Relearning What Was Neglected

[Southtown]

I desire to grow stronger in my ability to play this beautiful game of ours.

Problem is I've been stuck around 3 kyu for a solid 5 years now and it is time to admit that I messed up my learning curve.

I'm strong enough to muscle wins based more on my opponents mistakes due to my dependence on never ending fighting the DDK way with a dubious understanding of the game that makes people wonder if I'm straight up lying or playing weaker players to pad my rank.

I understand enough to know that I have never bothered learning any joseki directly and what I know came from a time when I would diligently practice lie & death problems on goproblems.com

I tried to see how high I could get on goproblems.com while making this post and stalled out at 15 kyu.

This only confirms my quiet thoughts about my abilities which are as follows:

I don't know shapes, josekis, tesuji or fuseki beyond what I have fallen into a pattern of using based on past matches copying what my opponents used on me.

I don't understand how to see the "whole board" in any sense.

I don't actually know any terms for the moves I make and never bothered learning them because I was winning games without that knowledge.

I am terrible at timing moves to the point that opponents sometimes just quit playing me because they see I don't know what I am doing in the space.

I fight way to much and now that I'm trying to play in a conservative way I now have my ass handed to me against players I use to beat with regularity because I don't understand the way to play without being the aggressor.

I know nothing will come of my efforts if I don't take the consorted effort to slow down and reassess my foundation, break it down and build myself back up in the proper ways.

I know enough to understand that I am missing a lot of knowledge I should have at this point so I am using this as a way of keeping myself accountable to myself for the lackluster growth and over-reliance on fighting and giving up a ton of "thank-you" moves to my opponents.

If any of you have insights to some of the games I'll upload and explain where I knew I lost or won: please do share.

I plan to keep this up for the next 100 days where I'll play games to work on skills rather than out right winning.

I'm using Katago to gauge my strength as I have only manage to beat it without hitting undo on a 9-stone handicap while only playing it on the strong setting.

Here is the link to an online GUI to use. https://katagui.baduk.club/home#

This is day one:

My record for today is 1W - 5L.

I have study the "A" section of Go terms and played on teumego hero until I exhausted all my lives in completion of 103 problems.

I didn't watch any matches or study any games as I just ran out of time due to other matters needing to be attended to.

[John Fairbairn]

Prime pro advice always has been, and still is, to play over lots of games. Not "review" or "study" and not your own games, but pro games.

I have seen no advice to use AI, and even in this modern age the Japanese magazine Go Weekly ran a series in which you had to play over a pro game from a single diagram, as fast as possible. If you could do one game in half an hour you were an ace, or something like that. In the famous Kitani school, pupils had to do one game before breakfast, so the prize was an early plate of Crunchy Munchies.

This does not mean that you never play games of your own, review them, study life & death, count endgames or whatever else floats your boat. It's just that you devote MOST of your time to playing over pro games.

The idea is to build up your intuition. The more you do it, the better your intuition becomes. It may seem counter-intuitive to do this at all, and especially to do it as fast as possible, bypassing any deep thought process. But what is going on is that to complete the game as fast as possible, you have to find the next move on the diagram as fast as possible. To do that, you have to learn to predict quickly where the next move is going to be. At first it's hard, but your "second" brain, your intuition actually does all the learning for you. And in that way, you are learning whole-board vision and timing (and other things, but those were two things you mentioned).

My GoGoD partner T Mark Hall famously got from 2-dan to 4-dan (and British Open champion) just by transcribing, i.e. playing over, the 800 or so collected games of Go Seigen. No other study of any kind. He had transcribed many games before, of course, but what was special about Go Seigen, a genius, is that his next moves were often not where Mark expected them to be. His intuition had to adapt to take account of the genius moves, and so Mark became much stronger (and super-fast!). The usual pro maxim is play over 1,000 to become 1-dan. That's just a symbolic number, but Mark's achievement shows it's in the right ball-park.

As to life & death. Yes, this is important, but should be way down the list. A tricky L&D situation may only occur once per game, and one that you actually know may come up once per 100 or even 1,000 games. How many under-the-stones positions have any of us met in real life? Studying tesujis gives a higher return on investment, but still suffers the same drawback of relative infrequency in play. In any case, you will meet L&D and tesuji situations in playing over pro games, and as a bonus you will meet them in the frequency in which they actually occur in real life.

As to AI, remember it too relies on intuition. Over many more games than you can ever play over in your lifetime, but intuition based on playing over games nonetheless.

You may wonder if such pro advice is any good, why does nobody on L19 seem to follow it. Well, for one thing, they are still weak amateurs...

