I appreciate everyone's responses, regardless of whether they were helpful or not, its means a lot that you would even take the time to bother with helping along a struggling beginner. That being said, let me open the floor a little bit: Uberdude critiqued my inferior shape. Tell me, what sort of exercises are helpful in understanding fundamental shape qualities? I'm a musician and I've been surprised to see that learning the game of Go is quite similar to learning to play an instrument. By this I mean that theory and skill development are both essential and one will be quite insufficient while the other is absent. Now I realize that at my level, exposure and experience are probably going to get me further than anything else, however, just like practicing an instrument, playing and practicing are not the same thing. I know from playing Chess that when you're actually "practicing", it really shouldn't be fun at all and you shouldn't be able to do it for very long without getting mentally worn out. All this to say, I'm looking for exercises that are particular meant for understanding what strong stones look like and what makes a shape "weak". I'm not certain if this is something based primarily in book theory or in skillful development but I'd like to work at whatever is necessary. By the way, this wasn't the purpose of the original post (I was asking about pincers primarily) but I'm posting this here so that everyone can see a game of mine to asses my weaknesses and possibly, my strengths if any (it does help to tell a student when they're on the right track). One last question: I have this constant feeling that I've had since my first game ever, and that is that if a pro looked at my game, he would consider at least 90% if not more of my moves to be strait bad. The question: Does this feeling ever go away?

_________________
Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

As someone improves, this percentage drops.
The closer one gets to pro level, the more this percentage drops.
That's the upside. The downside is it gets exponentially^(*) more difficult to improve.

For example, if someone is about 6 or 7 stones from pro,
the percentage should be quite a bit less than 90%,
though I dunno by how much.

Say you play an even game with someone your own level.
For all 4 corners, you play OK josekis, each about 10 moves,
and let's further assume the game is still even globally.
Now, even if the game is very long -- 300 moves --
then you already have 20 'OK' moves (40 joseki moves / 2).
So even if all the rest of your moves are what you referred to
as terrible, they still only constitute 86.7% max (130/150).

If someone is about 8 or 9 stones from pro,
it's not easy to imagine they would make 130 terrible moves in a row.

_______________
^(*) I don't the exact shape of the growth curve.
It most likely varies, possibly substantially, from person to person.
But all my anecdotal evidence shows it's not linear.

One thing is thinking and reviewing your games and analyzing the comments about them. So I said your moves 9 and 17 were excellent, but 13 was a mistake. Can you see any similarities in these shapes, and with the clue that your 9 and 17 were good find a similarly good move for 13?


Yes most of your moves are bad, but I think even 90% may be a tad pessimistic for you at 14k. If you take those first 31 moves for you and your opponent I gave point loses for, 13 were 0. Now maybe w30 was actually bad so let's say 12/31 = 39% ok or 61% wrong. Now yeah there were the first 6 moves ok from the opening so over the whole game those get diluted down, and I'm not a pro so I could be wrong when I say a move is not bad, but I would bet my house that moves 1-5 and 24-25 are not bad. Now 6 is definitely not "straight bad" and has been played professionally many times but some pro might say he/she doesn't like it but that's different. When people ask on KGS what does dan and kyu mean, I used to answer with only part of my tongue in my cheek that kyu is how many bad moves you play per good move, and dan is how many good moves you play per bad move.

It is good that you think about pro play. But use it for inspiration, not to think about how bad you play. Or consider that almost every pro played as badly as you do at some time in their lives.

And, as Uberdude said, you probably play more than 10% of your moves perfectly.

Doe the feeling go away? Again, as Uberdude suggested, albeit tongue in cheek, maybe only half of the moves of amateur shodans are bad. Your moves lose, on average, only 2 points or so from par. Many amateur shodans don't care if they make a move than only loses 2 points. Just as long as they don't make too many of them.



I think so, too.



No pain, no gain? Really? I thought that musicians had long embraced the idea of relaxation, both for play and practice. IMO, a relaxed and even playful attitude is good for studying and doing go problems. No pain, no pain.



There are books about shape in English, material about shape on Sensei's Library, and even some threads here.

viewtopic.php?t=8136
viewtopic.php?t=5825
viewtopic.php?t=6229



There is not much mystery to the strength and weakness of shapes. It has to do with three things:

1) the possibility of being cut;
2) the number of dame (adjacent empty points);
3) the possibility of making an eye or eyes.

Tsumego problems deal with all three of these, but tsumego is specialized. Shape is more general, and usually comes into play before life and death are urgent questions. Shape is mainly about local efficiency, which means that strength and weakness are secondary questions. A strong shape may be inefficient; a weak shape may be efficient.

Suzuki Tamejiro, a strong player in the early 20th century, wrote a self study course for go. A couple of volumes are in the online Japanese National Diet Library. In vol. 2 he mentions three shapes, which from skimming I gather he emphasized for beginners:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Nobi (extension)
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . X 1 . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Kosumi (diagonal play)
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . X . . . .
$$ . . . 1 . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Tobi (jump)
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . X . 1 . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .[/go]

He used the same terms, even in the presence of other stones, particularly enemy stones. E. g.,

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Nobi (extension)
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . X 1 . . .
$$ . . . O . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Kosumi (diagonal play)
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . X . . . .
$$ . . O 1 . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Tobi (jump)
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . X . 1 . .
$$ . . . . O . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .[/go]

Normally we would call the first play a block, the second play a hane, and the third play a jump attachment.

The three may be ranked from strongest to weakest. The nobi cannot be cut, the kosumi can be cut if Black ignores the threat to cut, and the tobi can be cut if White plays first. OTOH, the nobi is the slowest, and the tobi is the fastest.

As it turns out, the nobi, in all of its guises, is probably the most frequent play in go. The other two cannot be far behind. So if a beginner masters these plays, he will be well on the way to playing good shape and good go most of the time.

Gotta go now, but I have more I want to say about shape for beginners. If I don't post something tomorrow, please remind me.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Good point. I guess what I mean't was: 90% of moves that aren't overly obvious such as joseki moves (which even still, I know so few joseki that I imagine my choice of variation is rarely correct either) or basic endgame patterns and what not. 90% of the moves where I have actual decision making to do.

_________________
Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

You may be underestimating how much you have to think during joseki and endgame patterns.

I think this is an interesting question. I think the key word is "feeling". Your feelings are probably not correlated to a statistical analysis of the precise percentage of your moves that could be said to be bad. Your feelings are the result of your own perceptions and attitudes toward your go. So no one can say whether the feeling will go away or not. I don't want make any assumptions about you or your outlook on go/life/self from what little you have shared, but it seems kind of like you are viewing your abilities, and maybe yourself somewhat negatively. You are choosing the highest level of performance to compare yourself to, and your wording implies that this comparison is pervasive, coloring your self-perception. Maybe the solution lies in focusing on each step in front of you, one at a time, instead of staring up the endless winding staircase thinking how small you must look to those atop it. Even most of these revered pros are unremarkable (compared to their field of competition) and are striving to climb a few steps higher just as you are.

I think a another way to describe the feeling is to say that I don't have a clue what I'm doing (at least it feels that way). It's like on every move, I'm still just guessing and and I'm continually doubting the merit of my moves. Even when I win, and even when I totally blow my opponent off the board, I still just kinda' feel like I got lucky or something. I'm asking because I'm not sure if this is just due to the more abstract nature of the game or if it's insecurity from lack of experience and so on.

_________________
Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...