Chess just spends its names in a different place. There are literally thousands of named openings.

I certainly don't mind

I've started replaying pro games while predicting the next move - done that before - and while it's fun, instructive and the kind of activity you can practice intensively with the prospect of becoming better at it, the main question I keep having is what impact such "deliberate practice" has on one's quality of play.

The same question can be asked about tsumego and reviewing your own games (with AI or without or hybrid). There's traditional advice and anecdotal evidence that all of these practices do lead to better playing ability but in fact we still don't really know the extent to which each of those does. I don't know of any scientific study that takes a group of players of various strength, let them perform any of those deliberate practices over a certain period of time, and compare their progress to a control group of players of similar strength distribution.

So we're stuck with our hypotheses, beliefs and some expert advice. One element that I keep coming back on and which is often neglected in expert advice, is the underlying assumption that you take games seriously. Pros do that, because their playing and training environment offers such "seriousness" naturally. We, amateurs, have mostly swapped the original club environment, where games were played physically but opponents of similar strength were scarce, for online play where the latter abound but we tend to play faster games because of the inherent unreliability of anonyous opponents or our network connections, discouraging an honest effort and investment of our precious time. We may play our games when half asleep, or drinking alcohol, or while watching TV ... all but serious match conditions.

I have often talked about my major progress, 2k to 2d in a few months in the early 2000s, and have attributed that to serious game review. But the underlying feature was serious play, on a physical board, without time constraints. Stupid errors way below my level were unlikely because I played every move thoughtfully. Hence the review was more about unknown unknowns than "if it weren't for that self atari".

Hence I still hold the belief that forcing oneself to play serious games, even online, is the key: be fully concentrated, awake, no alcohol, no distractions; major time limits (or none), no blitz; think about every move; don't resign too early and develop some fighting spirit ... Then again, this too is anecdotal evidence, part of my story, not tested in objective research.

I'm curious about the "internet generation" of chess players. The prevailing culture on the servers is for very fast games. 3-minute blitz is normal, and 1-minute "bullet chess" is fairly common too. That's 1 minute absolute time for the whole game. Some people will happily play 10- or 15-minute games, but it's next to impossible to get a game at anything like a tournament time control.

Anecdotally, there's a bunch of people who've reached international master strength (similar to 6d amateur in go?) simply from tens of thousands of blitz or bullet games, with no other form of study.

Rather than deliberate practice, it's about throwing patterns at your brain, with a fast feedback loop, to see what sticks. And if I understand correctly, this is more or less what John is advocating when he speaks of playing through pro games quickly.

To be pedantic, it's not really me who's advocating this - it's a lot of pros. I don't study go to become strong so I have no experience to fall back on, except with the version of the technique that is replicated by transcribing games (which does, however, seem to confirm this pro view).

There is one common aspect that has not been mentioned yet. Quite a few pros mention playing through all the games of Player X several times (usually the likes of Jowa or Shuei, but Shusaku seems rare, as does Go Seigen, which I find odd). Perhaps, by repetition, they are further reinforcing what they think has been good fertiliser to feed their garden of intuition.

Over the years, I have also been struck by the number of very strong European players I have met who say they have played over the complete works of a favourite player, sometimes more than once. In this case, the name of Go Seigen has cropped up fairly often. Quite a few players can remember lots of specific positions (but not whole games), and I can do this, too. I didn't set out to do - it just happened (after transcribing, but more often after writing about a game, so perhaps that doesn't count).

To be ignorant, could you repeat to me what exactly is meant by "transcribing"? Is it taking a paper kifu and digitizing it?

On the other note, I'm also somewhat surprised by the overwhelming practice of Blitz games. I still see that as a sign of the times - not wanting to invest a lot of time in a casual encounters. Yes, it accounts for fast feedback, but surely to understand what's going on beyond the surface, one has to do some studying alongside.

Do you mean a kifu or a kifu?

