Hello.
There are a lot of online go teachers but I wondered about the lessons,are they really effective?
On KGS some students are stuck on their low dan/kyu level despite taking huge amount of lessons from pros/strong ama.
Perhaps having a strong teacher is overrated?
Thanks for your thoughts

how helpful it is depends heavily on a few factors:

1. what is your level of effort?
if you're only going to be taking lessons and 2 games a week, progress will be slow. if you don't really try and learn from the lesson/reviews after the fact, progress will be slow. if you're making the committment to get lessons then you should probably put a certain amount of effort in as well

2. who are you going through for a teacher?
if you're doing some random KGS 3d bargain bin teacher, i wouldn't expect good results. if you're going through an established go professional, i'd expect better results. also make sure you get along with this teacher. just because they're a teacher doesn't mean they're the right teacher for you.




more importantly
there's a lot of go knowledge to be learned
it will take awhile before it ever shows up in your game
dont expect to take 2 months of lessons and jump up to a 5d.
if it were that easy everybody would be 5d.

for more information read this post i made:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=11078

From my experience of having taught go to more than 100 regular pupils (not counting one-time pupils and group lessons), they fall into two major categories:

1) Improving because they also apply the lessons, play regularly and do also non-teaching go study.

2) Not improving (but only acquiring knowledge) because they do little else than taking lessons.

So (1) is a requirement for taking lessons being useful. Among the (1) pupils, improvement speed varies and depends on several factors. Since, as the teacher, I can influence only part of those factors, I cannot know exactly which fraction of responsibility for the pupil's improvement speed is mine versus his.

I have had quite a few pupils improving 4 (rarely 5 or 6) ranks while taking lessons from me. Sometimes this occurs witin 10 lessons, sometimes within 1 or 2 years; this depends mainly on the pupil's learning ability and available study time. The limit of 4+ ranks is, IMO, given by pupils quitting lessons at some time; I think further improvement would be possible by continued lessons but successful pupils would then also try to proceed on their own.

The improvement is almost independent of the pupil's initial rank. (This would, of course, differ for pupils starting to take lessons as mid or high dan.)

So, if you are a (1) pupil, cannot improve by yourself, can afford lessons and find a teacher fitting your learning style, then taking lessons is very useful.

I take lessons from yunguseng dojang. After one year, I play much stronger than when I started, but am not a dan player or even close. More like 10-8k I don't do it for dreams of immediate and swift progress, I don't have the time outside of work to study enough for that to occur. What it does get me is a well structured league for long games, frequent lectures, reviews of my games, and tons of exposure to new ideas. I do hope to reach at least 1d, and the lessons will certainly help with that. Just not overnight, or even this year perhaps. Meanwhile I'm having a great time.

whats your weekly practice regimen like?

Monday nights is about an hour of tsumego, then lecture. Tuesday's I watch the league a and b games and reviews. Wednesday I focus on joseki after work. Thursday is my league game and review. Friday Saturday I do lots of tsumego and try to play online if I can find time. Sunday is go club, usually two games against 3k-1d players.

I also do the yunguseng dojang and like the program. I didn't really have a solid rank to compare before and after, but probably got about 2-3 stones this year. More importantly than rank though is understanding through the stronger player what to look for and what to study. He has a great program of league games, reviews, and lectures. I still make some of the same mistakes I have always made, but now I know where to look for them.

If you want to get better, it's a highly recommended program.
http://www.yunguseng.com/

I believe that lessons from a pro or very strong amateur are more beneficial if you have done some self-study beforehand. A régime of playing actual games, replaying pro game records, and doing puzzles. In my view, an unpolished novice taking lessons from a pro and expecting to improve quickly is like a 2-year-old child talking to an adult. She is speaking clearly, but the adult cannot understand anything.

What I mean by that is the novice plays Go in a way that, to a pro, seems utterly incoherent, namely because the understanding of Go that each one has differs greatly. This is why I like to replay pro game records. Of course I do not have even 1/10 of the experience needed to understand the reasoning behind each move, but I get to see what properly played Go looks like. With time and regular exposure, plus regular application of the ideas that one picks up from replaying pro games, my understanding of Go changes and increases. Of course I still exhibit bad habits when I play, but I've been able to weed out the more obvious ones.

