the best way to study

SoDesuNe · **#21**

kivi wrote:

Some general study advice from ex-inseis: http://senseis.xmp.net/?BenjaminTeuber% ... comeStrong
http://www.361points.com/study/

I know those advice, they were among the first things I read while beginning to play Go ^^ And I can say, for me they are just wrong. They don't work. I'm different ; )

I won't read a dead corner shape, I will just play the vital point. See the two problems above.

This has nothing to do with reading in first place, it's time-managing. That's why memorizing shapes is only useful with beginner problems like the ones in the Graded Go Problems For Beginner series. There is no point in memorizing "1001 Life-and-Death Problems", because most of the problems are too artificial.
There is also no point in memorizing problems for Dan-players, because in the end they will break down to familiar (beginner) shapes, they are just harder to work out. If you can reduce the eye-sapce to a bulky-five, you don't have to read further because you know a bulky-five shape is dead.

karaklis · **#22**

Totally agree with you. Benjamin Teuber's advices are obviously for those who are already quite strong, maybe 2-3 dan, and their aim is just to practice reading. The prerequisite however is that you already know all the basic shapes. That's where DrStraw's advice to memorize L&D problems comes in. It refers mainly to encyclopedic problems (such as James Davies' "L&D" or" Tesuji") to learn these basic shapes.

SpongeBob · **#23**

A thread about the best way to study and nobody mentions the Go Teaching Ladder ? :shock:

Alakazam · **#24**

My personal experience:

I was able to get to 1d in about a year because:

1: very passionate and dedicated.
2: took a few lessons from an ama 6d (kgs) teacher (took lessons in person though)
3: There were a few Go clubs and tons of people around me helping me improve, I was lucky.

2-3d: Playing in tournaments and having 'epiphanies' was the biggest factor in most of my improvement up to here. 2008 Canadian open I was solid kgs 1k, but when I got back, I became solid 2d/flimsy 3d kgs immediately. Random epiphany.

After this, I had to work on my reading and fighting big time, as I had neglected it and was only good at opening/joseki for my level.
4d happened from playing games with players 1-2 stones stronger, reading books, and random epiphany (=D)

By this time I had been playing for around 2.5 years or something

Becoming weak 5d (canadian) happened because I was learning in Korea for 5 months.
Becoming strong 5d, 5d on KGS and 7d on Tygem happened from lots and lots of games, tsumego, and deep contemplation about my Go, how it reflects on myself, and basically finding my style. During the last year or so before this post, I tried every kind of style I could think of and even random mvoes in the centre, expanding my thinking. By the end of it, I ended up settling on plopping down two 4-4's all the time very calmly (ended up at nirensei naturally =D). Then after playing like that for a few months, I finally switched back to my territorial ways, but not too territorial, and with a lot of new perspective and knowledge (prepelling me to tygem 7d/almost to 8d and making it easy for me to get kgs 5d any time i want, whereas before i had trouble).

Right now I feel like I am finally starting to improve again, and it is definitely because of three things:

1: I'm doing tsumego. I'm actually doing them. It really really makes u stronger, you'd be surprised how much it improves your general 'sense'!
2: Learnings from having experimented with over 9000 styles ^^ Now my game is calm, collected, and confident - usually. I have come to terms with not having a common "fighting" style (this term is ambiguous and misinterpreted imo), but instead, mroe of a lee changho style by nature.
3: Picking up on little details in my game to pick up extra bits of points that I almost unknowingly discarded before.
I'll elaborate:
A: I need to defend my territory, option A looks cleanest, but B gives me 2-3 more points. Now I will choose B!!! Depends though. I don't mean make bad shape. I'm talking about, for example, a territory that you would fix with one more fourth line stone, but one of them vaguely looks like the opponent could cross cut it later in their despair but is a shape that gives u more points.
B: Even during central fighting. The moves you play have differing points later, even in close quarterz fighting. We are usually so focused on surviving the situation, but because of that, we time and tiem again lose 1 point here, 1 point there. That's already Komi right there!

