At the moment I'm facing the problem that I have stoped playing go entirely for a little more than a year. So not only did I learn nothing in that time, I forgot and lost some of the things I had acquired.

So the Goal: get back on track.

To do this I need to retrain my reading. I think it's probably what suffers the most from not playing. I think I'll go back to Graded Go Problems 2 and 3 first, 30 mn a day.
I also want to reread Opening theory made easy.

And obviously, playing is the most important thing. I'm feeling a bit strange about playing online again, though. I'm completely unsure about my current rank, but I'm not a beginner either, so I might be a very boring fight to a 15k, like missing an atari or something, but I'm not going to go slaughter beginners just to assert my self confidence, either. So I don't know where to start. Maybe I'll try getting crushed by GnuGo for starters. The good thing with bots is, they always punish the basic tactical mistakes.

Edit: adding my KGS graph here

This depends on your goal. If you just want to have fun, then playing could be the most important thing for you.
But if you want to improve, then playing is necessary but not sufficient.
Playing is very important, but not necessarily the most important thing;
other factors -- reviews with a good teacher, self-study, or group study, etc. -- could be equally important.

I'm glad you say that, because I have the tendency to do more studying than actual playing ^^ (Games are fun, but discovering new concepts and moves I would never have thought about is the most fascinating part of playing go).

Good luck with your studies!

I have to say I am the opposite at the moment, I play alot without any reviews and study (This is probably why I have been my current rank for about 6 months now). However I must say that playing is essential, or as Ed says necessary, as you will actually pick up alot of tesuji, joseki etc.. through osmosis especially playing stronger players. Also what I have found fun is reading pro games from books like the ones by John Fairbairn.

Anyway 頑張ってください!!!!　（Gambatte Kudasai ≈ Keep battling on）

_________________
我が道を行く。
I'll do it my way....

Currently reading Graded go problems 2. Those books are so great. It does a wonderful job of reminding me of all the basic shapes.
I also got thrashed by GnuGo a few times. Although I should stop just closing the game when a big group gets captured and review it instead. It's a horrible habit to take and it wouldn't happen if I was playing a human.

Which I feel ready to do without being ashamed of myself, now.


Pro games at my level are mostly a big mistery. I do it sometimes for fun, I replay a commented game, try out the variations explained and so on. But I don't think it improves my game much, because it's so much higher level than what I understand from the game. Maybe it pays off in the long run though.



Thank you!

Pro games don't make sense for me either (the most time) and it only pays off in the long run. But the latter is true for everything regarding Go ^^
If you have fun replaying commented pro games, then by all means, replay a game a day. It is good! Your pattern-loving brain will most certainly learn something.

I can recommend Fairbairn's Shuei books. In a month or so, I might also recommend his Go Seigen books : D

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Thank you, I'll look into it. I also had a look at your "How to get strong at go" page, it was interesting. Once I'm done with my current reading, I'll look at the books you recommend.

You're 100% correct.

Thank you, nice to hear =)
It sure needs an update though. Hopefully I have it up next week.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I have his 9 dan showdown one and find it thoroughly intriguing. The stories are great fun and really enjoy the comments on the games.

_________________
我が道を行く。
I'll do it my way....

Boy, I really need to be more focused and careful.

Here I thought I wasn't doing too bad, but I got too excited about my own capture to pay any attention to what GnuGo was actually doing (move 156). And so a close game became a loss by 30 points. What was the trick again? Sit on your hands?
But hell, even before that I should have noticed this group could be threatened and I never even stopped to assess its status. Seriously need to work on my attitude and I think to do that I have to stop playing against GnuGo.

Anyway, I registered on Kaya but the server's down, so now I'm back on KGS. I also registered on Tygem. Time to play some real people again.

There's a huge difference between reading a problem in a book calmly and assessing a group's status in a game.

This game yesterday night made me painfully aware of that difference. But I think as I keep doing tsumegos over and over again, it will get easier to spot the winning move even when I feel under pressure.

The main problem is, innerly I give up too early. Just because I can't read out that a move will succeed or fail doesn't mean I should stop trying entirely. I need to remind myself that I play to learn more than I play to win.



At the moment I'm very busy, but in april it will get better. I will be able to play more often, and hopefully to go back to my go group meetings.

The Kido Cup in Hamburg is in May. It would be fun to go there. I want to be stronger by then.

Thank you EdLee!
I did consider Q18 but dismissed it quickly because of W Q17. I will take some time to look into it more.

