My Study Journal: Shodan in 800 days?!

[Jujube]

Alright, I've decided to throw my hat in the ring and see if I can climb the ranks as competently as some of the other enthusiasts that have climbed before me.

I think this will be my 76th post on these forums, and I joined this forum exactly 1697 days ago. So on average I post every 3 weeks. I hope to slightly improve on that - maybe one or two posts a week is sensible for a journal.

I have 803 days to go until I'm 30 years old. I have a full time job, and I am an active chess-playing, board-gaming, software-coding, PC-Steaming hobbyist all week long. My biggest problem has always been that I find so many things interesting, and I am deeply analytical and theoretical. There are simply not enough hours in the day to devote to the things I like, and therefore I bounce from one thing to another every few months. This is going to (have to) stop.

I graduated in Computer Science in December last year. So that means if I did a degree part-time, I can do Go part-time, right? So........... Shodan in 800 days. That is the aim.

THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TIME!!! I shout to myself.

For my birthday this year, I am going to get myself a nice board and stones from Mr. Kuroki. That's in September. I really hope he does not retire or move or sell his boards or something in the meanwhile. I also hope the exchange rate stays where it is!

I already have a board and stones, Korean / Chinese bamboo and glass. I think it's time I took this game seriously and devote myself to it. I hope the beauty of the equipment will be a reminder about how much I love and want to be good at the game and wish to play it long after I am dead.

I have improved from, er, 15 kyu, to, er, 12kyu (maybe?) in the last 4.5 years. Now I want to get to Shodan in 800 days. That may be impossible, you say, but bear in mind that the 3 kyu improvement came with a 4 year gap in the middle!

Here's what I am going to do:

1. Play 2 serious games per week at (minimum) 30 minutes + 5x30 byo-yomi, on KGS or IGS. Analyse them thoroughly, then post them here for feedback.

2. Play (if I feel like it) more games on weekdays against strong computers at high handicaps.

3. I own these books (ah, Go books, one of life's pleasures): Tesuji, Attack & Defence, Get Strong at Tesuji, 1001 Life and Death problems, 38 Basic Joseki, GGPFB vols 2 - 4, Maeda Tsumego (3 vols), The Middle Game of Go, Opening Theory Made Easy, Making Good Shape, The 1971 Honinbo Tournament, The Endgame, Life & Death. (Yeah, a lot of books for a 12 kyu!) Each week, I will take a chapter (or two if it's short) per week of a wordy book and really work on it. I find that making "fake articles" using markdown and GoWrite diagrams (or LaTeX and GoWrite diagrams), as though I'm teaching the concept to others, makes the ideas cement in my mind.

4. Do tsumego! Today I will buy GoGrinder for Android. I am in the process of making SGFs out of the Go books I own. On the bus in the morning, at lunch, on the bus on the way home, while dinner is cooking, at bed time... I think that 100-200 tsumego a day is perfectly do-able. (By the way, I am TERRIBLE at Get Strong at Tesuji. So, I'm going to start with that one!).

5. Post monthly here about my thoughts, whether this be things that I'm stuck on, words of encouragement, or lauding my quick steady progress.

6. I do not plan on studying pro games until I am 5kyu. I just don't think I will be able to understand them in a meaningful way until I have the basics of shape, tesuji, joseki, reducing, attacking, defending... all the basics that make the "foundation" of a player.

After my 30th birthday, I will pick a date in the calendar to go to my first Go congress, and walk through the door as a dan player.

I live in Nottingham, UK. There is a Go club here which is quite difficult to get to as it's over the other side of town (I live in a rural area and public transport stops after 6pm!). So if anyone lives locally, PM me for a real game in the city somewhere. I will also be taking a 9x9 and 13x13 set to the local "King Billy" pub (they have a new board game night the second Monday of each month) to publicise the game!

Thanks for reading.

[often]

One tip:

If you are this serious and going to spend this much time, get a teacher.

[Jujube]

I'm surprised by the recommendation for a teacher at my low level of skill?

I'd be happy to discuss what the merits are.

I mean, one problem is where I live (as explained, I live in the middle of nowhere) which results in a maximum download speed of 38KBps which is enough to watch YouTube in 144p with no-one else on the Internet but that's it. So, online teachers might find me disappearing from the Internet (or at least, endlessly buffering!)

My personal, uneducated opinion when it comes to these sorts of things is that I have a finite amount of money. I would spend it on a teacher to break a wall at 5kyu or 2kyu, but getting to mid-SDK? That's got to be tsumego, tsumego, tsumego, and playing, playing, playing, right?

