You severely understimate the penetrance that some people exhibit (including myself) by repeating the same mistakes over and over again

A bit more context:( Emphasis added on "know". )

A very common mis-understanding of what it means to know, or to understand something:

Two things <<I have been keeping out of this so far>>

1) That such "walls" exist is one thing but where they exist is an entirely individual matter. Thus there may be a wall at 6 kyu for thee but mine might be at 3 kyu or 2 dan or even down at 11 kyu.

2) Sorry, knowing something is a mistake, even a second after you have placed the stone, is very different from being able to prevent yourslfe from making this sort of mistake.

For example, you see that you will have to make a certain move. This draws you focus/attention. So you miss that there is a sente move that you could have made before this one.

Problems like "following" when you shouldn't aren't really a matter of knowledge but getting sucked into a rhythm.

I think at 6k the fastest way to go up is to do more tsumego. Usually at 6k that is where the problem is.

Trying a more solid play helps, aji is a killer for player like us (kyu players)

While these suggestions that you are getting are good, and reading more deeply will inevitably help your game, I would recommend that you work on the real basics too, and make sure you actually have some idea how to play the game.

Things like making sure that you see miai, and get at least one of them. This includes allowing "your" territory to be hurt in exchange for damaging your opponents. Another is making sure you have acceptable shape. Making sure you use your thickness, and aren't using it solely to build territory directly.

One thing I found very helpful for all of this is reading over commented pro games. When they say in the comments that responding to X, Y or Z is painful, make sure you feel that pain. You want to be in a place where you see a line of play on the board and it makes you cringe, because it's so submissive or you're giving your opponent moves in sente when you should tenuki.

I've seen a lot of players get stuck because they respond habitually to small moves, or fail to apply mutual damage and basically let their opponent damage their territory in sente and then protect his own. Kiai is surprisingly important, and if you lose through it's application, you'll probably learn more than if you lose by playing submissively.

The last thing is, make sure you count, so you know if you can afford to play a certain way, need to be more aggressive, or need to simplify the game.

Actually, yeah. It is totally not my style to keep to dull premade moves instead of something interesting. I think it must have been due to the spastic desire to become stronger that I resorted to such play. Also, it used to be my only response to extend upwards (that a dan player showed me long ago) and now I learned I can also jump into the corner so I was now always jumping into the corner .


That means one can reach shodan without josekis. Deal! In another thread there were some movies featuring GO. There was a Youtube link to Tokyo Newcomer. When I watched the movie there was a sidebar link to a documentary about Fujisawa Shuko. He also encouraged his students to play unconventional moves. I'm aware that the very high level of his students can not be compared to me but I also feel that this approach has some validity even on my very low level of play.
Thus for now, I'll play my own go. (I also have many new aspects to integrate into my play and I think this will help.)


So true.


Yes, but real basics are hard to grasp. And I do have quite some (granted, probably flawed) ideas about how to play the game. Identify and unlearn bad ideas is not easy.

Finally a short game to show progress or the lack thereof:

At I resigned because I couldn't read out a sequence that would save me the L-14 cutting stones. Amazingly though, K-14 would have worked! Got to give it to Kageyama, you indeed need to really read through your ladders...
(FYI, the sequence I missed is b K-14, w K-15, b J-14, w J-15, b H-14, w G-14, b H-15, w H-16.... and that the ladder actually doesn't work for w because of the D-16 stone)

Hi Peter,

See also Toothpaste and small gaps.You may want to double check -- see continuation in SGF.
The ladder is not the only thing Kageyama mentioned in his little yellow book.

So maybe he would have resigned if you had played just one more move. So don't resign because you think you might lose a ladder. Just play it out. It is even faster than reading.

_________________
I think I am so I think I am.

Don't defeat yourself. Try to aim for actually winning the game. Based on that latest game record, your moves seem to completely lack spirit and meaning, they are hollow inside. Make moves that try to accomplish something, and try to make sure that the thing you're trying to accomplish is helping you to win the game.

To me it seems like you've long since stopped actually playing go, and your moves are just whatever gut reactions and reflexes that remain. Stop being like that, start fighting back. Try to win the game by reading out sequences further, by making better shape, or by gaining important objectives throughout the board.

Might help if you were more specific.

Btw. There are times when I feel that my own play is as you describe, lacking spirit and meaning, but how can you tell this by looking at an sgf? Is it not possible that the moves are just bad because he doesn't know any better?

