Memorizing Games of Professionals

serapis · **#61**

Sorry, his kgs id is not mine to give out.

kgsbaduk · **#62**

But his story is real ?

cdybeijing · **#63**

serapis wrote:

In my first two years of playing go I improved largely by memorizing professional games. I began around 8kyu and by the end of the first year I had reached 1dan. A friend of mine, when reaching a barrier of around 1kyu/1dan or so, took an even more extreme path. He stopped playing any go, only studying/memorizing games for about a year. When he was finished he was about 6dan.

Despite my apparent success with memorizing go games as well as my friend's, I can honestly say that I almost never recommend it. It's a quaint idea while you're thinking about it, but spending day after day, week after week replaying previously memorized games and trying to memorize new ones, is unbelievably difficult and anyone crazy enough to go through with it may start hating the game.

I think that, whatever you do to study, the most important thing is keep your mind open. Through the course of my teaching I've encountered students who weren't really trying to learn new things, rather they were seeking validation that what they knew was correct. Whereas, for me, when studying, it's always been essential to keep in mind that everything i know can be wrong.

To me this is incredible. As in, I really need to devote some time to the serious memorization of even one game a week. I have frequently played through pro games before, and I will easily remember the first 100 moves or so on a micro time frame without trying, but definitely I would forget that within 24 hours. To memorize an entire game, and be able to replay it a week or more later, must be an entirely different exercise.

My suspicion is that this might be excellent for those without access to any strong teachers.

Dusk Eagle · **#64**

serapis wrote:

He stopped playing any go, only studying/memorizing games for about a year. When he was finished he was about 6dan.

I wonder if he was also doing tsumego in that year.

entropi · **#65**

These individual examples may be true but they do not prove anything. There are also people reaching shodan within one year by playing blitz. Maybe the guy hitting 6d just by memorizing would improve anyway also by playing or just by tsumego.

cdybeijing · **#66**

entropi wrote:

These individual examples may be true but they do not prove anything. There are also people reaching shodan within one year by playing blitz. Maybe the guy hitting 6d just by memorizing would improve anyway also by playing or just by tsumego.

It's true that nothing is proven. But, I have heard of lots of examples of people getting to 1-2 dan in a year through various means, but I have never heard of anyone anywhere gaining 6 dan ranks in a year. The scale of such an achievement is incomparable to making 1 dan in any amount of time.

p2501 · **#67**

1d to 6d in a year is hard to believe, given the used method. In an insei like environment it would be more believable.

pwaldron · **#68**

In the past I've found memorizing pro games to be extremely useful, but not for the reason you might expect. I was studying pro games, starting from the front of the Kido yearbook and going from there. The first step in studying a game was replaying it enough that I had the memorized up to the early middle game.

The advantage came in the later studying, when I started looking at why the pro played a particular move. Knowing what comes later in the game, it was often clear that the move was preparation for something that was to come. It turned out to be one of the more useful things that happened in my study, and really highlighted just how far out the pros are planning.

daniel_the_smith · **#69**

Hm, you all are making me want to add features to my website...

tapir · **#70**

Dusk Eagle wrote:

serapis wrote:

He stopped playing any go, only studying/memorizing games for about a year. When he was finished he was about 6dan.

I wonder if he was also doing tsumego in that year.

You are doing many "implicit" tsumego when you study games seriously, maybe there is no need for extra tsumego then. (Can he cut here? Oh no this prevents it indirectly by threatening this exchange. Why does he play here? Oh, otherwise the corner dies.)

I am by the way inspired by this thread as well. But I won't stop playing. (What would all the other players in the go club say, when I just replay games there?) I don't take commented games, but just took some games from my database (MasterGo in my case), with some openings I do play myself or am interested in and where I never understood what to do with it.

snorri · **#71**

tapir wrote:

You are doing many "implicit" tsumego when you study games seriously, maybe there is no need for extra tsumego then. (Can he cut here? Oh no this prevents it indirectly by threatening this exchange. Why does he play here? Oh, otherwise the corner dies.)

Possibly. If you believe in the "never look at the answers" school of tsumego study, then pretty much any position is a tsumego. I guess it's a question of mental discipline.

Here's something to try: you can just scatter some stones randomly on the board and start reading. Mental isometrics, if you will. We can call that the "Charles Atlas" style of study. If you are successful at it, you can take out a lot of print ads in comic books and charge money for the secrets to your "method," but instead of bullys kicking sand in the face of a skinny kid, it would be...well I guess in go most of the time it would be the skinny kid who's the bully. In a smoke-filled go salon. Or maybe it's a old guy with a big bushy beard wearing sandals and socks. Clearly, I have no future in advertizing.

I am surprised when people claim to improve just by playing blitz games and never reviewing or studying anything, as that has never worked for me. But if you are able to focus enough during such games, I can't rule it out, so I don't dispute their claims.

Probably any learning has to be relevant, effortful, and self-reflective.

malweth · **#72**

I haven't yet read through the whole thread, but this is what I posed on GD and I stick to it:

malweth wrote:

I'm a fan of the memorization method of study. Never long term memorization, and ramping up with rank.