Then B atari P17 and hurts the stone, which makes a bad wedge.
Your first instinct of wedge means you don't have a feeling it's a bad wedge,
and you don't have a feeling about getting damaged -- develop these feelings.
Also, if at R18 works, then everybody would play it, instead of the joseki keima at Q18.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc
$$-------------------
$$. . . . . . . . . |
$$. . . . X X 7 . . |
$$. . . W X Q O . . |
$$. . . . . X . . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |
$$. . . . . . X . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |[/go]

B also has the option to connect on the outside with :

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc
$$-------------------
$$. . . . . 4 . . . |
$$. . . 3 2 X O . . |
$$. . 5 W X Q O . . |
$$. . . . 1 X . . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |
$$. . . . . . X . . |
$$. . . . . . . . . |[/go]

I'm not good in deep reviewing, however in this game I see certain move categories, which easily would promote you >= 3 Stones in rank, if you avoid them

a) Caring about single stones
- On move 40 you capture a ko, while your surrounding stones are not really in danger. Try to see the difference if you played at the position of White-41 instead
- Same thing for move 52. Here, the W stones are more or less dead anyway. You could encircle them on a larger scale (e. g. by playing around tengen) or do something different e. g. C2
- Move 60 saves a single stone and maybe worth 2 points. Try to find out, if there are any bigger and/or more urgent points on the board.

b) Letting the opponent enter your moyo / almost secured territory
- On move 85 W finds time to play C2. This may look small but the difference, if you've played there before (remember move 60? ) easily approaches 10 points. After move 85 you still didn't block but let white further in during moves 111-113. Except for the points lost there, the group looks somewhat weak after move 113 (and got finally killed, later in the game).
- The same thing happened in move 120-122; move 120 costs you about 12 points with no need (taken aside the fact, that GnuGO blundered later on by not protecting the cut at S15... )

Thus, every time you are trying to capture or save one or two single stones (unless they are of special importance, e. g. cutting stones) ask yourself if there is nothing else more urgent (I'm now able to letting go off up to four stones easily, with more than five stones I still have problems ).

Further, in some cases it is really important to block or protect your existing structures from being entered, even if this looks slow. Think of the proverb "Urgent moves before big moves"...

The first diagram is not playable for black. W's p16 cut is good.

Yeah, that seems to be a problem of mine lately. The problem is not so much that I care so much, but that I fail to sit back and look at the whole board.


Yeah especially in the corner it is often much more painful than it looks. I need to develop a feeling for this, as EdLee would say.


The frightening thing with GnuGo is, it never stops counting. It will keep playing whatever it things is bigger in points at any point in time. Sometimes it looks nonsensical, but it certainly does a good job of crushing me.


The trick is, you've got to see what's urgent and what's not But I play and learn.


The second diagram definitely looks safer to me anyway.
But I see now I could have done a lot more damage to white's position. Thank you all for the explanations

I completed vol 2 of GGPB and am now starting vol 3. I solved that book once already, I had just about finished it when I stopped playing a year ago. I remember being very startled at first by the middle game problems. This time it feels easy and I solve the problems in under 1 mn. I seem to remember the shapes and tactics. I'm happy about that
I plan to track how many problems I get wrong and how many right, like SoDesuNe does. It feels like a useful idea to study a book another time until the positions have sinked in. Especially as GGPB deals with lots of basic and important shapes. My first time studying go, when I finished a volume I would just rush over to the next, as I believed working on harder problems would make me stronger, but I now believe it was a mistake. I have seen advice to work more often and quickly on easier problems and I think it benefits me more than to get a headache on problems I can't solve.

I also read Tesuji in parallel, slowly, one tesuji a week. I had just about started that book when I stopped playing. It felt horribly difficult. Here again, it is easier this time around, and I understand the shapes much faster. The problems are still difficult, because I have a hard time to read up to five moves, and more is close to impossible. Many of the sequences have at least five moves so this is a lot for me.

Playing doesn't happen often right now because of the difficulty to get 1/2 hour of uninterrupted quiet. With my malkovich game, I still manage to make a move in-between, though. And I play the occasional game with GnuGo. I forced the damn thing to resign at four stones while playing quickly, killing two of its groups. I feel like my instinct and focus have improved and I'm satisfied that I'm back at the level I was when I quit playing. Perhaps even a little further.

Hey! I need a new goal. Let's make SDK

This is a game I just played. Playing white in handicap game is still hard. Somehow I didn't do too bad in that game, though in the end a couple of pretty bad tactical mistakes cost me the game.
But it's hard to know if my advantage was skill on my part or mistakes on my opponent's part, or his lack of knowledge of how to take advantage of my overplays.



Aside from that, I'm now studying 1001 life and death problems and GGPB 3. At the moment I have about 80% solving rate in both books. I marked some problems that puzzle me even after looking at the answer, I'll study them separately and might post them here if I can't answer my own questions.