Having a teacher is essential to quick improvement, but it only makes up about 10-15% of learning. The rest has to come from self-study and reflection.

I strongly disagree, but please explain.

A great teacher will point you towards the right direction. But you have to walk the path, run when needed, crawl when tired and jump when required.

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

that doesn't explain the numbers of 10-15%

Magic numbers are usually hard to pinpoint.
Perhaps they are to be taken figuratively.

But I seem to remember some studies have shown:

- the difference in productivity between the top software programmers vs. the average could be around an order of magnitude (or more).
- ditto with the best teachers vs. the average.
- I have a feeling this tendency can be found in many different areas.

figurative wise that is also very damning
10-15 suggests that a teacher has very little to do with improvement, which is what i disagree with

Which is why magic numbers are difficult to deal with.

Concrete numbers: the number of hours per week spent with the teacher,
versus the number of hours the student spends by himself on tsumego, game reviews, etc. -- it's possible to get the 15% estimate based on this.

We can do the same for other disciplines: math, language, etc.

I don't think having a teacher is necessary for a talented beginner to go from 30k to 1d in a year (which I call quick improvement). I didn't have "a teacher" when I did that (or a bit slower) though I did benefit from teaching from the kind folks in the KGS Teaching Ladder, shygost's lectures, Charles Matthews at the Cambridge club etc. Where teachers can really help is when you on your own get stuck in a rut and need external help to improve.

that's if we're taking concrete numbers
if we're saying a holistic understanding of go, i would argue differently

either way, this guy needs to get in here and defend his assertion

There seems to be a dichotomy: people who started Go by their teens and made 1d in their teens or 20's, and those who didn't.

The former group would make claims like the above.
The latter may remain quiet, or go, "What are you talking about."

It'd be interesting to see real-world data points that support the above claim for these age brackets:
30 - 40
40 - 50
50 - 60
60 - 70
70 - 80
80+

If I remember correctly, every single person on this forum or KGS who's made such a claim belongs to the former group.

I am a member of the Yunguseng Dojang that oren mentioned (which is awesome, by the way), and it's my first significant experience in having a teacher.

There are a number of "yunguseng" in the program, but some have improved much faster than others. I came to wonder why might this be.

I happen to know a bit of Korean, and I read an interview conducted with In-seong Hwang, the teacher of the program. One interesting response he provided in the article was that he found a difference between teaching students in Europe and Korea. Namely, in Korea, if he taught a new joseki or technique, students took the information, tried it out in their games, and studied it offline on their own. When he taught students in Europe, there were many more questions. If he taught a joseki, students would ask "why" for every move. They'd ask about alternative responses. They'd ask many questions to gain understanding.

This response really made me think, not just only about the difference in learning styles among students, but also about what I had been wondering about earlier - why do some students improve faster than others?

I came up with a hypothesis, connecting these two ideas. Disregarding nationalities, some students have an expectation for the teacher to make them stronger. It would seem to make sense - you pay a teacher to help you get stronger - so why not? This would explain why some students are eager to ask many questions about what they are being taught - the teacher should explain to you fully, "spoon-feeding" the information, if you will, until you totally understand. Maybe this is the reason why some students (at times, myself included) ask questions even about the most trivial aspects of what's being taught.

A contrasting viewpoint is to throw away this expectation - it is not the teacher's job to make you stronger. The teacher's job is to provide you with new information. The person responsible for making you stronger - is you.

Currently, I am an advocate of the latter viewpoint. Why then, do I want to have a teacher? There are many reasons:
* Learning up-to-date information from an experienced player.
* Having a person to review my games objectively.
* Having an example player to aim for.
* Motivation.

But all of these reasons will do nothing to make me stronger - unless *I* make myself stronger. This is what I've learned from having a teacher.

_________________
be immersed

@Kirby: I kinda disagree with that. Yes, you have to put in the work yourself, but providing general information is probably the "least" value you can get out of a teacher. I'm fairly certain that there is more than enough information in books out there to reach at least mid dan level, so there is no need to get a teacher for that. What you can get from a teacher is individual guidance, be it questions you have or reviews of your games.

@Ed: You may be right, but I wonder if there is some actual data on that. Specifically the age coupled with the time put in.