As for volume, let's set some expectations. The grandmaster norm for digits is memorizing 1000 in an hour. In 1993 the world record was 900. Now the world record is 2660. So let's say 500 moves in one of these training runs. Probably keep around 10 journeys of this size for training, but if one ditches training and just uses for review of joseki encodings, 5000 moves. Kogo's had about 62,000 moves the last time I checked. I think 5000 moves would be in the ballpark for a grandmaster who knows nothing about go. I am not a grandmaster and I don't know how long it will take to meet that norm. I was probably 30% of the way there at my peak, but my journeys are kind of rusty.

So the conclusion is that I wouldn't do it this way. If I wanted to learn a lot of joseki, I would do it mostly the traditional way and only use mnemotechnics in tough spots.

Put it another way: "use complicated mnemonics!" or "think carefully about why you play x in move y situation!". Which piece of advice would you bet on Lee Chang Ho giving you, if one of the two?

It sounds like it's hard to get an advantage out of these memory tricks here, I wonder if it could be used backward to get an advantage? A go board (or a specific game) AS a memory palace?

I tried to respond, but my response got lost. Anyway, use a game with key moves in the game marked as loci (a ko, invasion, probe) and put iteams you want to rememeber there, or just your favorite opening. Imagine the players---people are sometimes easier to remember than objects---actually doing something interesting with the object you want to remember at that point in the game.

Nice ideas. Seems like one could get quite a large collection of (admittedly small) palaces by referring to popular openings (low chinese, high chinese, sanrensei, great wall, rotating komoku, kobayashi, mini chinese, etc)

This might be a good way of making palaces out of go memories for use memorizing _other_ things. The trouble with using them to remember go things is that they'd be easy to confuse. Don't forget that memory techniques make use of things the memory remembers easily, like places and vivid actions, to store things hard to remember, like words, digits, names and abstract elements. If the thing being remembered and the thing being used to remember resemble each other, there might not be much advantage and the similarity could act as camouflage.

About memory and meaning:

Wasn't there a study long ago that found that chess masters and beginners did about as well when asked to remember a random chess position that they could see for only a few seconds, but that the masters did much better when presented with positions from actual games?

Maybe you're thinking about Chase, W.G. and Simon, H.A. Perception in Chess 1973, Cognitive Psychology 4, 55-81?

Maybe you're thinking about Chase, W.G. and Simon, H.A. Perception in Chess 1973, Cognitive Psychology 4, 55-81?

I've recently been reading about Memory Palaces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci and after some experimentation I've been quite impressed by how well the work.

Recent discussions in the Tami's Way topic and the Intuition topic have prompted me to wonder whether there is any mileage to be gained by trying to apply this memory technique to Go.

If indeed one can store hundreds, or even thousands of facts, in a reliable and retrievable way, what should one attempt to store?

Just a checklist of things to remember? A pretty lengthy and detailed checklist could be kept.

A list of principles and techniques? Which ones?

Joseki sequences? An encoding method is not clear to me.

A 'shape' database? What does this even mean?

Has anyone tried this? If not, do you have any opinions or suggestions?