On the effectiveness of tsumego, Sora's study journal

[Sora]

Hi everyone, I've been reading this forum for a while, but I've just made an account today, so please allow me to introduce myself.

I'm 20, and I have been playing go for 3 years on and off, (mostly off). Sadly I never really had time to dedicate to go as much as I'd like because of school and work. Recently I've changed jobs, and like 50% of the time I'm doing basically nothing, and my boss allows me to read, watch videos or do whatever I like as long as I do my job well. And in my free time I also have no real responsibilities (not married, no kids, etc), and I'm nearing the end of my academic studies, so I've decided to dedicate all of this blessed and newly found free time to improve at go, since I like this game very much.

So, how am I going to do it? What does every strong player tell weaker players to do in order to improve? Do tsumego. And that's exactly what I intend to do.

The thing is, I won't do ''X'' problems a day, since that might lead to extreme burnout if I find the problems for that specific day particularly difficult, but instead I'll exercise my reading ability for a set amount of time each day (say, minimum 1 hour). It doesn't matter if I do 5 or 100 problems as long as I'm making an effort to read and improve my ability to calculate, and doing it every single day. Of course, all of this is meaningless if I don't pause and make an effort to read in my actual games, so that's an attitude I must radically change, instead of playing just by ''gut feeling''.

This is half a study journal, and half a kind of research paper, to document how my brain reacts to doing a lot of tsumego everyday, and how it affects my games.

The other part of my go studies will consist in playing as often as possible and reviewing my games with stronger players, watching go lectures and reading go books.

Also, I must note that I'm no genius. I've personally seen talented people improve ridiculously fast (getting to 1d KGS) in a short period of time with little or no study at all, but I'm far from that. I'm pretty average, Which means, any improvement I make will be due to pure hard work and will be within the reach of anyone willing to put in the time. Also, if I do improve, this journal might serve as motivation for future players. If I don't, oh well, I'll keep playing, studying and updating anyways because I like go very much and I've wanted to do something like this for a while.

I've already started this study routine a couple of days ago, but only today I had the idea to make a forum account and post it to share my project with everyone. It's nothing too complicated, I made it a thing to do atleast 1 hour of tsumego each day (I've been doing way more than that, but everyday I must do the minimum amount), playing serious games atleast 3 times a week, review them with stonger players, and watch go lectures/read go books as often as possible.

I'm KGS 9k as of the time of this post, and I'll do my best to stay consistent and update atleast 2 or 3 times a week, in case anyone cares. But please don't have high expectations. This is not one of those 1D in 1 year kind of journal. I don't have any specific rank goal. Besides doing my best to improve and learn something new each day, the speed in which I improve doesn't really matter.

Right now I'm reading Tesuji by James Davies and I'm finding it incredibly amusing. For the next couple of days I'll focus on solving all of the problems in the book.

Any feedback will be appreciated


I'll update as soon as possible, see you later!

[RobertJasiek]

What does every strong player tell weaker players to do in order to improve? Do tsumego.

I'm KGS 9k

You must study much more than only tsumego. E.g., at your level, you must also learn to keep things simple. E.g., if you maintain connection, your group simply is alive and you need not solve tsumego at all to create life.

[Bill Spight]

What does every strong player tell weaker players to do in order to improve? Do tsumego.

Pas moi.

The other part of my go studies will consist in playing as often as possible and reviewing my games with stronger players, watching go lectures and reading go books.

Good. Reviewing your own games is perhaps the most practical way to improve. Even if you do it yourself. Try to find the losing move.

It is also important to play against stronger players, with or without a handicap. For instance, you might take Black against a bot that is rated at least five stones stronger than you. Sure, you will almost always lose, but the stronger player will show you plays that you may not have thought of, or that you thought were not good, and will punish your mistakes. Weak opponents won't do that.

[Sora]

What does every strong player tell weaker players to do in order to improve? Do tsumego.

I'm KGS 9k

You must study much more than only tsumego. E.g., at your level, you must also learn to keep things simple. E.g., if you maintain connection, your group simply is alive and you need not solve tsumego at all to create life.

Sorry, maybe I've been misunderstood. I'm in no way going to neglect the other aspects of go (shape, fundamentals, direction of play, etc). I play and review games almost daily. But I think my reading and fighting abilities are lacking, that's why I'm going to study tsumego for a while to improve in that area, but of course, all while studying other things as well. Thanks for the reply.

[Sora]

Why don't you recommend tsumego? Also, I think the playing stronger players advice is solid, and I try to follow it whenever possible. But sometimes it's hard to get them to play me. Maybe I could try reverse sandbagging? Haha. Thanks for the reply


edit: i suck at editing

[Bill Spight]

Why don't you recommend tsumego?

I have nothing against tsumego. But it is not the only path up the mountain, or even the best. Do you think that current pros could get to AlphaGo's level by doing more tsumego? No. It's advantage is strategic. It may not even be as good as top pros at tsumego. (We haven't tested that. It may be better, who knows? But that's not what makes it a better player.

