Life In 19x19

Hello -

I see quite a few professionals and high ranked amateurs offering Go lessons online. Does anyone have experience taking such lessons? Were they effective? Possibly recommend someone with whom you had a good experience?

Thank you,

StarPoint

I used to take lessons with Tsurukame on KGS. He offered some good insight by looking at my games,
and he helped me rise from about 8k to 5k. I stopped only because of lack of time.

I haven't tried other teachers, so I have no means to compare, but I can say that I had a good experience and thought it was worth it. The only thing is that you need to have the time to review your teacher's comments afterwards.

Speaking from my experience as a teacher about pupils taking more than a very few trial lessons, there are basically two kinds of players of every initial rank:

1) Improves rapidly because of applying the lessons, playing regularly and seriously, also studying one's own games, reading a lot of books and solving problems.

2) Improves slowly because of doing little else besides taking the lessons.

Therefore, whether teaching is effective depends mainly on whether the pupil is very serious and active. Without a player's great commitment, taking lessons can be good entertainment, good knowledge learning but ineffective for improvement. Therefore, when starting to take lessons, ensure and maintain your commitment to learning go theory.

RobertJasiek wrote:1) Improves rapidly because of applying the lessons, playing regularly and seriously, also studying one's own games, reading a lot of books and solving problems.

Hi Robert, thank you for this information.
From your experience, for these type (1) students, do you happen to know the age bracket ?
In other words, for these type (1) students, what are:
the lowest age, the highest age, the average age, the median age, and the mode age?

In addition, have you ever experienced any type (3) students, as follows:
apply your lessons, play regularly and seriously, study their own games seriously, do many Go problems and read many Go books,
and yet still improve slowly because of their age ?

Here's what you need to know going in.


1. don't argue with the teacher.

2. DON'T ARGUE WITH THE TEACHER. seriously, there's a difference between not understanding and trying to assert what you think is right. if you don't understand, then ask for clarification or a better way of explaining it. do not justify your moves with later results or with your own logic.

3. get a professional go player. it's worth it, they know more and have the proper knowledge to teach you.

4. make sure you like taking lessons from this teacher. each one has a different teaching style and also interaction with you. figure out which one you actually enjoy. just because they're a pro/teacher/high dan does not mean you'll like learning from them

5. you will not see results for awhile. as i wrote over here

That said, it will be hard for you to see benefits immediately. Every game you play is different and if you are deficient in a lot of things, one lesson will not fix everything, nor will that lesson possibly show up for awhile. And that's assuming you learn and completley internalize the lesson afterwards.

6. put forth the effort. you will need to play games to show the teacher, many games. don't just show the teacher the only two games you played that week

7. don't be embarassed. your winning games will have mistakes, your losing games will have mistakes. you'll probably learn more from the losing games than the winning games.


Lessons are always effective, if not for getting better, then for getting an appreciation for the game and how vast/deep it is. Just don't go in thinking you'll be X ranks stronger in a month. it's not that simple.

RobertJasiek wrote:Speaking from my experience as a teacher about pupils taking more than a very few trial lessons, there are basically two kinds of players of every initial rank:

1) Improves rapidly because of applying the lessons, playing regularly and seriously, also studying one's own games, reading a lot of books and solving problems.

2) Improves slowly because of doing little else besides taking the lessons.

Therefore, whether teaching is effective depends mainly on whether the pupil is very serious and active. Without a player's great commitment, taking lessons can be good entertainment, good knowledge learning but ineffective for improvement. Therefore, when starting to take lessons, ensure and maintain your commitment to learning go theory.

You forgot a 3rd option:
1) Improves rapidly because of playing regularly and seriously, also studying one's own games, reading a lot of books and solving problems. Without any lessons.

Har har...

often wrote: 1. don't argue with the teacher.

2. DON'T ARGUE WITH THE TEACHER. seriously

I would say that if the need to argue with the teacher is that big, then either you are really grumpy or the teacher is really not good. Given the pupil's willingness to listen and the teacher's skill at explaining his ideas, there should be very little reason to argue.

