (I couldn't read his ladders, so who knows?); by now it is a burden. For me, visualizing and verbalizing isn't in synch most of the time. So I mutter "Black-White-Black-..." but in my head I'm somewhere different and start to lose the image of the stones. It is very hard to let go an old habit : (

Somewhat related is a habit, which I credit to doing too many problems: The solution is given in numbers, Black 1 here, White 2 there and so on. Now I often find myself thinking in numbers instead of stones and - again - I start muttering, but now it is "1-2-3-4-..."

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

It might be that writing a book Kageyama just had to write "Black, White, Black, White", I don't remember that he advises to actually mutter these words to yourself, but somehow it happens to a lot of people. When even more verbal "thinking" enters, like "when it works I am ahead", "hah an overplay, i punish him", "this is a ladder breaker, but what happens when he answers here, does it still break the ladder" it is too easy to lose the image altogether.

I imagine that professionals may have a problem in even recognizing this problem, because they probably never played like this. It is somehow like talking in a foreign language while preparing the sentence in your native tongue, it is just so much extra effort for your poor brain (handling two things at once) and the result will never convince.

The other question this raises is: can there be too much verbalizing - e.g. with Malkovich games, game reviews. (Maybe some of us talk too much about their games, so we start commenting during the game to ourselves instead of playing it.)

I've noticed my visualizations getting 'lighter' as my reading has improved. To start, I'd make an effort to imagine a white stone, then a black stone, pausing after each to sort of mentally draw it onto the board. I'd put mental effort into giving the stone 'permanence', remembering where I'd played it explicitly. This may work for the visually-minded, but I'd quickly get bogged down just trying to hold all this visual information in my mind.

Now, when I'm reading well, I just give the slightest hint to an intersection as I put a stone down. I don't make a conscious effort to hold the imaginary stones in place. Counter-intuitively, I'm more accurate with these ghost stones. When I invariably do lose details at the start of reading, I just restart, paying attention to whatever detail mattered here. Having read the sequence once, the second time is faster and smoother.

I suspect reading is a fairly individual process, but for me, my instinct was to improve reading by imagining more vivid stones on the board and being more forceful about keeping them in memory, but I've actually improved by reducing them to the smallest information I can and avoiding conscious intrusion into 'helping' keep the stones in memory.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Status?
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . O . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . X . . .
$$ | . . X . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

If you really want to give yourself a lot to chew on, start with one of these positions.

Edit: Accidentally included part of an old post I copied the diagrams from.

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Occupy Babel!

I cannot visualize moves at all; I have to think through things as a sequence and try to check it by asking "would there be a stone there? how about there? Would there be any liberty problems?" and retrace my steps when I am trying to read, which is time-consuming, difficult, and unreliable. I have the same issue with anything involving visual memory. I wonder how much poor visualization skills can improve, or how strong one can get without visualizing stones? I am just a weak SDK.

When there's a direction to reading, e.g., you're trying to escape stones to a particular area, you can sometimes summarize sections of your reading and then forget the details. You might read out how to maximize your liberties in the opposite direction you're escaping: you're not necessarily going to play that now, but if you count out that you can find 4 liberties at the bottom, you can keep just that number in mind as you read out the escape. Because your focus is moving one way, the specific end formation in the other direction isn't likely to have an immediate bearing.

Or if you read that along the path to escape you'll reduce an important enemy group to two liberties, it's sometimes easier to just mentally mark the last two liberties as forcing. Or if you can capture enemy stones, but you need 5 liberties to achieve it, continue reading with just a focus on maintaining a count of liberties.

It's very cool when it works: you've read to the limits of your ability, just getting a harried group into an open area. Then you realize that having gotten here, the various tesuji and skirmishes don't have much bearing in this region, and you clean most of the details other than the stones put down around this new area, and start reading all over. It's no harder than the first chapter of reading, but you're already 15 moves out, and now you're adding another 10, far deeper than you've ever read before.

Just be careful if the fight starts to bend back towards areas you've cleared from memory.

If you can think of a room of your house that you're not currently in and remember what colors the walls are and how many pieces of furniture are in it, then the problem is not visualization.

In the same fashion, you simply picture an extra stone on the board. Then another new stone of the opposite color. If you can do just that, you'll be on your way to 'reading'. Once this becomes a competent skill, start counting the liberties of your imaginary stones (and any real stones that may be in contact with them) and keep this as a habit. There was a point when I didn't bother counting my liberties, and then weird and terrible things happened to my stones.

It takes more work for some, but as long as you work at it, you'll get there.

Now think of a zebra with the head of a crocodile. Have I convinced you yet?

I put my response in a hide tag because it's probably not terribly interesting. Summary: I can remember some visual things but not well enough to hold or manipulate an accurate image of a game of go. I can remember where a stone is, but I cannot see it unless it is there.

Well it's certainly a start! And you have to be good at some aspects of visualization, otherwise how would you navigate to the grocery store and back?

If you read a little bit before our posts on the thread SoDesuNe talks about Kageyama's book "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go". In that book he sets up the following diagram:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c Ladder Exercise.
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O O . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . . . . . X O X O . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . 1 O X , . . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . X . X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . O , . . . . . , . . . . X , . . . |
$$ | . . . O X . . . . X . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

The idea is to read the ladder out from to see if it works.

Since the sequence, as Kageyama points out, is unbranched, the point of the exercise is to instill the correct attitude and good habits in reading (you're supposed to read it out patiently, stone by stone). The other benefit is to work on the visualizing aspect of reading without bogging yourself down with variations.

Kageyama says when you've read it out stone by stone, read it again and become comfortable with ladders. Once you're sure of your answer, rearrange the stones in the bottom-left however you want and read it again. The result is the confidence to read out any ladder almost instantly, at any time.

Another very real benefit for weaker players like you and I, though, is practice in visualizing the stones.

Better than colors, etc, mentally count the windows in some apartment or house you have lived in.

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Occupy Babel!