Anyway, my first 12 hours have been productive (well, the evening that is, when I'm not at work). I have transcribed part 1 of volume 2 of GGPFB, I have picked 2 chapters from Tesuji for the weekly theory (8 and 9, 'into enemy territory' and 'escape', thought they seemed kinda opposite-yet-similar in a theoretical point of view. I have downloaded GoGui and Fuego and I am going to meditate for a few years and gain a higher plane of existence so that I can learn how to install the damn things.

In the last hour I have put part 1 of vol 2 in GoGrinder, 58 tsumego, and got these stats:

93.10% (54/58), 10.28 seconds avg.

Admittedly that was shortly after converting them to SVG. It will be interesting to see where the stats go when I attempt them again in a month or so.

I will post a slow game in the next update which will probably be on Sunday.

Feeling good about this.

[cyndane]

The merits of a teacher -- less bad habits to break later

[oren]

Also a teacher will tell you what to study. I recommend Yunguseng dojang. Inseong is a great teacher, but you can also work with Yilun Yang, Mingjiu, and many others who have experience teaching students to the level you're trying to reach in the most efficient way possible.

[Kirby]

I have mixed feelings about having a teacher. I'm a member of the Yunguseng Dojang as well, and I think Inseong's lessons are a lot of fun.

Basically, you'll get what you put into study, whether you have a teacher or not.

The best comparison I can think of at the moment is the navigation system I have in my car. I love the navigation system, because it guides me where I want to go - if I need to go to a new address, just type it in, and it can lead me there. But at the same time, I depend too much on my navigation system sometimes. If I'm in a car that doesn't have a navigation system, I easily get lost. I don't know the streets that well, because I totally trust the navigation system.

The best situation would be if I knew the streets well without the navigation system, and still had the navigation system for situations when I needed it.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, a teacher will point you in the right direction. But keep in mind that you're the driver. If the navigation system goes out, make sure you know the roads well yourself.

That being said, I'd still recommend a teacher. I love being a part of the AYD. But maybe more than for improvement, I enjoy it because it's fun... And you can feel cool about having a navigation system.

[often]

A few things.

First of, if money is a problem, then yea skip the teacher. But if you can afford it, go for it. The way I see it, plenty of other hobbies can be just as expensive compared against a weekly one hour lesson.

But yes, the earlier you start, the better. When i started my teacher told me it would take two years to break all my bad habits. What this means is that if you're weaker, you have less bad habits to get ingrained in your brain. I still have random bad habits that bubble up from time to time.

Also, i'd say ditch the time limit or "shodan" goal. In my opinion those things are toxic to progress. Go takes a long time, and learning is not a linear thing with Go.

Finally, go to the congresses when you can, and you'll have a fun time at any rank. People get hung up on their rank as some sort of manhood measuring contest. What you'll find is that the people who do this typically have inflated ranks, and aren't really people you want to play Go with in the first place.

There's more to say, but i'll let you take in these points first.

[CnP]

Hi, just a few thoughts. You might want to play your serious games a bit faster, 10,15 minutes main time and play more games during the week. Also, how about playing blitz (kgs automatch definition of blitz which is actually quite slow for blitz) instead of high handicap games with software?

I think efficiency is the important thing and I do wonder whether data entry of go problems is very efficient study time. I once converted the problems from the whole of "Tesuji" to sgf format but I didn't find it particularly efficient.

As for teachers, there are people who for a fee will review and comment on your game records - so no need for high internet speeds. This might be better than rely on people here to review your games.

[Jujube]

I once converted the problems from the whole of "Tesuji" to sgf format but I didn't find it particularly efficient.

As for teachers, there are people who for a fee will review and comment on your game records - so no need for high internet speeds. This might be better than rely on people here to review your games.

The idea I had was that all the problem books I own add up to maybe somewhat under 5,000 tsumego, and maybe I'll need some more books later on, so let's call it 7,000 tsumego. I wanted a way of tracking progress on specific sets of problems, and I wanted a way of "lengthening" the problems by swapping colours and orientations around on the board automatically. I also wanted a way of doing problems over and over again, whether it is at home or away from home. Digitising the problems seemed the way to go. I agree that it is time-consuming; however, I'm actually doing the problems as I'm transcribing them. If it takes 10 or 20 seconds to click around on GoWrite, I think it will be ok. I've already done half of the GGPFB vol 2.

I like the idea of having someone review game records for a fee, especially if they consciously keep track of the player's progression and zone-in on mistakes that they keep on making.

Teachers really are popular as a recommendation mmm? I don't know if a group lecture is a good fit for me though. I might enjoy the game reviews. Do you have anyone in mind?

[Jujube]

Also, i'd say ditch the time limit or "shodan" goal. In my opinion those things are toxic to progress. Go takes a long time, and learning is not a linear thing with Go.

Maybe it was a bit of a sales pitch! I was going to call the blog "All you are is the Go you play" but I thought that that might make me sound like an idiot.

