Marcel Grünauer wrote:
I'm thinking a lot about what's the best way to improve, especially as an adult learner. Of course there's the usual "play, analyze, tsumego" advice, but something a bit more concrete would be appreciated.
The "play, analyze, tsumego" is decent advice but I find it more useful to first focus on
what needs to be improved and only then on
how to improve it. This helps with establishing more concrete goals and adding structure to one's training plan. For example, we can distinguish between:
Or:
- meta elements (e.g. time management)
Or:
- local tactics (e.g. tesuji, sabaki, haengma...)
- global strategies (e.g. direction of play, positional judgment...)
You can also approach these topics in a different order. For example,
- chronologically (opening>middle game>yose)
- starting with your weakest area
- starting with the topic you enjoy the most
If you're interested in fast improvement, then I suggest starting with the weakest area first. If you'd prefer a more ordered approach then something more chronological would be better. I've pretty much opted for a mix of both. My opening is probably mid-dan level but my middle game is very weak so I've been focusing on improving it for the past year. My goal is to master all/most middle game fundamentals before I move on to yose. This will probably take me at least another year.
Marcel Grünauer wrote:
It would be nice if there was a well-trodden road to improvement. Let's say, a five-year plan to get to EGF 3-dan. I spend quite a bit of time on studying Go but a lot of what I do seems random or haphazard.
I'm sure the above lists are not exhaustive but if you manage to master the fundamentals of everything I listed above you should be within reach of EGF 3 dan. As for "how to master all of these fundamentals", well, that's a more difficult matter. The reason why there's so many different study plans is that there's no one-size-fits-all plan. You'll probably improve regardless of the plan you use but if you want to be efficient you need to figure out what works for you. After a very long decade of slowly and painfully crawling towards shodan, I finally started making some decent progress again last year after I started more seriously analysing my games with AI. While I've always religiously reviewed my games on my own, I never had a teacher and apparently what I needed to kick-start my progress again was for someone or something to yell at me for all the bad moves I make. I've also started reading go books again after a decade long pause and I believe that helped me as well since books are the only resource I found that provide decent enough overview of various go topics. This is what worked for me but everyone is different.
Marcel Grünauer wrote:
As a child, people support you. as an adult and learn something new, no one really cares about you. So I feel it's important to have a coach who gives you support and cares about you.
Go is a solitary pursuit. Time is a precious resource, so I should really have rules in place on how to use it.
Since you feel that having a teacher is important, have you tried getting one? There's also various online leagues/study groups that you could join. Some of them are free. I've also found go clubs and tournaments to be very useful in terms of learning opportunities as well as motivation and support.
All in all, what I'd suggest to you if you want a more structured approach is:
1.) Write down a comprehensive list of go topics.
2.) Asses how good you are at each of these topics (if possible, with the help of AI and/or a stronger player).
3.) Choose which topic(s) you want to focus on. Don't pick too many.
4.) Decide how you want to study them. This will to an extent depend on your learning style but you can't go too wrong with a mix of theory (books, youtube), practice (games) and analysis (I'd include here being conscious of your thought-processes while you're playing.)
5.) Regularly assess your improvement.