A post by lemmata in the Professional section of the board got me thinking about my own game. But it also got me thinking about a lot of things on a deeper level than I had previously. I'm already 23 years old, but is it still possible for me to reach my maximum potential? Is it still possible for one to reach a professional level through dedication and hard work (something I have not yet shown.) even if they're in their twenties?

I'm having fun simply playing the game right now. But sometime soon I might want to re-focus my efforts in to becoming a better player. I'm just afraid that these efforts might be in vein. I wouldn't want to become 1 Dan and stay there forever, for example.

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Slava Ukraini!

Age does not easily prevent one from improving much or quickly or reaching (almost) one's principally possible maximum. Missing time and effort are the decisive factors.

Age does limit some of your abilities. As you get older - probably anything past about 30 - you will experience a decline in linear cognitive functioning, both go and non-go. You won't read as quickly, you will walk into a room and then wonder why you did so, etc.

But the non-linear stuff will improve. You'll be able to handle more complex ideas.

The physical changes behind this are a decline in brain cells, but an increase in connections between those remaining cells.

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Can you become a pro? Probably not.

Even at a mere 23, you have reached the age at which some of life's possibilities are closed to you. But more possibilities will open...just different ones.

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or wonder where you are and how you got there, etc.

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"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

Hmm... I opened this thread, now I have no clue why.
Darned age.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

It's worth remembering that James Kerwin became a pro in his mid 20's, beginning his pro studies after graduating from college.

FWIW I don't think that it is possible to define "full potential". Just do the best you can and don't worry abou what might have happened if ...

Considering todays kids are stronger than many if not most old professional 9-dans, I would assume that reaching the "new pro level" is beyond anyone except those youngsters.

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Formerly Gorim

I would second Robert Jasiek on the time and effort. My experience starting programming at young age, then going on to study CS, is that many people will try to cross over later and be programmers, but there is always something missing, they do fine as long as they don't have to write a bubble sort, and they can rely on stock code for convenience and time. On the other hand Suzuki violinists have got to be some of the most annoying musicians, their sound is so juvenile. I think this is one of the reasons I respect Cho Chikun, is that even though he was trained at a young age, he didn't dominate until later, and seems to have a different level of maturity than today's wunderkind.

Exactly what I have been saying for years.

Age has a detrimental influence on your max mental abilities, but most of us run against other barriers long before that. Time, work, loud kids to take care of, other hobbies, etc. So, if we are using our mental abilities at level 3 out of 10, then lowering the max level from 10 to 9 or 8 will not change our situation very much. We can still improve unti next barrier, say at leve 5, regardless.

Having said that, I must also say that I think there might be a negative influence on the 'speed' of learning. Older brains might need more time to accumulate new ideas. At least judging by myself - a sample of 1.

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Setting aside for a second that after a certain point it might require an increasing amount of work just to stay at 1 dan as you age...

Would you be okay staying at 5 dan forever? If the answer is yes, then we're just haggling.

I don't think one's happiness with go is really highly correlated with rank. I think one pro said he thought 3 dan amateur was about the happiest. I'm not sure why he picked 3 dan. Stronger than that, it becomes too much of a job, I guess. Or maybe he just met a nice girl when he was 3 dan.

Remember the fact that most people can play go their entire lives already puts it in a special category. Although maybe that's a shrinking category. There are people doing triathlons in their 90s.

The best course therefore is to start after 30, then one never notices what is missing!

There has been a certain amount of harping on how stupid old people are in some recent threads, but it's worth remembering that kids have a lot of free time. If you don't stop them, there are teenagers who will spend five hours a day playing video games, or talking on the phone, or watching television. If they set their minds to playing soccer, or drawing, or practicing the violin, they can get really good, really rapidly. If you're playing a game of Go a week, there is some go-happy 14 year-old out there who plays more Go in a week than you do in a year.

There are differences though in learning while young and while old. One simply needs to look at the speed a child can pick up a language, and I don't just mean being able to speak it but accent, pronunciation, command of idiom and so on. A rare few adults (and kids older than 6 or 7) can learn at this speed but it's rare, and very rare in people brought up monolingually. It's not just a matter of the amount of time you have available for something, though this is very important. Language learning is different to go but it has a lot of similarities with shape/tesuji knowledge broadly corresponding to basic vocabulary knowledge and so on.

I am 30 years old.

A hypothetical experiment: I am a complete novice at go and I am paired with a 7 year old complete novice. Both of us have one year to devote to studying go with no other life obligations or external considerations. We both study on similar routines with the same quality and volume of personalized instruction. I might not play as many games or complete as many tsumego as the 7 year old, but we devote the same amount of time to the two activities. (Perhaps I play longer games, or review more, or my approach to tsumego is different, or I choose to read a go book, or I'm just frankly slower.)

At the end of the 1 year period I will be stronger than the 7 year old, without question.

First: Why?

Second: The proposition isn't that the 7 year old will gain strength faster than the 30 year old, it's that the 7 year old will peak higher than the 30 year old in strength.

I agree with the Second statement, but I think that the primary reason is that the 7 year old will be able to devote much more time to go than the 30 year old. Most 7 years olds don't have children to take care of, or a living that needs to be earned.

One of the key things a 7 year old lacks is the adult's or teenager's ability (but especially an adult's) to sacrifice now for reward later. Adults are able to put themselves through pain for several years for a cookie at the end, children find this kind of idea alien to them for quite a while. It's rare to find a kid under 8 who's able to do this very well. Some would put that age older. You need to force a young child to learn/practice/whatever (this could be quite subtly done but it's rather necessary with the vast majority of young children). You do to a fairly large extent need to take some of their childhood away from them. For a Western reference look at the training regimes forced on young children by parents wanting to give them a shot at professional classical musicianship. Or the training regime done by the Polgar sisters.

For every 7 year old working as hard as possible at go, or violin or chess there's an adult standing behind them encouraging/goading/whatever to make it happen.

Make it a week or a month, and maybe you are right. You know how to study efficiently. But after a year I think that the smart money is on the kid. Their brains are more plastic, and there is less knowledge to interfere with new knowledge.

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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.

Many children are able to focus in an uncanny way that few adults can. A perfectly normal child will play a number of incredibly boring, repetitive games. If a child decides he's fascinated by cars or baseball, he's going to know an awful lot about cars or baseball. Adults lose interest in things much more rapidly. It's not that children can put up with the monotony of playing Go for the sake of future reward, it's that they are capable of really enjoying things that most adults find at least a little bit monotonous.

But I think we may be talking about different things. I'm mostly thinking about why people who start go younger tend to improve faster (measured in years). But this improvement is almost exclusively in the amateur ranks.