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

I'd accept this was a regular 15k game where B really tried. But if B is 6k, something simply doesn't look right. B is abandoning moves he made, and settling for terrible results without trying to fight back. Top right, B first tried to take influence using P14, and then completely and permanently abandoned that stone with S16 and Q17. It's not like the shapes involved were difficult either, reading ahead 1 move in that scenario would be about as easy as fuseki can ever get, and yet B did end up doing complete 180 degree turn with his shape. It could've been a remarkable blunder, but it also could be a sign that B isn't even trying to follow up ideas behind moves or read ahead, which seems like a psychological problem no amount of tsumego can cure.

Q5 then became a troublesome group without a clear eyeshape. B then quickly made another weak group and started some weird split fight. Seems like a risky move, but it could've been justified by B being willing to sacrifice bottom to attack top. But then B goes right back to answer 2nd line move at bot when W plays such. Again, a move made before was abandoned the next move.

W then becomes completely alive as B settles with getting bad shape and giving W lots of territory, and B has huge shape trouble. B responds to this by protecting very small 2-stone string instead of trying to make living shape or something. With such a move, I'm not sure if B is already thinking that his group has died or what.

B then spends 3 moves to make a gote 2-pt eye and forgets about the huge dying dragon entirely for quite some time. Then the dragon dies.

To me, it didn't look like it was a game by someone who was actually working hard to win a game.

I give you that I do play like that sometimes. Especially since GO for me is a form of relaxation after a long day of work. I practically never play in my top form with a sharp, reposeful mind. I'm aware of that and I can live with that compromise. (Further distractions are that I usually listen to music while I play - sometimes I even need to adjust tracks or volume - and my wife usually watches TV in the background, etc.)

But. Despite all that, I seldom play mindlessly (sometimes I do get very sleepy though). The above game was not one without thoughts. In fact I think (as far as I can remember) I was thinking hard.

My problem is different. I'm (almost) completely unaware of what a certain move _really_ does. E.g: very often I have a nice big moyo. My opponent invades, what seems to me as an unreasonable or at least punishable invasion and then they dance around so that I'm unable to kill or make any profit of trying to pressure their invading group.

Let's see what I thought during the game:
R-17: I won't give you my corner that easily.
S-16: I said I want my corner.
Q-17: let's fix this cutting point otherwise my corner gets stolen.
O-17: oops, toothpaste. But I can still take a reasonable amounts of points on the top side
...
R-11: I wanted to pincer R-9
R-7: pressure R-9 some more
Q-9: I'm in trouble. Trying to somehow connect my two weak groups otherwise I'm finished.
R-5: I could not delay to protect the cut any longer. I thought I have an ok wall. I didn't want to give those two stones to white because that would mean a huge corner for white. I thought I could make life with such a long wall.
w O-9: I didn't see that move coming. After this point it's either I can live or it's game over so nothing surprising about risky or desperate moves IMO.
M-9: a desperate attempt to cut. Was there any other hope to live?
M-3: a questionable move indeed. I was trying to secure the M-5 stones as those are cutting stones I could not afford to lose. Luckily it got answered by white.
L-13 to N-11: actually I was proud that I was able to make one eye with all those forcing moves. And please notice the two cut white groups at N-15 (that's connected but may end up in a shortage of liberties) and L-11. And it was not gote since it forced white to poke my potential second eye out at P-8.
J-12 to the end: if I can kill this, I can save my dragon. I was infinitely far away from "forgetting" about my dieing dragon.

What may confuse you is the lack of thoughtfulness behind my early moves, such as Q-6 or R-11. It's because I simply don't know the full effect and consequences of those moves. They are "let's try this" kind of moves because I really don't know any better.

---

Lately I've become more territory oriented (or should I say thickness-oriented) as I'm really getting fed up by having my nice moyos destroyed all the time. Maybe I'll post an example soon.

I don't mean to say that you're lazy or stupid when I say your moves are hollow. Go is a complex game, and occasionally, especially at kyu level, mistakes we make are pretty stupid when explained out loud. Say, when I was 1k, I started winning 2d players when before each game I decided that my only goal was "don't defeat myself". Turns out even 2d's are still very prone to collapsing if you just don't destroy yourself first. Similarly, trying to not make completely hollow moves that don't respect each other at all is a skill, and you need to be aware of that goal to strive towards it.

The basic idea is that your each move should have a point. If you're about to make a move and you don't know what's the point of it, don't make that move. Play tenuki. If you can't make a single move on the board that would have a point, play a move at random. At 6k level you should be well past the point where you can at each situation make a move that has a purpose you can understand. If you really did think about these points behind moves while playing(like, R17 is there to protect a corner), at what point did you realize that Q17 and P14 completely contradict each other? When did you decide to abandon P14? Did you ever see it as a problem that the moves you made are contradicting each other?