Anyway, I believe as long as u fit these criteria, u should improve:

Very passionate

Dedicated and willing to practice "no pain, no gain". For some people that means Tsumego, forcing yourself to focus.
Playing a lot, reviewing (if even by yourself), and constantly contemplating not only your moves, but your thinking and your style as a whole. What is your strategy, and what are your beliefs/philosophies about Go? You can think back to the elementary things we teach beginners and find things like "I am fundamentally opposed to deliberate moyo-making. corners are more efficient and should be chosen when both options are good.", "I like scattered, divided games, not moyo vs. moyo", "I don't like to have moyo, so I will avoid it unless it becomes too natural", "I dont like to allow 3-4 to be clsoed, so i will approach on move 3!", "I don't like letting black do min chinese, so i will approach on move 3, maybe with two-space high", "I will fight only when it is at least 0.5 points better an option than the peaceful route" etc. etc.

Play a lot

Have a mindset about yourself like "i should study as though im a pro" or "I will be kgs 8d one day", don't limit yourself! This psychology actually affects us!

One last thing:

You can NEVER do too many Tsumego. The more you do, the more powerful you can get! Even if u lack knowledge, you can always try to out-power your opponent through reading ahead. Although knowledge makes reading ahead easier, reading power fro mtsumego gives you depth, clarity and possibly speed. It's one of the most important parts of a go player and without it, u will one day hit a wall and never progress.

Do Lots of Tsumego! Make it a hobby separate from Go. Separate! I just started doing that. For each game you play, do at least 20 minutes of Tsumego, but hopefully more like 1+ hours.

Personally, I don't replay pro games a lot, but I do research shapes from my own games.

EdLee · **#25**

Alakazam wrote:

I was able to get to 1d in about a year because:

May I ask what was your age at the beginning of that 1-year period?

Alakazam · **#26**

Almost 17 years old when I started playing.

Age is a factor, but personal limits is a bigger one I think. Psychology is huge. I should study it ^^

Everyone has their own pace, so going fast is not necessary as long as u still make the goal u aim for.

My goal was to become a pro, but now, althoguh I sitll cling to that tiny chance prospect, my goal is more like KGS 8d. One day.

1d in 1 yr not even so rare these days, ive known ppl who did it in half a year... But sometimes even if we improve very fast, we can become suddenly very slow at 1d or 3d or whenever. We could have some kind of knack or affinity for part of the game, but when it gets complex we can hit a wall. I think learning Go up until about 2-Dan is very simple and straight forward. People may have difficulty with it, sure, but the knowledge and thinking u need is not so complicated. It's only after that that it really gets tough and extremely ambiguous, you have to bend your mind. Worst of all for me has been getting from 5d to 6d, still not there yet in terms of KGS and CGA. Really hard... 2-3 and 3-4 were surprisingly fast for me, but again, I think I just lucked out with random epiphanies and a decent supply of stronger players around me (university of Toronto Go club is very strong! No 7d's, but several 6d, 5d and other Dan-levels!)

4d to 5d was from studying at KBC in S. Korea. I gained a lot of serious game experience, did many Tsumego, greatly improved my study habits and focus, doubled or tripled my opening and joseki knowledge (which was already a bit high for my level, because I always preferred studying those over Tsumego ;p) and realized a thing or two about thickness. I was there for 5 months, and bam, 5d. Mind you, I was not a strong 5d, and still 4d on KGS. A lot of time has passed and a great deal of deep contemplation about my Go. Now I guess I am strong 5d (cga) close to 6d, and weak/mid 5d on kgs (at least, I have no trouble at all getting any new account to 5d and holding it, but I am a far cry from 6d for sure V___V)

KGS is strong!!!

Tygem ranks are silly. I should not be 6d anywhere i nthe world I think. Nevermind 7d. Or 8d. Wbaduk is the same way, easy to get 7d+ there. But hey, great for the ego ;p

Alakazam · **#27**

Best thing of all for anyone is to attend go clubs with strong players there and just watch them talk about Go and Tsumego and things, that's what worked for me.

2d-->3d I had to stop thinking only of cash-territory.
3d and 4d<--what's the difference? I don't even remember the difference between the two (canadian) ratings.

gogameguru · **#28**

Alakazam wrote:

Tygem ranks are silly. I should not be 6d anywhere i nthe world I think. Nevermind 7d. Or 8d. Wbaduk is the same way, easy to get 7d+ there. But hey, great for the ego ;p

Tygem actually used to be quite strong. A couple of years 7d there was a top amateur and 8d was almost pro or even weak pro. A lot of the 9d there still are pros (e.g. idontca is thought to be Lee Sedol).

