Life In 19x19

wineandgolover wrote:It sounds to me you need the exact same thing I need. Less theory, better reading. This is probably true of 90% of the board denizens. Better reading helps us win the fights where we are locally stronger, as we inevitably are when the opponent is "negative". Poor reading makes all our theory good for naught when our cutting stones die.

I appreciate your sincerity, but I have to say that I completely disagree with you.

When I lose, I go over my game a little later when I am feeling rational and focussed. I also do reviews for GTL. In the course of reviewing my own games and those of others I realised that the worst errors are not the reading mistakes, though many do occur, but simple strategic mistakes. They are things like holding on to junk stones or responding passively in gote, when it would have been possible to take sente.

To reach my current level, I did a lot of work on reading and tesuji. But I have found it difficult to get past my current level, and I have become more convinced it has largely been bacause I enjoy fighting, but sometimes don't know when not to fight, and because I often would get confused when there was nothing to fight about. I rarely miss a tesuji, and I don't get killed all that often. I tend to lose because I keep losing sight of the basic things!

In most fields there are fundamentals that apply comprehensively, and then there are specifics. When you learn specifics, it often happens you forget about the bigger picture. It's "not seeing the wood for the trees". Specific knowledge is only really valuable when you have the larger vision to know how to apply it.

As a musician, I find that slowly working on simple things like alternate picking or the way I hold my guitar enable me to tackle complex music better. You will note in my avatar pic that I am holding my guitar largely on my right knee, that's fine for classic guitar, but a pro pointed out to me that you should hold it on your left (I am a southpaw). I started doing so, and my folk-rock playing jumped up a level.

As a language teacher, over and over again I meet students who know thousands of words and how to conjugate obscure verbs and create all kinds of subjunctives, but have not practiced the fundamentals, like greetings or basic grammar sufficiently.

For myself, my goal in go from now on is to keep reminding myself of the basics until they become dyed into my very soul. At the same time, I will increase my knowledge of specifics, by doing tsumego and studying (i.e., not memorising) joseki.

Back to the issue of "negative go". Actually, meeting it and learning to deal with it is a valuable experience. I simply don't like the mentality that sometimes lurks behind it.

To put it in another way: there may be people who are tempted to use the "dark arts" as a way to boost their ranks. Up to a point, it may even bring certain rewards. Yet it cannot succeed past a certain point. You might quickly get two stones stronger by honing your hamete and anti-joseki and playing strange openings, but if you do that at the expense of the ABCs, then you will eventually reach an unsurpassable wall. I'd rather take the long path, and eventually become five or six stones stronger.