I don't think it's impossible to become a pro at "late" age, but as others have said it all depends on means and material.

You will need a high dan teacher right now. You will need an enviroment of constant competition like in an asion Go school. You will have to make sacrifices in other aspects of life.

And even if you are strong-willed and follow those points, I think it will take at least five years.

Here are two links regarding kghin 8D on KGS. He scratched 9D a while ago but could not keep it, although he is 8D already about 2 years and has professional tuition if I'm not mistaken. MilanMilan a chinese professional says that kghin still plays a lot of amateurish moves despite this tuition and is far away from reaching professional level. Although, too be fair: Kghin says he does not aim to become a professional.

http://gosensations.com/index.php?id=2& ... new_id=792 (Interview with kghin)
http://gosensations.com/index.php?id=2& ... ew_id=1357 (MilanMilan's opinion)

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Here is my current strategy for getting stronger at my current level:

1. Figuring out the Chinese Opening and other flavor openings
When someone plays moves that I consider outside the norm, like the Chinese fuseki, the sanrensei (not so much because I'm familiar with it), ect. I often get flustered and do not know how to proceed. So studying these exotic fuseki will be one of my first steps.

But really, my main deal is the Chinese fuseki. I hate playing against this opening. And I mean, I HATE it. Of course that might change after I study some more.

2. Reviewing each serious game I play
I was thinking of using a pattern matcher to help me here. I figure if I use it to help go back over games, it'll at least help me with fuseki. And it might even help me learn some more joseki and how to apply them in a given situation. It's not a perfect method as I'll obviously have to use my own judgement in positional situations, but it should help.

4. Solve life and death and how stones work together
Life and death is essential knowledge to any player who wants to attain a higher level. But more so than that, I want to learn how stones can function together and be able to know that if I'm trying to capture a big group, I don't need to patch non-existent weaknesses.

Also learning how stones work together will help my middle game dramatically. For example, if I need to run, where will I run to if all my stones aren't reachable? How can I make it to where my groups are light and can get to safety with ease?

5. Observe High Dan players
This one needs no explanation. This will be especially beneficial for the fuseki side of things. Later on, maybe not since high dans tend to play blitz, but I'll at least glean some sort of knowledge from how they play the openings. Maybe.

I also just like watching high dan games. Twoeye, miao, bum, ect. are some of my favorite players to watch.

6. Play blitz games for fun
Why, you're asking. What good is that? How does that help? Well, it doesn't. Blitz games seem to be good for testing instinct, and that's about it. However, these games aren't to help my studies at all. They're a way to just enjoy the game.

I don't want to be in serious mode 100% of the time because I would crash faster than someone coming off a sugar rush.


So this is my current strategy. I've been told to also read attack and defense, so I plan to read that as well. Does anyone happen to have any suggestions? Maybe there's something I haven't thought of, and it would be great to know.

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Slava Ukraini!

Be sure to check Battousai's lectures on fuseki: http://www.youtube.com/user/dwyrin And I know at first they are odd... but there's nothing "exotic" in the Chinese (or Sanrensei, or Kobayashi or mini-micro Chinese)



Get kombilo (free) and a game database (GoGoD is pretty cheap, but I don't have it yet, so I can recommend it faithfully)


Tsumego tsumego tsumego. Do tons of them. TONS.



Beware of watching blitz games among dans. They are not that useful.

Always enjoy

Also lots of tesuji, of course. But tsumego should be like 40-50% of your time, 25%-35% playing and the rest for the remaining items.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I have to vehemently disagree about this, at least for the case of high dans. Sure, sometimes it degenerates into a ton of desperation plays, but most of the time watching high dans blitz is one of the best ways to gain intuition about shape. High dans don't have time to do much reading, so they're playing off of knowledge of shapes. I attribute a lot of my getting to 5k in 6 months to watching high dans play.

There are high dans and high dans, I've seen plenty of blitz among high dans that are just a mess, no shape whatsoever, just lumps of stones. Far better to watch slow games from dans: the shape is always there.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Your biggest obstacle is not your age, but the bad habits that you have already learned.

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Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

They're just teaching us how NOT to play in those isntances. lol (jk)

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Slava Ukraini!

Why watch high dans blitz? You can always watch pro games quickly if you want to learn good shape.

True, but I feel as if I'm constantly shifting because I keep learning new things. Maybe these bad habits will gradually go away.

For example, one of my biggest problems used to be that I was using too little time in 25-30 minute games. But now I'm getting to byo-yomi in almost all of my serious games.