Point behind a move is not just a rationalization you think of after making the move, it's the reason that the move exists. If you're contradicting yourself in your own play, you are essentially defeating yourself, no matter who you are against.

Say, when white played O9, just stop and think about the situation for a moment. You want to make your wall live. One can make a group live in two ways: Either run, or make two eyes locally. Which of them looks easier? If you try to make eyes, where would they be? If you try to run, where should you run towards? What moves are useful when running with a group?

These are not that difficult questions to come up with. If you figured out that you are in trouble, all you need to do is take a breath, think for a moment looking at the whole board and ask yourself this kinds of questions. After answering these, what's the move you come up with? Compare it to what you played in game. My hope is that the contrast between the move you came up with and the move you played is enough to get you past the 6k barrier :p

I think I understand.

Here is a game I played today. I payed special attention to nearly all of the moves. It ended as a sure win even though I committed at least two remarkable blunders (and most probably several more I'm not aware of).

(The two mistakes I'm talking about are :b171: should have been at J-19 and :b215: should have been at R-2)

Well, I am impressed. This should be enough to get you well past 6k.

StlenVlr: if only it would be that simple...

Ed: for a surprisingly long amount of time I didn't understand what you meant at . I was like "I wanted to connect in sente, it's reasonable, not?" . I don't want to spoiler the solution if anyone around my strength is reading this. It's a good exercise and I think I'll remember that better now that I found it out on my own. (And yes, I'm familiar with the concept. It still took me long to realize.)

Here is the game I played tonight. I concentrated again during this one. (The downside is that I can only play one game per night this way.) I don't know what to think about this game. My opponent was 7k I still felt I was getting into trouble all around the board. In the end I killed a large group and won by resignation. Interestingly I was not even intending to kill really.

- I didn't want to slide at the top left because that would end up gote. White still took sente but at least I now had some possibilities left at the top left corner.
- The bottom right didn't really end up too good: I had two weakish groups separated by a strong though pretty surrounded black corner
- this pincer served me well in my last game, so did it here...
- I was happy to play D-9. For some reason I didn't want to get cross cut after that. Though maybe I could have been ok thanks to C-12. I figured I'll be ok with two strong groups while black will have one weak one in between.
- was so that I can play the net later. I was afraid that E-8 and D-9 would get double-ataried. But now that I checked some variations after the game I see that it would have been no problem.
- I wasn't feeling happy about walking with it was only to protect the net once again.
- I liked S-8 better than S-7
- ok, one weak group is taken care of.
- another group is back to ok from troublesome...
- :w104: was aji-keshi...
- :w108: now that group is almost safe too (didn't feel like make it alive in gote while it had access to the center)
- :w114: this one won't be so easy...
- :w120: I was happy to find out that I had a local KO threat that also helps me build eye-space
- :w152: I've been wanting to play that since the KO ended.
- :w156: I wanted to play G-17 but I didn't dare. I don't know if it would've worked.
- :w160: it first appeared to me at this point that the black D-12 group might be in trouble.
- :w174: and now it was dead. I just wanted the G-13 stones. Now that I check I think black should have lived.
- hmm, it's disheartening that it would've been so easy for black to live and if he did I'd have lost by so many points...
Edit: then again. Maybe it wouldn't have been so easy for b to make life there...

Gee, I was shodan before I reached that point.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

- Here, you have a chance to bully S17. A rather simple sequence to do so would be R14 S14 R12
- After this move, W has some serious shape issues. O15 looks troublesome. You could try protecting your shape with exchange like Q13 R14 O14
- What you should try to do when you attack your opponent is to get their groups as close together as possible, and then cut. For that reason, R6 seems really wrong. Either abandon the stone for now, or jump to the center with P9
- Not playing R2 makes life really easy for Black, and I don't see the upside for W. Tsuke is serious business, you usually should hane or nobi.
- Connect with B10. Connection is really nice, although occasionally a bit small or slow. Here, however, there really isn't anything else you can achieve. It's a lot of points and it means B has to deal with his group in gote.
- B10. The connection is worth so much here, and there really isn't any other way for any of these groups to make points.
- This move should've been E14. Likewise, W probably should play F14 as soon as possible. The reason being, B playing E14 completely traps W, and W has to, in gote, make local eyes. Then again, F14 would make in uncertain if B center group can live. Regardless, B E14 could easily turn into a large moyo.
- Mid-game pass. W was totally alive even without this stone.
Moves from 100 onward:
- K6 would be really nice shape here. There are 3 groups in the center that may die, you don't want to just connect, you want to make eye shape as well.
- This should've been a connection with K11
- E13 would live. B not playing E13 was the last mistake he made in this game. Never mind that, E13 doesn't work.