If you want to understand why intuition is so valuable, read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking and Fast and Slow.

[kvasir]

Problem is I've been stuck around 3 kyu for a solid 5 years now and it is time to admit that I messed up my learning curve.

I think if you paid more attention to the safety of your own groups you can improve a lot but it will probably also take a long time. The way you are playing in these three games is abhorrent. You die live groups in gote, never try to live groups that could easily live and keep playing to the end making more and more mistakes. Instead you need to make sure your groups are alive, can escape or otherwise are not losing you the game.

My suggestion, if you want to improve, is to lose a few tens of games while you focus on improving your life and death and group safety techniques. If you can manage to not habitually die in gote then there is a long journey to learn how to play good moves rather than only good looking moves.

Sorry if I am harsh but every single one of the games has groups that just die for no reason There are about 10 groups in the 3 games that didn't get the attentions that they deserved.

[dust]

I feel like John is the elderly Taoist sage, encouraging you to learn without forcing it, letting the process fulfil itself; whilst kvasir is the fierce Zen master giving you a severe blow with his wooden sword to shock you into playing better and encouraging discipline.

Somewhere between this spectrum is the correct approach for you..... My own view is that absorbing James Davies' Tesuji and Life and Death (or any similar basic volumes) and improving reading a bit would be the fastest way to improve.

[Knotwilg]

I read some self deprecating analysis here, which I have seen very often in go players who somehow feel guilty for who they are as a go player and possibly as a person. One of the first steps is accepting who you are, in both aspects, while also accepting you are the kind of person that occasionally drowns themselves in guilt. Self acceptance is a prerequisite for mental stability which is a prerequisite for any sustainable change.

The "split personality" between the observer and the actor is blocking any genuine progress. The observer holds the promise of a better future while the actor is resisting any change. This allows the observer to hold on to the illusion of progress if it weren't for bloody actor. Self acceptance makes these two personalities come together and work on actual change while also accepting the limitations.

More on the tactical part of progress, you need to find ways of progress which you like and/or are easy to maintain. Myself I play, review my games with AI and do daily tsumego via an app. Any monster program soon turned out to be impossible to follow. I have a similar example on guitar playing. You got to love the process. As the formidable Bill Spight said: study what you like. It doesn't mean you stay in your comfort zone, just that you give yourself gentle nudges, both in terms of content and discipline.

Good luck

[Southtown]

I read some self deprecating analysis here

I would ask more questions about one's journey before making that kind of assertion.

I live a life where critical analysis and honesty of my situation is a requirement to keep moving forward.

Where you see "self-deprecating" I see myself being 100% honest and up front with myself and others around me about what I don't know and don't understand while at no time did I say that "I hate myself", or "I can't do it" or any of the tenants you should look for in conversation to make the assertion.

I would say culture is the reason why you see it that way as I see you reside in Belgium.

As an American living in the Midwest, this level of honesty is greatly appreciated as it shows others around us we are aware of ourselves and our actions having an effect on the world around us while working to correct those issues shows people I do grow and change to meet the demands placed on me.

Not that danger is around every corner but it is nice to know you have someone that keeps it plain, honest and to the point to avoid wasting time and effort trying to get things done.

All that to say this: Your last paragraph was the only helpful piece of information you gave me while the split actor/observer definition doesn't fit that I am working through a lack of education and understanding for the game.

Next time: stay on topic like the others because I don't appreciate someone trying to tell me that my problem is something else when I have told the exact reason of my problem.

Your soft approach may work for others: but I don't respond well to it as it beats around the bush and is meant for people that have a hard time admitting what is wrong.

You and I can get along but we just differ in our ideals, and that is ok.

[Southtown]

Completed 47 Tesuji problems on tsumego-hero.com

Played 4 games for 1W - 3L

Looked at one pro game once to see the sequence.

Today was a focus on playing light and not getting over-concentrated in one specific area to often.

I don't see the whole board yet and I did virtually no reading during any of the matches just playing moves according to shapes I saw.

Pretty much just playing gote through all the games.

I'll work on reading eventually.

That day is not today.

[Southtown]

You die live groups in gote, never try to live groups that could easily live and keep playing to the end making more and more mistakes. Instead you need to make sure your groups are alive, can escape or otherwise are not losing you the game.

That is what I don't understand. I don't know if groups are alive or dead for the majority of the game because I'm playing to fight not live.

I neglected so much because I found I really liked attacking all the time.

I appreciate the insight.

I'll work to learn how to see what you are talking about eventually.