Transcribing here is taking a game record on paper and rendering it into sgf form, using a comnputer. It is possible to do this by OCR or other manual means (such as scanning from left to right and filling in an sgf move template). In terms of creating a database, it is possible (indeed, a blessed relief!) to use multiple source diagrams (1-100, 100-200 etc), but in terms of pro advice to play over games to become stronger, they are just referring to recreating the game on a real board, normally using a single paper diagram as a source. The thinking behind using a single diagram is presumably to make the task harder. It's too easy to peep ahead when you are using multiple diagrams.

To go off at a bit of a tangent, you see or hear so often a basic error of thinking among western amateurs which is encompassed in phrases like "to become strong at go you need to do X", to which someone else will respond sternly with "no, to become strong at go you need to do Y". Indeed, what I have noticed over the years is that very many western amateurs will become very stroppy when given advice, seeing this as an insult to the "logical" ways of thinking to which they cleave. We have seen a good example of that in a concurrent thread here. I regard that as a mistaken mindset, too, although I can see that one normally wants to be cautious when taking advice from a fellow amateur than from a pro.

Japanese amateurs are obviously just as prone to wrong mindsets as we are, and it might seem pros are, too, when we see books touted as (in English) "How to get strong at by doing Z". But the mindsets , and so the mistakes, can differ. Japanese does not have a distinct comparative or superlative form for adjectives (e.g. fast, faster, fastest). As a result, the plain form (fast) in Japanese often overlaps with the comparative form (faster), and can even overlap with the superlative. Therefore, a book translated into English as "become strong at go, do Z" really means, to a Japanese, "Become strongER at go..."

The significance of this is that pros are not recommending a single method (as western amateurs tend to do), though of course they will think that one method is better than another. It is my experience that replaying games by past masters is seen a, at least, one of the best methods, to build up intuition. And in essence this is what AI does.

Pros seem to stress speed in doing this. In the Kitani school, children were expected to rise at 6am and play over a game or games from the past until 7am, when they did radio calisthenics. Breakfast was at 7.30. So, replaying was the first task of the day, and took priority over breakfast. Kato used to cheat and look for short games, but he was the Kitani pupil who found it hardest to win titles, so maybe there was a connection there!

The only other regular go study was from 6-9 in the evening and was playing games and studying with each other. It was very rare to play with Kitani himself. He spent a lot of time with the children, but on daily tasks (such as tending the goats), and no doubt offered many words of advice. But one thing he did do, most days, was to set tsumego problems when he came home in the evenings. Speed was stressed here, too. There was a race to get the right answer. Any visitors were roped in too, and in the nature of things they were usually very strong players. But they always ended up being embarrassed by the children. The tactic was to write the answer and show it to Kitani, who secretly marked it right or wrong, but everyone had to continue till they got it right. The duffers might have to do the washing up, or such.

Other go activities included charity visits to hospitals and the like. Little Otake Hideo was famous for his behaviour at these. He played instantly and usually read comics while waiting for his opponent to play. The old men were nonplussed by a diminutive lad who replied before they had released their fingers from the stone (while looking at the game next door). If they thought too long, he would soon get bored and go and look out of the window, or even wander off outside.

This speed of play was never criticised. Otake was gregarious and didn't like to study alone. His main study group was with Tozawa Akinobu and Kitani Reiko. Otake/Tozawa games took half an hour. But Reiko was notorious for very slow play and games with her could take 5 hours. Kitani used to take Otake and Tozawa on his charity trips, but apparently never Reiko!

I have heard pros say that they were taught to play fast because that skill was important when playing with amateurs, or in exhibition type games with other pros but for amateurs.

What I have inferred from all this (and much more, of course) is that pros recommended certain things (replaying games being a/the prime one) to become strongER, but to become just plain strong you need a varied diet. Replaying may be your staple rice, tsumego your meat or fish, and endgame may be for those who like dessert. But, whatever, you eat, a well-balanced diet is important.

But this is for pros. All amateurs, however, are opsimaths, and very often busy ones. It is understandable, therefore, if they choose to study tsumego because they can take a book on the commute to work, or play blitz games online before bed (as opposed when getting up with the lark). But being understandable doesn't make it right. At least if you want to become truly stronge as opposed to just a bit strongER.

