Perceptual learning

[Bill Spight]

Perhaps these are too easy, in the sense that you might do well by asking which one would I play and then picking the other one. Alternatively, you can pick the more aggressive reply.

Well...I got them all right by thinking 'if I were looking at a pro game, where would I expect the pro to play'. Perhaps this tells me something about how to improve my own games

I used to play regularly with someone (Mr. X) who was a much better tactician than I was. While considering my plays I would sometimes tease him by saying, "Where would X play?" Besides, I really did ask myself that. It helped.

I really do think that it helps to ask where a pro would play, even a specific pro. Once in a post-mortem somebody asked me why I made a certain play. I truthfully replied, "That's where I thought that Dosaku would play."

Now if I could only channel Cho Chikun.

[Kirby]

Perhaps these are too easy, in the sense that you might do well by asking which one would I play and then picking the other one. Alternatively, you can pick the more aggressive reply.

This is exactly what happened with me. The answers you gave are all the opposite of the one I would have chosen.

[entropi]

I often study go problems (more or less) like this. I have SmartGo on the iPhone and it isn't too hard to just throw stones around until you get the right answer and then move on to the next question.

It doesn't train reading at all; it's more about identifying shape points and tesujis and the like and just internalizing it all into your gut. I have heard that this is how young inseis study.

Very nice and interesting method of learning. Not only go but for anything.

But when you use it for go, my impression is that it can be more useful if you apply it to "normal" positions. What I mean by "normal" is positions that are likely to occur in real games, i.e. positions or sequences that you wouldn't say "wow" if you see it in a game.

But problems tend to have more "unusual" answers in order to force you to read accurately. My gut says that such a perceptual learning will be less useful for learning unusual tricky shapes from problems.

Nevertheless this is just my first impression of the idea. Maybe it's useful in any case. Would be nice hear results from the ones who experiment with it.

[daal]

I'm having trouble constructing a worthwhile exercise because my own judgement is too inaccurate, but one idea would be to quickly recognize a weak group (i.e., when shown a few groups, correctly choose which one needs help first), and another would be to help teach positional judgement by showing several results of a clash and asking which one favors one player. Any other ideas?

[entropi]

I'm having trouble constructing a worthwhile exercise because my own judgement is too inaccurate, but one idea would be to quickly recognize a weak group (i.e., when shown a few groups, correctly choose which one needs help first), and another would be to help teach positional judgement by showing several results of a clash and asking which one favors one player. Any other ideas?

- Joseki selection
- Should you cut the opponets extension in a given position?
- Should you try to save the group or sacrifice it?