[gennan]

Looking at the duration of those games, those were basically blitz games (played at a rate of 10+ moves per minute). Blitz games may be enjoyable, but don't expect to learn much from them. You can play 1000s of blitz games online without improving at all. So my advice is to play slower, more serious games, where you take some time to consider different strategies, some time to read, some time to count the score, etcetera.

Maybe it helps to imagine during the game that you will show the game to a pro or your teacher for a game review afterwards. They will ask you why you played specific moves while rejecting some alternatives, and at your level you should be able to answer those questions by explaining your reasoning. The reasoning may be wrong, or you may have overlooked a strong response by your opponent, but there will be something useful to discuss and learn from.
With blitz games, you typically put little conscious thought or reasoning into your moves. The moves just happen, so there is not much to say about such games.

[jlt]

Apparently Southtown almost doesn't know any theory, so probably studying almost anything should lead to an improvement. Tsumegos only represent a small portion of go skills, but if you are only 15 kyu on goproblems.com, then you will probably benefit from practicing tsumegos. Not necessarily on goproblems.com though, you will find better sets of problems in "graded go problems for beginners", or on the Tsumego Pro app, or on tsumego-hero.com.

Side note: I have solved many tsumegos involving the "tombstone tesuji" and thought it was useless since it never came up in my games... until I played it twice a few weeks ago.

[Southtown]

Apparently Southtown almost doesn't know any theory, so probably studying almost anything should lead to an improvement.

I do not disagree with your assessment of not knowing theory as I have dedicated no effort in learning theory up to now.

I use tsumego-hero.com way more than goproblems.com as I'm level 42 working through the collections but level mode has me around 3kyu when I use it in that fashion.

I learned a lot just by mimicry but without knowledge of why I'm playing the move I cannot grow wisdom of said move because it is my of a reflex than a well thought out play.

[Elom0]

. . . My GoGoD partner T Mark Hall famously got from 2-dan to 4-dan (and British Open champion) just by transcribing, i.e. playing over, the 800 or so collected games of Go Seigen. No other study of any kind. He had transcribed many games before, of course, but what was special about Go Seigen, a genius, is that his next moves were often not where Mark expected them to be. His intuition had to adapt to take account of the genius moves, and so Mark became much stronger (and super-fast!). The usual pro maxim is play over 1,000 to become 1-dan. That's just a symbolic number, but Mark's achievement shows it's in the right ball-park.

As to life & death. Yes, this is important, but should be way down the list. A tricky L&D situation may only occur once per game, and one that you actually know may come up once per 100 or even 1,000 games. How many under-the-stones positions have any of us met in real life? Studying tesujis gives a higher return on investment, but still suffers the same drawback of relative infrequency in play. In any case, you will meet L&D and tesuji situations in playing over pro games, and as a bonus you will meet them in the frequency in which they actually occur in real life.

As to AI, remember it too relies on intuition. Over many more games than you can ever play over in your lifetime, but intuition based on playing over games nonetheless.

You may wonder if such pro advice is any good, why does nobody on L19 seem to follow it. Well, for one thing, they are still weak amateurs...

If you want to understand why intuition is so valuable, read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking and Fast and Slow.

One great advantage to being a human is that it takes far less games to get to the same level of intuition. That's a motivating factor? I guess, haha

Perhaps on Life and Death, it should only be done as a fun pursuit in and of itself? So if if you like doing puzzles in general, you'll like Life and Death, but if you dom't, you won't and so don't, perhaps there are even those whom the risk of discouraging their enjoyment of go is not worth any potential benefits. Your not aiming for for pro. Of course if you were aiming for pro then by definition anything that makes stronger at go is something you like, the order of which caused which not being important!

[Southtown]

Read about keima/the knight's move under the haengma section of sensei's library since I know I like to use that a lot in games for defense and offense.

I gain a bit of an insight that I give away influence early on when I do contact fighting seeking to push in a specific direction only to be toppled because I was way to light and far to early to make moves toward that strategy.

I'll read up on diagonal attachment paths page tomorrow and work on some reading problems on tsumego-hero.com and from Cho Chikun's collection.

Completed only 13 problems in the Tesuji section on Tsumego-hero.com moving from 51 to 64 out of 200 problems seen a/o solved.

Played 7 games over the past 2 days for a combined record of 2W - 5L and was downgraded to 5kyu before getting back into the 4kyu rank.

Observations so far: I see myself playing way to fast and my instincts don't work on players with much better understanding of the rules that govern the laws of this game.

I do see improvement in moves and a growing knowledge of actions and reactions to moves I previously only guessed at.

While I still intend to not memorize joseki, I do see the value of just seeing the variations in the games I play thus far.

[Southtown]

[Southtown]