Well I might just take that last writing of yours as a good summary for times to remember. I love the linguistic tangent!

Replay professional games, fast, predictive. Play games and review them together. Don't mind the speed too much. Do tsumego that challenge you but try to do them fast.

There's also a sizeable amount of people whose grade never goes up despite playing lots of bullet or blitz games.

I really have my doubts that it's possible to play consistently at a higher level much beyond one's own reading ability. In my own personal experience, I may get some nice ideas and shapes from pro games but it's amazing how it only takes a few moves from a player who is much stronger in reading to send me floundering.

Since this discussion turned to chess, maybe I'll be excused to share one of my favorite videos on the topic but in context of chess.



I don't know why I find this guy entertaining, maybe it is the shared love of Perrier water, but his point is very good and blunt. I'll try to be more blunt, if you want to improve at anything then you need to pick up on what you are doing wrong and fix that. There isn't much more to it. If you make a mistake in a game then you need to stop making that mistake, if the opponent tricks you then you can use the same trick on someone else, and that is that, and if you trick yourself then you also need to stop doing that. Doing tsumego, replaying games from paper and playing actual games does nothing for anyone in terms of playing better if they don't resolve to not make the same mistakes again and again. It is not the activity, it is the attitude!

Also what he said about people not making mistakes because they don't know it is a mistake. Most of the time, in Go too, it is not that we don't know it is a mistake, most of the time it is that we don't realize it in the moment.

I also think it is easy to forget how hard one worked to get to where one is in terms of Go skill. It gets harder so it is natural to not make progress if one doesn't have the memory of working hard before, the lack of reference belies faulty expectations. Anyway, there is nothing wrong with just enjoying instead of being on a quest or doing one's own thing; I think it was Lee Chang-ho who played himself which I think is very silly.

I'd go further and say it's the vast majority.

I think what's happening is that they are just filling their brains with amateur shapes and sequences. Garbage in, garbage out.

And next to nobody even records the game results, so there's not even a rudimentary feedback loop.

Good point.

Playing good moves comes in (at least) three parts: (i) finding candidate moves, (ii) reading the result of candidate moves, and (iii) evaluating the results of the reading. Playing through pro games is going help with the first part, but won't help much with the second.

I'm inclined to disagree. You see the main line of reading when playing over the game, and over time you see similar positions which may or may not follow the same path. At the very least you get a head start with the reading. You're not just getting candidate moves; you are getting candidate sequences.

It seems to me a bit like piano fingering. It's painfully tricky at first, but then you get a flow while reading the music, and then - magic - you can play a tune by ear, your fingers just moving by themselves.

Once the opponent deviates from the sequence you have practiced, you must come up with a response. This is part of reading.

I think it's obvious that all of the following are helpful (this list is probably incomplete):

- Reviewing high level games and/or joseki
- Playing and reviewing your own games
- Life and death problems

All three of these strategies have been recommended by pros, and all have value.

I would venture to hypothesize that ignoring any one of these categories is suboptimal at some point in your go studying career.

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be immersed

I agree that getting rid of your mistakes is part of the improvement cycle, but not the only aspect.

Eradicating blunders doesn't even need much review, it "merely" requires to concentrate while playing, use the time you have and that of your opponent to focus on the board, consider a couple of alternatives each time and be aware of liberties, especially towards the end of the game. All of this adds up to "playing at the level of your understanding". You will know you have achieved this if the review (with AI) doesn't show any mistakes which you can easily spot yourself, only interesting, "new", insights to learn from. This doesn't necessarily mean there are no big fluctuations in the AI's game evaluation: big fights can be very difficult and choosing the wrong option makes for big swings.

If you are able to play at the level of your understanding, improving your understanding of the game is going to pay dividends. If you're not, then it will rather add to the current frustration.

