Life In 19x19

Thanks jlt!Yeah now that you point those out I can see how stupid they look :/ I really need to start thinking a bit more before playing

So a bit of an update about how I'm doing.

Currently I'm 11k on OGS, maybe 2 games from ranking up to 10. We shall see how that goes. I'm on a 9 game winning streak so I'm a bit afraid I'm gonna crash and burn soon.

I've been skimming through a lot of go books but realized pretty quickly almost everything was a little too hard. Currently I'm reading Elementary go series vol 1 and Graded go problems for beginners vol 1. (It's a bit sad to realize how much trouble I've got with the basics but at least I figured it out and I'm fixing it now!)

These days I tend to play and review ~1 live game a day and I've got way too many corr games going on too

A few exercises for your posted game:

88 - Black can kill
87 - White can live
105 - do better and save the game

Stemu wrote:I've been skimming through a lot of go books but realized pretty quickly almost everything was a little too hard. Currently I'm reading Elementary go series vol 1 and Graded go problems for beginners vol 1. (It's a bit sad to realize how much trouble I've got with the basics but at least I figured it out and I'm fixing it now!)

Too hard? For problems you should be getting only half of them right. Otherwise, they are too easy. (OC, when you review you should do better. )

Bill Spight wrote:

Stemu wrote:I've been skimming through a lot of go books but realized pretty quickly almost everything was a little too hard. Currently I'm reading Elementary go series vol 1 and Graded go problems for beginners vol 1. (It's a bit sad to realize how much trouble I've got with the basics but at least I figured it out and I'm fixing it now!)

Too hard? For problems you should be getting only half of them right. Otherwise, they are too easy. (OC, when you review you should do better. )

Hi Bill,
I've heard you mention this "half right" idea more than once, but I forgot how much time this was applicable to. Do you mean getting half right by spending a couple of minutes on the problem? More?

I guess you should spend similar time to what you'd spend in a game?

Re: difficulty of problem books, I usually find that the difficulty of problems throughout a book can be quite diverse. If a book has 1/3 obvious or easy, 1/3 medium and 1/3 hard problems, then I think the book is roughly at my level.

Obvious = I immediately see the good answer, and I only need a few seconds to check.
Easy = I can solve in roughly 30 seconds, with very few mistakes.
Medium = I need 1-3 minutes, and yet make occasional misreads
Hard = I have no intuition, so either I can't find the solution or I need several minutes of careful reading.

For such a book, my success rate is about 50% the first time (so this corresponds to Bill's criterion), 75% the second time if I review it just after (and 90% the third time if there is a third time). However, after a few months I tend to forget, so my success rate can be back to 70% or less... except if I have learned useful material from other books. For instance, some middle game problems in "Graded go problems for beginners 3" became much clearer after I had worked on "Tesuji" by Davis.

Kirby wrote:Hi Bill,
I've heard you mention this "half right" idea more than once, but I forgot how much time this was applicable to. Do you mean getting half right by spending a couple of minutes on the problem? More?

I guess you should spend similar time to what you'd spend in a game?

I don't know what's best. Everybody is different. Whatever feels right to someone is probably a good pace for them.

Bill Spight wrote:

Stemu wrote:I've been skimming through a lot of go books but realized pretty quickly almost everything was a little too hard. Currently I'm reading Elementary go series vol 1 and Graded go problems for beginners vol 1. (It's a bit sad to realize how much trouble I've got with the basics but at least I figured it out and I'm fixing it now!)

Too hard? For problems you should be getting only half of them right. Otherwise, they are too easy. (OC, when you review you should do better. )

Yeah mostly I was trying to read through theory books where I didn't really understand a word of what the author was talking about. Not fun and not useful at all. So I decided to go to the absolute basics. Which was a great decision because even Graded go problems for beginners vol 1 took me hours and gave me a headache

jlt wrote:Re: difficulty of problem books, I usually find that the difficulty of problems throughout a book can be quite diverse. If a book has 1/3 obvious or easy, 1/3 medium and 1/3 hard problems, then I think the book is roughly at my level.

Obvious = I immediately see the good answer, and I only need a few seconds to check.
Easy = I can solve in roughly 30 seconds, with very few mistakes.
Medium = I need 1-3 minutes, and yet make occasional misreads
Hard = I have no intuition, so either I can't find the solution or I need several minutes of careful reading.

For such a book, my success rate is about 50% the first time (so this corresponds to Bill's criterion), 75% the second time if I review it just after (and 90% the third time if there is a third time). However, after a few months I tend to forget, so my success rate can be back to 70% or less... except if I have learned useful material from other books. For instance, some middle game problems in "Graded go problems for beginners 3" became much clearer after I had worked on "Tesuji" by Davis.

Ah this makes sense! I guess I had a it a bit too easy but a gentle start never hurt anyone (Also going to keep tesuji in mind when I get to vol 3!)

Knotwilg wrote:A few exercises for your posted game:

88 - Black can kill
87 - White can live
105 - do better and save the game

Looked these trough. What move would you suggest at 105 tho I'm lost

I finally beat a 10k in even game! Ahhhhhh I'm so happy! I've been struggling against 10ks ever since I started this journal!

Is your E2 group alive after ?

Hi Stemu,

Re: jlt's note:

EdLee wrote:Hi Stemu,

Re: jlt's note:

Study what happens if 139 H1 hane.

jlt wrote:Is your E2 group alive after ?

Yeah I actually noticed that later in the actual game. I would have lost so badly if my opponent had realized. Actually you could probably summarise the whole game like that.

Yeah, taking a moment to look at my groups to see if I'm strong enough is something i've been trying to work on