I've taken lessons with Younggil on KGS, and I feel it's helped me to improve. There are lots of great teachers online. I highly recommend Yilun Yang as well who teaches a lot of people I know.

If you work at it with a teacher you'll improve. It mostly depends on how much effort you can put into it. A good teacher will help find your weaknesses quicker.

EdLee wrote:From your experience, for these type (1) students, do you happen to know the age bracket ?

Every age works. Well, ok, I think I have not had pupils 60+ years old yet. (1) applies at least to ages 9 to 55.

the average age

I guess,
mean = median = max - min
comes pretty close.

In addition, have you ever experienced any type (3) students, as follows:
apply your lessons, play regularly and seriously, study their own games seriously, do many Go problems and read many Go books, and yet still improve slowly because of their age?

AFAIK, no. However, I have lost about half a dozen due to marriages:)

***

Bantari, your option exists, and autodidactically fast improving players don't need a teacher (yet) indeed.

Bantari wrote:

often wrote: 1. don't argue with the teacher.

2. DON'T ARGUE WITH THE TEACHER. seriously

I would say that if the need to argue with the teacher is that big, then either you are really grumpy or the teacher is really not good. Given the pupil's willingness to listen and the teacher's skill at explaining his ideas, there should be very little reason to argue.

clearly you don't have this problem
but people do and it's worth reminding people not to

often wrote:

Bantari wrote:

often wrote: 1. don't argue with the teacher.

2. DON'T ARGUE WITH THE TEACHER. seriously

I would say that if the need to argue with the teacher is that big, then either you are really grumpy or the teacher is really not good. Given the pupil's willingness to listen and the teacher's skill at explaining his ideas, there should be very little reason to argue.

clearly you don't have this problem
but people do and it's worth reminding people not to

Heh... yeah yeah, I know. People argue with me all the time. Even when they should know better.

Why not argue with the teacher?

Why not try to kill the teacher's stones? If you do, fine. If not, you learn something.

(Sakata recommended trying to kill the teacher's stones in The Killer of Go. )

Bill Spight wrote:Why not argue with the teacher?

Why not try to kill the teacher's stones? If you do, fine. If not, you learn something.

(Sakata recommended trying to kill the teacher's stones in The Killer of Go. )

In my experience not trying to kill your teacher's stones gets you an earful after the game. Sometimes even during it.

Perhaps a good way to demonstrate the value of pro lessons is to post a demo.

Following is a game review that took maybe 30 minutes with Jennie Shen, 2P. She went through all the variations and talked. I recorded the text a few days later from memory, so mistakes are mine. Note, several comments are editorial or notes to myself. Most of Jennie's quotes are in quotation marks.

The two big take-aways I'd like to communicate are: 1) she saw mistakes I made, that I didn't see in my own self-review, and 2) there was a ton to learn from this single game, reviewed in just half an hour.



Note: Although Jennie knows I'm posting this (I requested her permission), I am doing this on my own volition, for the benefit of the others, not as an ad for her. I have no idea whether she is accepting students or not at this time.

Bill Spight wrote:Why not argue with the teacher?

lord. i didn't think this would be misinterpreted
read the second part of what i said

There's a difference between not understanding and trying to assert what you think is right. if you don't understand, then ask for clarification or a better way of explaining it. do not justify your moves with later results or with your own logic.

there are people out there who don't accept what a pro says and then will continue to argue their own move over and over because they think that their move is right.
chances are, if a pro is talking to you about your move, there's something wrong with it and there's something to be learned from it. arguing why you think your move is right wastes your lesson time and can frustrate a pro. if you don't understand that's different from arguing, because you'll be asking points on why it works or why it doesn't. but typically, if you get why it's right, shut up and move on to the next board situation.

arguing with a pro's move suggestion is like arguing with your math teacher why he marked off points for doing the math wrong even though you got the right multiple choice answer

a more blunt way of saying it, is that you are probably nowhere near the strength of a pro. do you -really- think all your experience and knowledge going into the argument is in any way comparable to the pro's?

if you don't understand, ask more questions, but don't argue with the pro.