Of course. The only requirement is that they want to learn from such sources.

Laman: It may be that professionals have an understanding of thickness etc, but may not necesssarily have sharp definitions that they could write down. But I think that's inconsistent with Robert's position, so I didn't include it in the options.

If it's true that professionals understand the concepts without having to give definitions for them (understanding via examples, backed by reading and experience), then Robert is wrong that these definitions are a necessary condition of becoming strong.

Note also that I didn't even say that giving definitions like Robert wants to is a bad thing. Even if top players don't need to have definitions spelled out, the rest of us might benefit from them. Not everyone learns in the same way.

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Occupy Babel!

Do you consider it unlikely / impossible that their understanding of the principles already exceeds that of the literature you are hoping to write / see written by others, but they simply haven't formulated their understanding in writing?

A definition of, e.g., thickness is only half the necessary way. It already gives a lot of new insights (like, as mentioned, distinguishing better from worse moves in the neighbourhood). The other half is a collection and explanation of all possible uses of thickness, especially during the middle game. This is still mostly an open research topic. Maybe all important uses are floating around somewhere in the literature but nobody seems to have compiled them all at one place so far.

They understand only part of the concepts - not all if them. Otherwise they could have explained better why good joseki follow-ups near thickness are the usually best moves.



I do not say so. I think that everybody able to read and understand definitions (due to their text alone or due to the text together with applying examples) can improve much faster than from seeing nothing but examples, for which the probablity is great that they do not represent as much / completely as the general definition. To create the contents of such definitions, I had to see 10,000 examples for each topic and then do additional research. With the definitions, ca. 10 (sometimes 1, sometimes 100) examples for each suffice. Learning can be accelerated by a factor of 100 to 1,000 because the reader does not need to repeat the effort of finding the best possible generalisation and doing research.

I think that the union of all professionals' knowledge
- contains principles known only to some or all of them (and often not formulated for amateurs' access),
- misses principles discovered only by amateurs,
- has abilities other than principles and better than typical top amateurs: reading speed, reading amount, endgame calculation speed, endgame calculation amount, life and death "mental database" knowledge

defining the word that is in its lowest form is pretty much useless as defining what "1" is.
people can add and substract without learning what peano system is.
thickness = thickness
everyone understand the meaning of "thickness"
and they can improve without reading the book you wrote about thickness.

all korean professionals became professionals without giving much thought on what the definiton of thickness.

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

This may well be true (I would guess that it almost certainly is true) of professionals, and perhaps even of high-level amateurs such as yourself - but I must say that "thickness", along with several other go terms, is something that I only have a vague sense of from having seen the term used in books ad online discussions. I can't speak for how good Robert's books are, as I've never seen any of them, but I certainly wouldn't dismiss the usefulness, at least for kyu players (and probably some dan-level amateurs too) of seeing a good definition and in-depth discussion of the term. (Although much would depend on how well the discussion is written )

I have been following this debate with interest, and have sympathies on both sides. I don't personally believe that Robert has discovered anything which is unknown to professionals, but I do believe that good presentations of such material (and I repeat that I have no idea whether his are good or not) would be potentially extremely useful to many amateurs.

So you could make someone become 9p in 7-70 days! Where can I sign up? Please also include your cancer cures.

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Occupy Babel!

Wrong. As a 7k (or still as a 5k?), I had almost no idea. Using thickness well in general is yet much more difficult I was 5d for about two years before learning it.



Of course, they can, can they? If all could, then why are there still kyu players?:) The question is: How fast can they learn it without reading a good book on the topic? When I was improving from 10k to 5d, there were no useful books on the topic at all. This made it particularly hard for me at that time.

How have you leant thickness?

I gave up thickness for leant.

I promise this isn't intended offensively, but you first entered as a 5d in 1998 (GoR 2427). 13 years on, and approximately 11 years after learning how to use thickness, you are still fluctuating between 2400 and 2445. Did learning how to use thickness effectively not actually help you, or is there another reason it hasn't manifested itself in your rating?

I'm asking primarily because, for example, if I wanted to get a book by you on thickness that you advocate as improving my understanding of the game, I'd want to see a corresponding change in the benchmark that tracks my performance. I'm surprised that, if you understand the concept so much better now, you haven't similarly improved over that period?

I'd hope so, i.e. that the professionals did learn it from me.

Maybe you mean something else though: That I did discover nothing and that all my research was nothing but rediscovery of previously existing knowledge? Utter nonsense; read all my messages on rec.games.go and other forums and you will learn about countless discoveries by me. Or read my webpages and try to find what others had not known before. E.g., Chen Zuyuan wants to spread knowledge of my ko research results in China. I invite everybody to attempt in vain proving that, e.g., my general ko definition (so that not all strings are ko strings) was not the first fitting all known ko shapes. (The earlier general ko definition (so that all strings are ko strings) is also from me.)

Classifying all possible types of ko may be interesting for you and some others, and perhaps even to me sometimes - but only in an abstract theoretical sense. I doubt that such "research" will help anyone to play better go.

