Oh I just read for pleasure rather than an expectation of much immediate improvement. My improvement has come from doing problems and playing games and things clicking in my own head long after being exposed to them be it through books or reviews on here. The "Aha" moments.

What's more important than new knowledge I think is getting rid of the bad habits found in reviews. This can only be done through play as far as I can see.

Edit: (More important for me! I'm not speaking generally)

Actually Tami another thing from the book that you might like (i.e. that you pretty much said in your post):

Knowledge only becomes useful when it becomes a habit. Reading Tesuji by Davies is all well and good but until you can see those tesuji in games etc. So how do we go from the latter to the former? Well, the most efficient way is through problem sets and drilling them until you can solve them on sight. A less efficient, but by far more fun for some, way would be to play games and review them looking for missed tesujis. So for tesuji we have the wonderful combination of Tesuji and Get Strong at Tesuji/501 Tesuji Problems, but for fuseki I think playing games is the only way to "drill" the ideas, 501 Opening Problems being marginally useful at best I think.

So we're pretty much on the same page when it comes to books and their point/purpose/usefulness.

Tom gave me a thrashing as always.

W+20.5

Hmm, but I`d say you have to be a bit careful here. If you simply turn book shapes and patterns into reflexes, you could be creating problems for yourself further down the line. I suppose that the value of putting what you learn to the test is that you can find out when it works and when it doesn`t, and all about the in-between areas too.

Take the Davies Tesuji book, for instance. You`ll probably get a lot stronger after the ideas in it have had time to "kick in", but maybe there is a danger of thinking of tesuji as "special" moves. The new Yamashita tesuji dictionary (which you will enjoy when you`re approaching shodan), might give you a different perspective. For me, it shows that just about any kind of move can be tesuji if it happens to be effective at the task.

So it might be a case of progressing through stages. First, get to recognise and be comfortable with some frequent and basic shapes and patterns. Second, learn to put all of that to one side and start tackling each situation on its own terms. I would like to know what the next stage might be...I`ve only just reached the second.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

Do you mean the danger is limiting your view that the tesuji in the book are the only tesuji? If so, I agree completely.

I think what Tami is trying to say is that 'tesuji' are not special moves. They are good moves and can often be very ordinary looking moves during a game. They're not just solutions to problems in books or super killer moves in games.

Because Davies used very colourful names for a number of shapes, it`s easy to remember them. After a while, those moves leap out at you from a position. But I think that could be a limiting factor. What I mean is that often nothing leaps out at you, but even so there may be many tesuji there to be played. So, to use a Rowsonian analogy, the terms Davies uses are like training wheels - they help you to start moving upright and stable, but to progress you`ll have to phase out the training wheels.

I think you`re likely to get several stones stronger because of reading and applying Davies`s book, but you might need to change your thinking to move past that point. It could be something like Rowson`s "unlearning".

Suppose somebody is learning English. They might start with common greetings, like "How do you do?" or "How are you?". I`ve known some people to be mightily troubled when they find out that there are other ways to make greetings. It's because they have developed an inflexible mindset when it comes to English - what helped them to make progress at first is now actually holding them back. So my guess is that the same issue could occur in learning the language of Go.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

On cognitive impairment, neural atrophy and bipolar:

One problem in bipolar as I've already alluded to is cognitive decline. This isn't very well studied and is theorised to tied to mood shifts. This follows on fairly well from me personal experience, I'm dumber when low essentially. A second thing that I haven't talked about is neural atrophy (literally the shrinking of the brain in certain regions) in bipolar. This is a *bad* thing to put it mildly and varies wildly from individual to individual depending on how ill they've been and so on.

So I've some mixed news about the two things above: a) Lithium reverses neural atrophy! Yah for Lithium. It's been shown that even in just 4 weeks there is an increase in grey matter in bipolar patients. This is the good news. The bad news is that: "There have been consistent findings that lithium has mild but adverse effects on long-term memory that involves the acquisition of new information (Judd, 1995)." which is less positive. I've been noticing this latter effect with respect to go, I'm finding it harder than before to absorb information. Not impossible or anything silly like that, just harder. I forget more.


The final thing which I noticed yesterday is that my concentration is quite poor at the moment. I was having a lot of difficulty reading out relatively simple sequences in my game with Tom. Ditto a game with Anthony on Saturday. This could be the effect of the benzodiazepine in my system since I'm taking one daily at night at the moment and it takes 18-48 hours to clear from one's system. Or it could be me being on benzos too long (since July when the recommended time is 3-4 weeks...). Or it could me having a few bad days. We'll see if this pattern continues.

Regardless, go is still fun for me and that is what matters.

On unlearning:

There is a well known phenomenon in children's acquisition of English. At first they learn past tense forms by rote, including irregular forms, like sang, went, flew, and quit. Later they learn the rule for forming the past tense and unlearn (inhibit) the irregular forms, replacing them with singed, goed, flied, and quitted. Later they relearn the irregular forms, inhibiting the regular rule.

This process is similar to learning tesuji at go. First, the beginner acquires zokusuji. E. g., atari. Then he learns to inhibit zokusuji and play tesuji. E. g., Don't play atari, play geta. Don't play atari, threaten to play atari. Don't play atari, extend. He learns the mocking phrase, Atari, atari!, as a way of inhibiting atari. Later he learns situations where the zokusuji is correct, Zokusuji nagara. This may involve inhibiting tesuji.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

A few comments.

You really did not play badly for your level.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thank you Bill, I do not know exactly what you mean by the "kosumi on the 5,5" though.

variation 3.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Ahh, thank you.

My nondenominational god, didn't realise Jesus was going to raise his pious head

Thanks for the review Bill.

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我が道を行く。
I'll do it my way....

俗筋　=ぞくすじ= (in English?)

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我が道を行く。
I'll do it my way....

Zokusuji. It's something that's not a tesuji. I think I've seen it translated as anti-suji.

I've seen it translated as vulgar move usually. The only place I've seen anti-suji is in Sakata's book.

I think that's where I'm getting that from.

Sweet Baby Intelligent Designer!

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Right.





The only place I have see "anti-suji" is in the Sakata book, too. With go terms you often find a tension between prescriptive and descriptive language. "Anti-suji" is on the prescriptive dimension, I think. OTOH, "zokusuji nagara" (despite being zokusuji) is descriptive.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.