That being said, I agree with you, it is better to let one's skill increase naturally through studiousness and good efficient learning. Having a name or ranking associated within a time limit can make progress harder, as we worry about ranks and names more than we worry about why our moves are bad.

So, let's just say it is a nice-to-have, but I will be consciously focusing on improving the game, and appreciating the improvement in rank online as a nice bonus. If I'm not improving anymore, maybe it is because I'm trying too hard!

[Loons]

I like the deadline. I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass.

I would recommend a private teacher over mass lectures. KGS plus lectures and community lectures in general (in my memory) are quite fun community events, though I thought Cho Hyeyeon's (prerecorded) wbaduk lectures (also available free online?) are better learning tools.

Are you just drawing your go diagrams in LaTeX? (I say, asking rather than googling in vain hope of a package).

[Jujube]

I like the deadline. I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass.

I'm sure that's a quote from a film or a writer or something. Hmm. Might have to google that one.

LaTeX has 2 packages for writing Go diagrams, there is igo, and psgo, docs here and here. I have tried both and found them ok. Problems are that it's quite laborious writing them, and one of the packages, I forget which, is based on SVG, which I would usually say is great, but I didn't like the way it rendered in PDFs, it kind of struggles to hit each line square on a pixel, so some lines appear fuzzy (to me, anyway), so I am using the tufte-book documentclass https://www.ctan.org/pkg/tufte-latex and GoWrite for the diagrams instead, and importing them as figures. It's a nice balance.

[Loons]

Douglas Adams.

[Jujube]

This is the first update on my journal. I aim to post weekly, every Sunday, about progress.

8th July (Wednesday)
Completed transcribing ggpfb volume 2 part 2.
Started transcribing ggpfb volume 2 part 3.
Did volume 2 part 1 in GoGrinder (58 problems) with the following stats:
93% correct (54 out of 58 correct) avg time per problem was 10.28 seconds.

9th July (Thursday)
Did volume 2 part 2 in GoGrinder (92 problems) with the following stats:
89% correct (82 out of 92) 18.28 seconds average time per problem.
Continued working on chapters 8 and 9 of Tesuji.

10th July (Friday)
Day off. Drank wine.

11th July (Saturday)
Brother's birthday. Went to see family.
Picked up new phone and installed EasyGo and put some problem sets on there. Looks good so far. I aim to input and work through 1001 L&D problems gradually on EasyGo instead of doing them in one large chunk.
Completed ggpfb part 3.

12th July (Sunday)
Did volume 2 part 3 of ggpfb in GoGrinder with the following stats:
61% correct (50/81) avg 35 seconds per problem (with a tea break in the middle)
Completed input of ggpfb vol 2 part 4.

---

I intended to play a game on KGS but some friends came over unannounced (not Go players). I also had some things to take care of (eBay stuff, ordering birthday presents, usual Sunday stuff). I am therefore behind on my 2 serious games per week. I will therefore have to play 4 games next weekend as I have some time off work.

I cannot escape the feeling that I will find it challenging to take the plunge and start playing online. My biggest worry is about having to guess my grade. The last time I played online was 4 years ago. I signed on to KGS today and could have played a game, but I ended up kibitzing for 10 minutes and opening a beer and watching The Day the Earth Stood Still instead. It wasn't even the 1951 classic, it was the kinda crappy 2008 remake.

I am really disappointed at how difficult I found ggpfb vol 2 part 3. It is not a difficult book. I may have discovered my reading / tsumego is not as good as I thought. I found L&D and the opening easy, I made a lot of mistakes on the parts about capturing races and defending corner positions and endgame. Actually, I think part 3 might be harder than part 4.

I think, however, I know what the problem is. In parts 1 and 2, the tsumego could be worked out in very short time, and the tesuji (or whatever) was quite obvious. Parts 3 and 4 require actual reading. I must admit that on a few problems, I played what looked like a move without reading out the solution. I got slammed for doing that. And yet reading 80 problems hurts the brain. I need to work on mental toughness, forcing myself to READ the problem out.

I created a great tip for myself. When doing tsumego, after you play move 1, you should be able to play the rest of the moves instantly. If you happen upon the right variation, but you hesitate when the computer plays the next move in the tree, it means you have not done the tsumego. You have guessed, and you do not deserve to get the answer right.

[Loons]

I find that over time on KGS one often gets an embarrassingly even number of wins and losses over time (I guess while not actively improving), and even then change is quite glacial. This is what having a rank is, I guess.

With tsumego, I would like to emphasise that to solve a tsumego, you should be finding multiple reasonable looking lines (which may fail or succeed or find a ko or something), not just jump to one "correct" sequence that looks forced. Which was a bad habit mine which I am projecting onto others.