Wait. Having to study 10 instead of 10000 examples per concept does not mean to become 9p. That requires more than knowledge about which concepts exist and what they are good for. (In particular, short cuts to life and death reading are hardly researched yet.) OTOH, the book is written to teach much more than a combination of "Strategic Concepts of Go" and "Attack and Defense", each of which I equate as worth 2 stones if the reader is about 5 kyu. (About that much they gave me.) If I had gotten my coming book into my hands as a 5 kyu, I would have improved ca. 4 to 5 ranks due to it because that much I made by reading less theory in over 100 books.

Very likely though, not everybody might have the ability to improve that quickly despite the amount of contents. It does not suffice to read a book - one must also be able to apply it. By my experience that needs ca. 3 months. Some players simply don't recall all they have read; they could consider reading a book more than once.

(Ratings is another topic.)

Between my 1998 5d games and my current 5d games is a tremendous difference in knowledge, understanding, insight, judgement etc. In 1998 I made bad moves because I felt like making them (making deep invasions without room for eyes etc.) - today I analyse positions carefully before making plans and choosing fitting moves. The 5d I was in 1998 would stand no chance against the 5d I am today.

Of course, it is a good question why I am still 5d. The major reasons in order are:
- I spent more time on rules research than on improving my playing strength.
- I spent more time on go theory research than on improving my playing strength.
- I had / have some playing weaknesses that no one else was able to point out (although in retrospect they are obvious to a good teacher), I had to discover by myself (because I could not find the sufficiently good other teachers) but discovered only about 2 years ago. (Sorry, I do not reveal my playing weaknesses to avoid giving my tournament opponents easier winning chances. Only one such weakness is pretty well known anyway: My local life and death problem reading is only 5d and not 6d level. My large scale life and death reading is much stronger though, although I do not quite believe when two 8p called it 8p level, when they together could not survive with their a mega-dragon in the center:) ) Those weaknesses require more time effort than I can / want to invest in view of my profession and hobbies (see above).
- Compared to 6d+ standard, my reading in unknown problems is very slow. As you know, I am an ultra-precise hyper-analytical thinker but the price is slowness. Precision and speed do not fit well together. While IQ tests measure high values (up to about 155), they do not model my much slower thinking in complex reading situations. Given the falling average of thinking times, I am having trouble with the time limits. (Everybody has.) Having learned Go at 20, I also miss the advantage of a child's early brain wiring for faster reading. By far I do not think that I am at my limit because things I know to some extent I can read very fast. For sure doing lots of more LD problems would help me a lot.
- The overall playing strengths have risen. At least I have managed to keep up with that overall increment.



Thickness is just one of many topics in the book, but a prominent one. Thickness is essential for becoming stronger. If you do not have an all-inclusive understanding of thickness yet, then you should try to get all information on it you can find.

Thickness is by far not the only thing that you need to know. One is about as weak as the weakest level of all standard go theory topics. (In the kyu range, this is not so clear. At 1k my LD knowledge was that of a 7k because during the half a year for the jump I had neglected LD. When I caught up with LD and a few other knowledge gaps, I jumped to 3d.) IOW, if you learn all about thickness but overlook every atari, then you remain 20k, to give an extreme example. Or I remain 5d (also) because my local LD reading and my reading speed remain at 5d.

Sure (except that really studying such things also improves one's reading ability). Rare kos are for research rather than for improvement. This my (yes, not some professional) research does make all players using area scoring a bit stronger though:

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/kodame.pdf

(You can stop reading ASA you understand what a dame ko fight is and how to fight it. All the necessary mathematical proofs by me you find in rec.games.go archives.)

"There's more than one way to skin a cat", as they say.

In this case, do I think reading an axiomatic book on thickness will increase my go strength? Maybe. Is it the only way to acquire the knowledge? Probably not. I can probably acquire the same or greater know-how by conventional study methods.

I will say that I'd trust a book from a pro over that of an amateur...

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be immersed

For that reason, my book offers both methods (and for influence even three different methods).



The quality of books is independent of whether the author is pro or (strong) amateur. The quality of a book's contents depends on the writer's teaching ability, his knowledge on the topic, his time invested in the book and possibly in preceding research, the amount and quality of knowledge in the book, the used teaching methods and whether the reader accepts or even enjoys the writing style.

From what I have seen in bookstores, on average books by amateurs are better than books by professionals because many professionals use only one teaching method: teaching by examples. Over 90% of their books in bookstores are like that. Such unimaginative teaching is good only for reading exercise problem books about life/death, tesuji or endgame (provided the endgame counts are more accurate than 0.5 points).

Precision and speed fit well together when speed is high enough. What is precision but speed? Calculating a tsumego problem is speed, and probably any dan player could solve any tsumego given enough time. So when practising tsumego it is not really about if you can solve it, but about how fast. If you practise tsumego your speed will rise, and you will be more precise(in less time see more variations, and miss less). I was just wondering, how high is 150 IQ?

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