A beginner's journal of little interest

[oren]

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.

[Tami]

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.

[Boidhre]

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.

[Bill Spight]

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.

[Bill Spight]

A few comments.

You really did not play badly for your level.

[Boidhre]

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

[Bill Spight]

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

variation 3.

[Boidhre]

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

variation 3.

Ahh, thank you.

[tomukaze]

Thank you, Jesus! White is overconcentrated.

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

Thanks for the review Bill.

[tomukaze]

俗筋　=ぞくすじ= (in English?)

[skydyr]

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

[Boidhre]

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.

[skydyr]

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.

[Bill Spight]

Thank you, Jesus! White is overconcentrated.

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

Sweet Baby Intelligent Designer!

[Bill Spight]

俗筋　=ぞくすじ= (in English?)

Right.

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.

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.