As for the calculation of variations per se, there is not much evidence that pros are better at that than amateur kyus. They are much, much better at choosing which variations to calculate and --a skill that has little application to tsumego--, much, much better at evaluating the results of calculation. (The evaluation of final tsumego positions is clear.) You do not need to do tsumego to develop the skill of deciding which variation to choose, nor will tsumego help you to develop the skill of evaluating the results of calculation. Again, let me stress that I am not against doing tsumego. That is my main study now, myself.

Also, I think the playing stronger players advice is solid, and I try to follow it whenever possible. But sometimes it's hard to get them to play me.

That's why I suggested playing against stronger bots. There are plenty of those, and they cannot refuse to play you.

BTW, back in the 1970s Kido, the premier go magazine of the time, for its New Year's issue asked all of the Nihon Kiin pros to give advice to amateurs on how to improve. Many of the pros just said, play a lot. The most frequent advice, as I recall, was to play a lot of games taking three stones. Also frequent was the advice to play thickly. Also to get a rival. I am sure that some of the pros said to do tsumego, but not that many.

In general, the pillars of a good go game are these:

1) Fighting spirit;
2) Tesuji and shape;
3) Fuseki;
4) Joseki;
5) Tsumego and yose.

Good luck!

[Bill Spight]

BTW, you will note that I linked tsumego and yose together. They are a natural pair, as they both involve play in a relatively small region, and the problems can be read out to a conclusion. Many of the tesuji are the same, and many yose involve threats to kill or make ko. The study of yose will also help you to evaluate the results of your reading. Damezumari is very important in both.

Speaking of which, at your level damezumari is quite dangerous. Do not play a gentlemanly pass at the end of your games. Fill all the dame. You will find that your opponents in even games will often fail to see protective plays, giving you the chance to turn the tables. Sometimes the same thing will happen to you.

[Sora]

BTW, you will note that I linked tsumego and yose together.

Yes, that's where I want to improve at the most, pure reading ability basically. Right now, especially for complicated positions I feel that after a bunch of moves I just lose track of the stones and liberties and it gets all blurry. I'm much better than when I started doing problems (could hardly read 2 moves ahead), but still not good enough.

Thank you so much for taking your time to write down those amazing tips, surely after I finish Tesuji I'll check out some Life and Death and Yose books.

Cheers

[Sora]

>Played against a 6k today. He gave me 3 stones. I've lost the game by 17 points. I had a huge lead throughout the whole game but made a
stupid mistake at move 135. I won't make excuses saying that I could had easily won, that I feel underranked, bla bla. Victory or defeat is the sole factor that determines rank. I made a mistake and he took advantage of it, that's why he's 6k and I'm 9k. I'll pay more attention next time.

http://eidogo.com/#vNRJcVaW


>Also went through the chapters about capturing stones of Tesuji (the first chapters) and did all of the problems of those chapters.

[Sora]

Today is my day off from work, so I'm going to dedicate the entire day to the study of go. My plan is to keep on reading and doing the problems of Tesuji, and also play a few serious slow games on KGS while actually pausing to think on every move, without making obvious blunders due to lack of concentration (this is way harder than it seems).
I also plan to rewatch a few lectures on direction of play and basics that I found intresting. This is it for now.


See you

[Shaddy]

>Played against a 6k today. He gave me 3 stones. I've lost the game by 17 points. I had a huge lead through the whole game but made a
stupid mistake at move 135. I won't make excuses saying that I could had easily won, that I feel underranked, bla bla. Victory or defeat is the sole factor that determines rank. I made a mistake and he took advantage of it, that's why he's 6k and I'm 9k. I'll pay more attention next time.

http://eidogo.com/#vNRJcVaW


>Also went through the chapters about capturing stones of Tesuji (the first chapters) and did all of the problems of those chapters.

@move 50, Black to play and kill the top right corner.

[Sora]

@move 50, Black to play and kill the top right corner.

Damn it, I missed that one. So much tsumego to then miss such basic stuff in actual games. I really need to improve my concentration. My opponents often play kind of blitz even in 30 minutes games and I feel like I get dragged into their pace and end up playing on ''auto pilot'' mode, really fast and without thinking much.
Thank you for taking your time to watch my game and pointing that out!

[Sora]

>Read the chapters about Ko of the book Tesuji and did all of the problems, some were very hard.

>Spent quite some time playing even games against a 1 dan bot, testing fuseki ideas, trying different shapes to see where it would attack me and expose my weakness and how he would profit from it. I tried not to get him to fool me twice with the same moves, was pretty fun. I lost all of them obviously.

>Watched dwyrin's basic lectures for kyus, his channel has a lot of good material it seems.

Tomorrow I'll do my usual tsumego practice, and then play one very slow game, In a way that I force myself to actually think before every move. I really need to learn to keep my hand off the mouse sometimes. I'll post the game even if I lose.

See you

[Sora]

Here's the game http://eidogo.com/#3f8zrvFD

Maybe trying to kill was overplay and I should had attacked to profit elsewhere.

[Sora]

>Did the problems about capturing races of the book Tesuji
>Played some games, one very slowly and pausing to think before every move, even though I lost I'm happy with my attitude in this game.
>Watched some lectures on fundamentals on youtube.