Taken from https://forums.online-go.com/t/repost-t ... t-hard/789
Which was taken from somewhere else. Original author's name is lost I think?

Anyway, I took the above and fixed the language a bit so that it doesn't sound so broken and unreadable. Hopefully sharing this here is going to be of assistance to somebody


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I saw many friends in the forum complaining that they can't make progress. I will share my self-learning experience from Tygem 2d to 8d with you in the hopes that it will help you.

Before going into details, I have to point out several things about study quality and study will.

1) Study quality
Regardless of whether you're doing tsumego or playing games, without quality it's insignificant. There are many internet players who've played thousands of games, but still stay at kyu level or low dan. This is because of study quality.

2) You should know the right way
If you study properly, you can avoid detours. I play Go since the late 1980's and I've had many detours and wasted alot of time. I remember holding a joseki dictionary and memorizing the contents. I could repeat every variation from memory and I got alot of self-satisfaction from it. Some years later, after I improved, I realized that it was a detour and that I wasted many years.

3) Strong will to study
To be a tygem 8d is not hard, but you need to sacrifice alot of time. If you use all off-hours on the game, It'll take 3 years at most to get from Tygem 2D to 8D. If you don't want to sacrifice too many off hours, 5 years at most.

When you wake up, you are thinking go, even when you visit your friends house youi also take a go book. When you're idle, you're holding a go book. Do such things then 3 years later you must be an 8D.

There are three main domains of study.
1) Do Tsumego
2) Play Games
3) Pro Kifu

About tsumego:

It is extremely important for Tygem 2D and these two points should be emphasized.
1) Quantity
When you encounter a tsumego book, just buy it even if it's an easy book. You can keep it for your kids or your students. You should have two copies of the classical tsumego books, one for everyday use and one for for referencing.

2) Quality
Don't go through the tsumego books only one time. You should do them repeatedly, until you clear every variation in your mind. Even that is not enough, clearing it slowly and clearing it in 10 seconds is different. (Basically, repeat tsumego books many times, always making sure to read out all the variations even in easy problems. Never skip the reading).

Two usual wrong ways to do Tsumego:
a) Not clearing all variations in your mind, just decide the answer by your intuition. It's a critical mistake in your calculation!
b) One-sided reading. You didn't check/find your opponents strongest answer.

I recommend a method for doing tsumego. Maybe it helps.

Before you do tsumego, prepare a pen and paper to record your mistakes. There are three general types of mistakes.
a) You think you were right, but you checked the answer in the book and it's different. Find the reason why you were wrong. This is an effective way to improve your calculation and make it more thorough.
b) You can't calculate the result. Don't check the answer until you solve the problem. If it takes too much time, leave it and move on to another problem. It means you're still not ready for it.
c) You think the author might be wrong. This is possible. You can consult other players.

The above are principles of doing tsumego. Let's talk about the essential points.

You must choose a proper book for you. Don't go for a very hard book. If you can only solve 10-20% then abandon it. You should choose a book in which you can solve 60-80% of the problems and then do it repeatedly until you can easily solve (clear all variations) more than 95% of the problems.

I think the proper tsumego books for Tygem 2D are:

Lee ChangHo tsumego (volume 1 to 6)

http://senseis.xmp.net/?LiChangHoJingjiangWeiqiSihuo81

Lee ChangHo tsumego

Lee ChangHo tesuji (volume 1 to 6)

http://senseis.xmp.net/?LiChangHoJingji ... iShoujin39

Lee ChangHo tesuji

After you finish the 12 volumes, you are above Tygem 4D. Although the author was not Lee ChangHo, the books are good and they contain almost every usual tsumego and tesuji that you'll come across in a real game.

Another book that's goodas well is Weiqi Tsumego 1000 Problems
http://senseis.xmp.net/?WeiqiLifeAndDeath1000Problems74

it fits from beginners to amateur 3D.

And a set named Weiqi Tsumego Training (http://senseis.xmp.net/?WeiqiLifeAndDeathDrills) (three volumes: junior, intermediate, senior), the senior volume is for amateur 6D and pro players, ignore it. The other two volumes contain about 2000 problems, a few of them are a bit hard. After my student finished the two volumes, he progressed from Tygem 5k to 4D.

Weiqi_Sihuo_Xunlian

If you finished all the books above(about 4500 tsumego problems in total), I think you can stay at Tygem 6D.

After you finish GuanZiPu(http://senseis.xmp.net/?GuanziPu), you can get up to Tygem 7D.

Tygem 7D is a barrier, calculation and comprehensive power are needed. If you want to jump to 8D, do Tianlongtu (I can’t find it on xmp.net), in my opinion Guanzipu’s problems require one clue, but to solve Tianlongtu’s problems you need find several right clues and compose them together, maybe this is the difference between pros and amateurs?

If you're done all the above tsumegos (about 7000 problems), your calculation is already ahead of common amateurs and not far from real amateur masters. You can stay at 8D.

Of course, you should calculate tsumegos but not learn them by heart.

About playing games:

Let's talk about quality first. A match is the contest of the two players' move fficiency. You should force yourself to play the most efficient moves. This is the only way from 2D to 8D.