Better understanding comes from aforementioned review but also from activities like replaying pro games (predictive, with instant feedback) or studying corner patterns (often recurring in games, so with presumable short term effect), or reading upon and practicing endgame techniques, ... or any aspect of the game. As said, such study won't translate to results immediately and requires the ability to convert understanding into playing strength.

A special note can be given to tsumego because it will achieve two things: acquire intuition about local positions and vital points, and build a higher capacity for reading, which will help in the first job of playing to your level of understanding.

Much of the frustration with amateurs' lack of progress comes from a weak link between their study and their game results. People sensitive to such immediate feedback, better choose a deliberate practice with a strong immediate link to game results. And I think that's what the video kvasir linked to talks about.

Distinguishing between "blunders" and "better understanding" is useful.

However, from the context of "picking up on what you are doing wrong and fixing that", both categories could fit - gaining a better understanding of the game is one way to stop doing what you are doing wrong.

I think this underscores the fact that various methods are applicable to improvement.

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be immersed

The argument in the video could possibly be rephrased:

In Chess "mistake A" for most people are blunders that lose material, most people being very poor chess players in the greater scope of things. Chess players seem to argue over how far it would take someone if they stopped hanging pieces, but that is maybe taking it too seriously because no one is ever going to only improve in this one aspect without learning anything else.

The poker example also seems good. You can only improve if you analyze your play, not just one or two hands but every hand. I think the point here was to take a holistic view, not get bogged down on single mistakes or bad luck.

Similar examples, but with different flavors, could be made in different contexts. I think the key thing is to be looking at what one's actual mistakes are, and depending on context you need to replace the word "mistake" with something else because, for example, a runner doesn't really make mistakes (or maybe they do) but can still improve their technique and form.



I agree. I'll add that to me it is also the question of what the main activity in the improvement cycle is and I'd say that is really not the other things (i.e. tsumego, memorization, ...), and it is not actually the analysis of your own games, it is the determination to not make the same mistakes again and also the practice when you play games and try to avoid these mistakes. Maybe this is not exactly what the video said but my own thinking instead. That said, tsumego and memorization of certain things does hugely improve results. It is really not one or the other, to me it is about what is the main activity.

Maybe I am repeating myself by now but I also like the point made in the video about mistakes usually not being something that people don't know are mistakes. I think it is easy to forget that we still make a lot of mistakes that are something we already understand. I think especially in Go this is the case because it is such a long game. It is true that this doesn't take much analysis but still, when we do this in every game it seems important for improving and it takes lot of practice to overcome.

Since this is a vanity thread anyway, I will post it here. This week I want to exercise discipline. I've been struggling with various bad habits and like many have made many vain attempts to get rid of them. They include

- staying up late (1-2 AM)
- being on the computer all the time
- drinking alcohol (not a lot but almost every day)
- eating sugar

I'd like to test what it does to my body and mind if I skip all of that during 1 week. I've prepared for it:

- I will go to bed AT midnight
- in the evening, I close my laptop; I have planned a specific non-computer activity each night
- when feeling the urge to drink alcohol, I will drink water instead
- likewise, I'll take a carrot when the desire for chocolate creeps up on me

I'll let you (or myself) know how it went, next Monday.

Good luck. I think this kind of discipline will have positive side effects that are hard to directly measure.

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be immersed

How is your week going so far?

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be immersed

I was planning to report out after 1 week but responded to your kind interest!
Here are the stats:

Alcohol V V V
Sugar V V X (one chocolate bar on Wednesday)
Early bed V X V* (after one sleepless night going to bed early, and then a cheat, I moved up my bedtime to 1AM)
Computer V V* V* (I did use the computer but for useful purposes, not procrastinating)

The impact on weight is already noticeable (dropped 2 kilos from the weekend). The craving for sugar and alcohol is there but they seem progressively easier to resist. Not touching the computer has been fairly easy since I went practicing table tennis instead on Tue & Wed, and on Mon I watched Netflix with my wife (which is a "good" activity).
Towards the future I think the biggest challenge will be changing the bedtime hour and getting enough sleep. The urge to procrastinate at night instead of getting enough sleep has a deeper cause than just a bad habit.