Re: Proper way to improve your game?
Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 4:28 pm
I know this thread has been inactive for almost 5 months now, but I thought I could add something constructive.
I first took up baduk in May 2006, when I was 24 years old. For the first 3 years I was beaten by almost everyone and did not know how to improve. I even gave up baduk for a while and focused on other hobbies.
Then some time last year I read the following posts by Furuyama Kazunari, a Japanese amateur baduk player.
http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/category/5656702-1.html
http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/category/5477443-1.html
http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/category/5547294-1.html
This one, too. From it I learned the great secret of Korean baduk pros.
http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/article/251432166.html
...and so I learned something very important.
I began looking at my problem books every day and slowly my understanding of baduk began to increase. I now find that the main benefit of doing tsumego is, beyond merely memorizing the order of the moves in a solution, knowing why that order of moves is correct, as opposed to an alternative one. The goal is to develop an intuition for the relationships between moves. This is the meaning behind the word 手筋 (tesuji); just as the sinews link together the muscles of the body to help them do great things, moves should work together to achieve great things on the board. Tsumego will help train the novice player to recognize differences in shape and relationships between moves. Of course it will not mean instant improvement to shodan, but it is the best way to improve in the long term. At the very least you will experience an increased ability to accurately read out board positions at different stages of the game.
Hopefully the author of this thread is close to SDK by now, if he is not already there
I first took up baduk in May 2006, when I was 24 years old. For the first 3 years I was beaten by almost everyone and did not know how to improve. I even gave up baduk for a while and focused on other hobbies.
Then some time last year I read the following posts by Furuyama Kazunari, a Japanese amateur baduk player.
http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/category/5656702-1.html
http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/category/5477443-1.html
http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/category/5547294-1.html
This one, too. From it I learned the great secret of Korean baduk pros.
http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/article/251432166.html
...and so I learned something very important.
I began looking at my problem books every day and slowly my understanding of baduk began to increase. I now find that the main benefit of doing tsumego is, beyond merely memorizing the order of the moves in a solution, knowing why that order of moves is correct, as opposed to an alternative one. The goal is to develop an intuition for the relationships between moves. This is the meaning behind the word 手筋 (tesuji); just as the sinews link together the muscles of the body to help them do great things, moves should work together to achieve great things on the board. Tsumego will help train the novice player to recognize differences in shape and relationships between moves. Of course it will not mean instant improvement to shodan, but it is the best way to improve in the long term. At the very least you will experience an increased ability to accurately read out board positions at different stages of the game.
Hopefully the author of this thread is close to SDK by now, if he is not already there