Beginners, play through games quickly without memorization.
Mid DDK, memorize until the first major fight (typically the spot where you can't remember the next move after more than one pass). (first 20-50 moves)
Low DDK, memorize the opening and early fighting (first 50-100 moves).
High SDK, memorize until big yose.
Mid SDK, memorize until big yose, read well commented games (Appreciating famous games was my favorite).
Low SDK (and up?), memorize and analyze. Use kifu instead of SGF to improve visualization.

This is a significant part of what got me from 22k to 5k. I found the biggest and quickest advancements in the high DDK (of course), but it makes sense. You're primarily developing your intuition for the Fuseki, Joseki, and Attack & Defense when "memorizing" pro games. This is a huge advantage over your 22k opponent, while only a minor advantage at, say, 8k - when you both know a decent amount about the beginning stages of the game.

Magicwand · **#73**

daniel_the_smith wrote:

Hm, you all are making me want to add features to my website...

load specific game, date and players and what game, make people guess their next move.
it will help them memorize the game. is this what you were thinking?

Knotwilg · **#74**

First question: the guy who allegedly made it to 6d in 1y, did he ever spend time on a forum?

I know of no person who became great in his art by lurking around on the Internet. There are some truly exceptional people out there, who became absolutely fantastic at what they do. If we want to mimic them, coming here is one of the first things to stop doing.

Net addicts like us are far too sociable to become great players. I've tried it with music. Even that captivating activity didn't keep me away from all the distractions.

Tami · **#75**

Knotwilg wrote:

I know of no person who became great in his art by lurking around on the Internet. There are some truly exceptional people out there, who became absolutely fantastic at what they do. If we want to mimic them, coming here is one of the first things to stop doing.

I think a lot depends on what you come to a forum for and how you use it. If you're here to goof off, then it won't help your go, although the fun may have a value, but if you're here to mine for ideas and insights, to ask questions and, not least, to help others out, then there may be a lot of gains to be had here.

swatters · **#76**

Knotwilg wrote:

I know of no person who became great in his art by lurking around on the Internet. There are some truly exceptional people out there, who became absolutely fantastic at what they do. If we want to mimic them, coming here is one of the first things to stop doing.

True, nobody becomes great in their art by just lurking around the internet but they don't become great by just practicing either.

I know truly great musicians and they all say one of the most important things is to listen to a lot of music. They also read about music and musicians. They do much of this on the internet.

I've been lurking about this forum a lot and have absorbed all kinds of seemingly useful information. I haven't been able to put much of it to good use yet but it's in the back of my mind and will probably manifest itself at some time.

daal · **#77**

Knotwilg wrote:

I know of no person who became great in his art by lurking around on the Internet. There are some truly exceptional people out there, who became absolutely fantastic at what they do. If we want to mimic them, coming here is one of the first things to stop doing.

Net addicts like us are far too sociable to become great players.

It's posts like this that make me spend most of my day thinking about them. No wonder it's so damn addictive.

On a side note, there is a forum member who dropped out of the forum because it was getting in the way of his go progress (until he discovered Malkovitch games) but his sociability was apparently not curbed and now he has got a pregnant wife. Who knows how that will affect his go?

jts · **#78**

daal wrote:

On a side note, there is a forum member who dropped out of the forum because it was getting in the way of his go progress (until he discovered Malkovitch games) but his sociability was apparently not curbed and now he has got a pregnant wife. Who knows how that will affect his go?

I like what you're suggesting here - internet forums as contraceptive? I think we can add a whole new dimension to abstinence-only sex ed...

Knotwilg · **#79**

swatters wrote:

True, nobody becomes great in their art by just lurking around the internet but they don't become great by just practicing either.

Well, if lurking is at all beneficial, I believe it pales in comparison to practice.

swatters wrote:

I know truly great musicians and they all say one of the most important things is to listen to a lot of music. They also read about music and musicians. They do much of this on the internet.

I'm sure they do. I'm less sure they need to do. Even great people waste their time.

Of course I'm exaggerating here and I do see the benefit of being social, even for sheer progress. The Internet is full of useful content, but ...

swatters wrote:

I've been lurking about this forum a lot and have absorbed all kinds of seemingly useful information. I haven't been able to put much of it to good use yet but it's in the back of my mind and will probably manifest itself at some time.

... I'm afraid many students of any skill use this as a pretext for avoiding real work. Net addicts like myself are professional absorbers of information. Putting it into practice requires a lot of discipline. Most of that discipline involves avoiding to absorb even more.

OK, I'll admit I'm spoiling the fun. The question was: is studying memorizing pro games the best (most efficient) way to improve. Myself, I think not. In order of importance:
Play (!), Review (own games), New ideas (books, lurk), Tsumego.

tchan001 · **#80**

Personally I prefer studying commented games rather than just memorizing a set of pro games. The commentaries usually give a lot of insights into what the pros are thinking about. Especially valuable are the variations a pro considers prior to making a difficult choice of move. I just don't have the reading power to see through the ideas behind the great moves and plain memorization does not take into account the particular situation. So it could backfire if I were to try out some pro sequence with little knowledge other than that a pro had played this way in a game I memorized earlier.

Memorizing Games of Professionals

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