But that took a long time for me solve that problem. So you may have a good point there.

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Slava Ukraini!

True, but it's really fun to watch high dan games. Not just for the game itself, but for the kibitz. It may not always be useful, but the kibitz can be very entertaining.

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Slava Ukraini!

It might be harsh, but if you're serious about getting better, you need to watch the best games. Kibitz won't help you.

KGS isn't a very respected server for rankings. I'd say go for IGS or a korean server.

I know that. I said I watch high dan games mostly for fuseki. And the kibitz is just entertaining. I try to find a balance between fun and learning. And those games offer it. Just my take on it.

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Slava Ukraini!

So, I spent a good amount of time reading the first 19 pages of Attack and Defense.

It seems like a very good book. I'm just having trouble concentrating (I have ADHD, literally.) But I get the overall gist of what it has said so far. I've even played a few of the diagrams on my go board just to get a feel for playing the moves it describes.

My question is: When reading a Go book with diagrams, what is the best way to read it so I can absorb the information better? I figured playing out the diagrams and studying them would be beneficial. Would playing games immediately afterward be better? Just curious.

Well, I'll have a small break for dinner, and then I'll proceed from there.

Also, my ultimate goal is to reach 1p, but I think my first step in my goal is to reach 1 Dan. Still pretty far off, but close enough to start thinking about.

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Slava Ukraini!

When I was weaker and read Attack and Defense and other books mainly about opening, I always read one chapter, one concept, and then immediately played some games after that to solidify my knowledge and try out the things I learned in the book. This helps retention alot and I recommend it. Also, you should try to play on other go servers as others have suggested, and stop watching blitz matches, just go to www.gokifu.com and look at the professional games there instead. it's much better in terms of learning fuseki or learning anything really. Though, if you're there for the kibitz (which I so abhore), then I guess you should say so, but for serious study go with pro games ;D

Have you considered Guo Juan's lessons? I haven't really used them to go from weak to dan, but I am watching some of them now and they are really useful. So far, I have found the opening and endgame lectures most useful. If you want to study opening then I cannot recommend her lectures enough! She poses a bunch of opening problems and you pause the video and consider the best move, then you proceed and she explains the best move and why others aren't so good. There are 3 levels, so you can find lessons for your level easily. I've only done the C ones (for dan), but I assume that the others are equally nice, or perhaps even more so.

I don't think 2 years is long enough. Perhaps it would be if you were already 5 dan.

I firmly believe that anyone can do anything, but a certain time frame is needed.

Even if you spent 8 hours a day studying go in a highly effective manner (very difficult), it would still take a minimum of 3 years to make it to the 10,000 hours consistent with "mastery" of an area. (http://thedanplan.com/)

9dan KGS isn't even CLOSE to mastery of go. I think he can do it

In my opinion hailthorns rank progression is too slow, so I don't think he can do it. If you spend a year going from 9 kyu to 7kyu I can't see how you can get from 7 kyu to 9 dan in two years.

Sorry hailthorn, I don't think you can do it but good luck anyways.

KGS ranks are actually generally considered quite solid (though of course, the high dans suffer from the issue of not enough players). KGS 9d is also quite respectable - I can't imagine how on Earth the statement that it's not close to mastery could be true unless it's in the same vein as "9p pro is NOWHERE close to mastery" -.-

Go for it!

I like how you're setting benchmarks and short-term goals. And, good luck. I am a firm believer that the human mind at almost any age is such an organ that is so flexible as to become an expert at most everything.

But, there are other factors.

1. Motivation. There will be times when you wanna give up. This is going to be tough.
2. Time. As someone said, it takes literally 10,000 hours to become a world-class (read pro) at something. I read it in the book: Outliers. I think another book was written. It's a quick read and I highly suggest reading it as you'll get a flavor of the dedication necessary to become world-class. People profiled in the book were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, and others. So at 10,000 hours at 8 hours a day is 1,250 days is 3 and a half years give or take going straight without breaks. But that leads me to something else.
3. Take breaks. There are times when yo'll need to take a week or a month off. I like to lift weights. And, almost every person big into fitness and weightlifting say that you need to give your body a rest. I imagine your mind is just the same. I say use the rule of 7, which I don't know where I read it. Take one day break in 7. One week break every 7 weeks. One month off every 7 months. This gives your brain time to relax, and the brain will continue to grind away even when not playing.
4. Don't listen to any naysayers. I am a big fan of people that think big, and as such, I wish you the best of luck. Stay positive. There's always someone out there that will cast stones. Move beyond them and good luck!