If you look at random steps throughout the game except the opening (first 10-20 moves), and then compare efficiency every 10 moves, we can see that they are different. The side that has high efficiency will win the game.

One match has about 250 moves in total. In about 200 of the moves you need to compare efficiency (not opening and endgame), so if you want to win you should collect tiny benefits from every move in the game.

The rest is meaningless, and there's no content about watching the kifu of the masters.

Here's my translation of another 6D's advice.

1. The foundation of weiqi is calculation. Doing Tsumego is the best long-term way to improve.

Some beginners always think their opening is weak and they spend too much time learning the opening. When I played with them I never felt their opening was weak. The problem was that whenever the stones touched they collapsed soon. Opening theory doesn't work for them.

Remember, calculation is the foundation of Weiqi. It's the most important thing. The so called calculation means imagining all the variations of both sides on the board. You imagine variations on the goban.

The best way to improve calculation is to do Tsumego and Tesuji. Even pro players do them often.

As for the opening, I think that it's meaningless for beginners. If they know where the big points are, that's enough. http://senseis.xmp.net/?BigPoint

1. About Joseki.
Joseki is the best move in a local situation. Of course the best is always changing and some joseki's change every year.

The beginner doesn't need to memorize too many joseki, two or three star point joseki and three or four komoku(3-4) joseki is enough. In many situations your opponent doesn't follow the joseki. Then you should deal with it in your own manner and after the game learn the proper continuation from a joseki book (www.josekipedia.com)

Joseki is strange. I know some amateur 5D's that never memorize josekis. So for amateur players what determines the victory is in the middle game, not in the opening or the endgame.

That's why Tsumego and tesuji are so important.

I've used both this and tchan's translation from Cho Chikun as advice. I'm not even close to 2d tygem yet, but...useful advice still.

Here's his translation:
https://tchan001.wordpress.com/2011/06/ ... lculation/

Edit: Invitation required. (Thanks skydyr)

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Invitation required notice please?

I need this kind of encouragement from time to time, thank you for sharing this.
The thread on the OGS forum is a motivating read, with a mix of positive and negative reinforcements. I'm thinking in particular about:



I knew you can be afraid of getting stronger, but the idea that it can be offensive is new to me (althought it might be a simple disagreement on the meaning of "easy"). Regardless, this way of thinking gives me motivation to prove them wrong.

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La victoire est un hasard, la défaite une nécessité.

Is this your quote or the 8D's?

That is what he said in the post. Everything except the last sentence is his, I just made it into readable english.

OtakuViking - Given that you're tygem 5d, how much do you agree with what the original author said? I'm curious for opinions.

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And yet at the same time he says...

It is much easier for those who have achieved something to say it is not hard. As a Tygem 7d (I think that's the highest I got there) I would say Tygem 8d or indeed 2d is hard. I'm not offended by his saying it is (IMO people get offended far too easily these days, and there seems to be a dubious implication that being offended means the person shouldn't have said what they did) but I think he is wrong (or maybe we disagree about the meaning of 'hard'; he himself says you need to spend all off-hours on Go for 3 years to do it which I would call hard).

I pretty much agree with most of it, but there's more to getting strong than just solving problems. I also think studying kifu has value, especially japanese players from the 1970's-1990's. This is due to the fact that their play is usually very proper, with frameworks, reduction moves etc. Today's professionals play very hard Go with lots of difficult and new variations all the time. Japanese go from 20 years ago is much more 'proper' in the sense that it's simpler, thus much easier to understand. For example, it's easy to see with Takemiya's kifu what he wants to do, but a complicated Ke jie fighting game is hard to judge and learn from because you don't possess Ke jie's reading. Modern openings also involve alot of fighting variations, attaches and stuff that can make it difficult. So studying some older Japanese Kifu can be a great way to learn proper play in terms of solid, simple positions, proper reduction moves and good shape, whereas modern professionals tend to care less about good shape.

Having said that, I still think doing tsumego and tesuji problems is the fastest way to get stronger. I'd say my getting stronger has alot to do with cleaning up my game and making fewer mistakes. I'm generally very good in the opening, so for me it's quite true that I need to do more problems to get stronger. His point about efficiency rings true aswell. I think you need good reading to see whether you can make a 2 space jump instead of a 1 space jump, or a knights move instead of a diagonal or smth like that. The reason why reading is so important for getting stronger, especially on tygem, is that you can play a perfect pro opening and fall apart in the fighting because you didn't read properly or you missed a crucial tesuji. If you don't have reading power you can't punish overplays properly.

I've recently had a few insights about the importance of doing simple problems repeatedly even as a Dan player. A kid can do one tesuji problem, then learn the tesuji and go use it in his games. But an adult will have a harder time spotting that tesuji in a game. It takes more repetitions of the same kind of tesuji shape to drill it in. It's the same with spotting a shortage of liberties in a game. Players who start 'late' aka not kids, have a much harder time spotting this and other things in their games. So we can't just do problems once or twice and call it quits. We've got to grind these problems 5 times, maybe even 10 times, before we 'get it' and can spot the shapes easily in game. Now ofc just doing the same problem over and over isn't good because you just end up memorizing it without 'reading' the variations. That's why large, easy collections are great for sharpness in reading. (Cho chikun's collection and Lee Changho's collection's are great, aswell as graded go problems for beginners and dan players). The main difference between kids and adults learning go is the speed of acquisition, so for most of us, grinding out many easy problems is the only way to get the same kind of sharpness that a kid has from solving problems.