I didn't play online much for awhile while we were setting up Go Game Guru, but I started a new account there a few weeks ago so that I could switch to the new English client. It let me set my initial rank at 5d (I thought it used to be 3d?) and, not surprisingly a lot of the other "5d" are just people trying to play stronger players. I think this combined with the way the ranking system works has screwed things a bit

.

Numsgil · **#29**

As far as how many hours to spend if you want to be maximally efficient...

I think computer programming and Go are very similar in terms of the mental resources it takes. There are a lot of computer programmers who program professionally. They are hired by people who have the sole interest of making money. The general modern belief is that maximum sustainable productivity comes from no more than 40 hours per week. You can work longer hours, but you end up producing less finished product.

I'd imagine a similar thing holds for go. It's not just about having a life outside of go. It's that if you study too much for too long your brain gets fatigued and you end up learning less even though you "worked more".

This doesn't apply to cramming, of course. You can do a "mental sprint" and cram an amazing amount of information in your brain in a short period of time. But it's not sustainable over more than a few weeks. You'll just burn out. And you can't cram your way to high dan.

So if you were willing to devote yourself entirely to go studying over a period of longer than a few months, I'd still say that no more than 6 to 8 hour days and taking time off for a "weekend" are going to produce the "fastest" results.

EdLee · **#30**

Alakazam wrote:

Almost 17 years old when I started playing.
Age is a factor, but personal limits is a bigger one I think.

Congrats.

Wait till you're in your 30's or 40's,
then start to learn a completely foreign new skill (like, some African language, if you have zero experience with it before;
or, the piano, if you also have no experience with music before)... then, maybe you'll have a different perspective.

Tami · **#31**

Take a tip from one who has already tried the "do hundreds" of problems route...and not got beyond 1k so far.

I agree with Numsgil's comment just above, and what's more, there are good reasons why.

I've recently been reading a lot of cognitive psychology, and it was interested to learn about the way memory works. If you're studying go, or anything else, for hours on end, it's likely you're overloading your working memory and, on top of that, depleting vital chemicals in your brain that make learning possible (serotonin, dopamine and others). Judy Willis suggests taking "syn-naps" to allow the brain to refill its supply of these neurotransmitters.

Have you ever studied for a long time and then asked yourself exactly what you have learned, only to find you're not really sure? I have :lol:

You need resting time to allow memories to transfer from working memory to long term memory. Further, you need time to consolidate and make sense of new information - this process is called "relational memory", if I have understood correctly. That's why you dream, and that's why often the answer to a puzzle often comes easily after you have taken a break. See Walker and Ellenbogen (2007) for more.

It seems better to study little and often, taking frequent breaks to allow information to be transferred to the LTM and to allow the brain to refresh itself (apparently, neurotransmitters can be replenished quickly if they are not worn down, but only slowly once you have become exhausted). And when you learn a lot, you cannot expect the benefit to be felt immediately - there is no substitute for the time that enables RM to perform its magic.

I am studying three things now: guitar, Japanese language, and go.

With guitar, I noticed significant improvements after I replaced long practice sessions with short, ten-minute ones focussed on one skill (e.g., alternate picking or tapping) or one section of one song (e.g., the first bar of the solo in "Purple Haze").

With Japanese, I find that by learning one new grammar or word at a time, I can learn and apply in real life more easily.

With go, I have only been playing for the last month, after a two-year lay off. I started at 4k (briefly 5k) on KGS, and am back to 1k there. I feel as though the bulk of the shallowly learned junk has cleared from my mind, and that what remains are the few bits and pieces of good advice and shape that I managed to pick up in spite of alternately cramming and skimming.

Further, there is no benefit eventually, in going back over things again and again. Rohrer and Pashler (2007) showed that "overlearning" is no better, over the long term, than reviewing things from time to time. In other words, there is no point in continuing to study your book of go problems once you have learned how to read them all - you'd be better off getting a new book, with more difficult problems in it. After all, who among us continues to recite the alphabet or practices tying their shoelaces? Getting better at anything means learning new things, not endlessly grinding through the old.

It's not psychology, but I think it's relevant: in the late 19th century Frederick Taylor demonstrated that a man could carry a great deal more pig iron in an hour if he rested between actions. If I recall correctly, his subject actually rested 33 minutes in the hour, and worked for 27 minutes in total. In other words, his study showed that one who rests more than they work can actually accomplish more work than one who works flat out. Could it also be that a similar approach to studying go, in which you work hard and rest frequently, might be the best?

:study:

the best way to study

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