Hi, I just wanted to float this idea-- I haven't thought that much about it but I'd like to hear your opinions.

I recently returned to go after not seeing anything go related for about two years. What was interesting to me is that the intervening two years had no effect on my ability to think strategically or understand the principles involved in playing a game. I was able to hop right back in and return to my previous 'rank' within a couple of games. Granted, I have blind spots such as not being able to find viable alternative moves sometimes, but this was a problem before I stopped playing. I mean, I still suck. But I can play just as well as I could before.

What changed was my ability to read. Simply seeing two stones ahead could be almost impossible depending on the position. I'd pretty much lost whatever cognitive ability I had gained. Nevertheless I could still play decent games with my learned intuition of what constituted a weak shape or a strong shape, etc., kind of like being able to 'pre-read' or 'see' a position.

With this in mind, to improve my reading, I started studying tsumego from Graded Go Problem vol.3, the Life and Death book, and Tsumego Pro on my phone every day. I have to say, my reading ability has jumped enormously and become much easier. The biggest gain came from doing simpler problems that took less than a minute to solve. Now I look at a problem and lo and behold, I have a greater intuition of how to solve it, the same kind of thing as 'pre-reading' or 'seeing' a position.

This is my idea, and tell me if you think it's ridiculous: if two years of not playing had no effect on my ability to play, then I could go another two years and be in the same place. What if I spent an extended period of time not playing the game, and simply concentrated on reading out go problems and improving my problem-solving intuition? I could 'come back' to the game and hopefully, would have improved. Reading at least two stones ahead in any position is easy now, given the repeated localized practise of doing tsumego and 'seeing' a position. My brain is already better wired for doing this stuff.

Anyone just done extended periods of study without playing? Did you see any results?

I've taken two prolonged breaks from playin, both of 3-5 years but I read a lot during that time. Each time I came back stronger.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Whenever I come back from a long break I seem to have forgotten some bad habits. I quickly acquire new ones though.