I also think pushing to solve hard problems is important, but it's an extra bit. Solving easy problems strengthens your fundamentals while doing harder problems pushes your mind to find new and interesting moves and variations and read longer sequences. It's like lifting light weights before lifting heavy weights to avoid injuring yourself and wasting your time. But in this case, as adults, we need to keep lifting light weights and keep working on our fundamental strength.

@Uberdude I agree that the author of the article makes it sound easier than it actually is. That's probably the point of it. He wants to motivate people instead of telling them 'look, you need to work your ass off for a long time to get anywhere because you didn't start as a sponge-brained kid'.
I don't find his attitude offensive either. People should get a harder skin and be less whiny in general

Thanks, both OtakuViking and Uberdude!

OtakuViking (or anyone) - you mentioned to study Japanese players between the 70s and 90s, one in specific Takemiya. Are there any other players you'd recommend studying?

I'm not as familiar with go players from that era, save a few big names, but I'm not always aware of when they played.

From go-ratings, a few of the dominant players during that time:
Cho Chikun
Otake Hideo
Kobayashi Koichi

Lee Changho - his classic games

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Prettymuch anyone who was a student of Kitani is probably a good choice.

Particular names might include Rin Kaiho, Sakata Eio (a bit older), Fujisawa Hideyuki (Shuko), Ishida Yoshio, and Kato Masao.

You're welcome

The ones mentioned above are pretty much the guys I had in mind. And yes, old Lee Changho games are excellent for this.

In addition to the above list, you could study Takagawa Kaku's games aswell. He's known for having a simple, easy-going style and the cap is his signature move. He usually outlasted his opponent and won in the endgame, a bit like Lee Changho.

Personally, I've also found that I enjoy Yoda Norimoto's playing style alot, but his games arent always simple. He has alot of fighting spirit, but will sometimes play seemingly slow looking reinforcement moves that make me go, wtf you play there? Why? then I find out that it's a strengthening move preparing for an attack or something, like a hidden honte move. So his games might be interesting to study aswell, but expect a bit more fighting. Yoda does seem to do well in the endgame though. I've seen quite a few 0.5 wins/losses against top players from Korea and china aswell as japan.

I fell that this is where the disagreement comes from. Walking, talking, writing are hard in the sense that it takes years of constant work to finally do it naturally. But it's also easy in the sense that almost every child (that goes to school) achieves it, barring a very low percentage of children with serious mental health problems.

I see the western go community as a group of adults that has never been taught how to read when young. We want to be able to read big books, we learn vocabulary lists, we want to do it a bit faster than everybody else, and we debate about the amount of natural talent necessary to read and understand Shakespeare.

So I read his statement as follows: of course getting Tygem 5d takes time, but if your energy is actually spent towards the goal, everybody achieves it after a few years - it's easy in that sense. On the other hand, stronger than that is getting in the realm of "strong Scrabble player" - it might just not be for you.

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La victoire est un hasard, la défaite une nécessité.

Can't say how much I agree with that. Anytime I spent on doing difficult problems feels...wasted. Well, maybe not so, but let's say the results are minimal. On the contrary, the same amount of time spent on doing (i. e. reading every possible variation) hundreds of easy/medium problems always brought/brings me better reading skills.

I don't know exactly why, but I guess in my case it has a lot to do with enjoyement, which in turn influences the quality of the reading that is done. Reading every variation is not too hard with easy/medium problems so I stick to it. My reading is then more thorough and "serious" so it pays off in actual games. Reading every variation (or even just the main branches) is much harder in complex problems so I tend to give up faster and/or read carelessly which doesn't bring much results.

This attitude I would call "extremely hard" for an adult. So I agree with Uberdude.

It reminds me of the time when I progressed from 2k to 2d. It happened in the course of a few months. I was playing a few games per week, long drawn out quality games, in a system with handicap based on the latest results. I was very keen to increase the gap with my opponent and spent many hours reviewing the game and draw lessons for the next one. Indeed, efficiency of stones was a major item in the analysis. I also had a large collection of easy problems which I browsed during idle hours. By the end of that period, I would indeed wake up and think about go. It lasted only those months though - there were other things in life I cherished, I had a job and a girlfriend ...

So, if you spend all your free time on Go and you spend it well, progress is inevitable and "easy". But the prerequisite isn't easy at all.

Anyhow, thanks for the comprehensive article: it is very interesting and useful.

The title of the page seems really interesting. Would tchan be willing to share his knowledge?

He may provide access upon request. There are a few other interesting articles, and he has a large collection of notes on various Go books, which have been very helpful to me. I'd recommend requesting access, if nothing else.

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I love you.

On my blog, I have retranslated the original revised Chinese essay which was the basis of the posted English version here.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.