No Longer Blindly Reaching

hailthorn011 · #1

So, my new year's resolution is to reach 1 Dan. It's been my goal for quite awhile, but I've finally decided to buckle down and really reach for it. So, my last method of scheduling 12 games a month ran into some difficulties, but I've developed a better strategy.

My Current Idea Process Is:

-Play at least 12 serious games a week.
-Self Review at least 4 that were lost.
-Have a stronger player review 2 of them.
-Study tsumego.
-Don't let losses dishearten me. (Probably the biggest one.)

And I might start reading a Go book. Any suggestions for a 7k-8k? I've thought about reading one for fuseki because I feel if I could just better my fuseki, it would help the rest of my game a lot.

My first bit of good news is that today I bested a 5k by 27 points in an even game with a lucky kill. And then I reached 7k today. (hopefully it sticks.)

So, I'll just update this on a semi regular basis. Does this sound like a good strategy?

shapenaji · #2

I dunno, sounds pretty good. Though I wonder about limiting yourself to "serious games". If playing "seriously" makes you filter yourself, they might not help you get very far.

But if that's not a problem for you, sounds good!

SoDesuNe · #3

hailthorn011 wrote:

And I might start reading a Go book. Any suggestions for a 7k-8k?

Attack and Defense and Tesuji are in my opinion the only two textbooks you need on your way to Shodan ; )

RBerenguel · #4

Since I'm more or less on your level, do tsumego. Lots and lots. Having a sharper reading (even if not much sharper as in my case) does wonders to my playing self-confidence, knowing that in case a fight breaks I can "do something".

As for books... Tesuji and tsumego books

I've read a lot of books, but I think only problem books and Attack and Defense have influenced positively so far. I'm currently reading In the beginning, since my fuseki sucks :/

hailthorn011 · #5

shapenaji wrote:

I dunno, sounds pretty good. Though I wonder about limiting yourself to "serious games". If playing "seriously" makes you filter yourself, they might not help you get very far.

But if that's not a problem for you, sounds good!

Well, this actually isn't a limit. I'd be playing more if I played 12 serious games a week. My biggest problem has been not playing often enough, and that's one of the things I'd like to fix. So I figure 12 serious games a week will equal 48 a month. I'm not saying I can't go over that total, but I definitely don't want it to be less.

OtakuViking · #6

I don't know if time is limiting the amount of games you can play but 12 is a little on the low side imo. Playing games is such a good way to get better (If they are serious, and you learn from them by reviewing ofc), that it takes precedence over things like go books and lectures. If you read go books and listen to lectures, you may know an awful lot about theory, but it won't help if that theory can't be applied in practice. That's the significance of playing games.

It helps you practice, and the more practice you get, the faster you will improve.

First, you acquire some piece of theoretical knowledge from a lecture or a chapter from a go book, then you play games to help integrate this knowledge into your game. If I read a good book on go theory, like an opening book, I can't think of how slowly I would improve if I didn't take a time out from reading in between the different concepts presented in the book, to play games in order to solidify the theoretical knowledge I gained.

It's a little bit like a cup of tea. You prepare the tea and pour it into a cup, the tea is the knowledge and preparation means reading a chapter of a book or watching a lecture or something. But if you don't drink the tea (playing games), the tea will just go cold and be of no use to you whatsoever.

(Note, you can also gain some piece of theoretical knowledge from just playing, which means just playing and reviewing, is better than ONLY reading theoretical go books or ONLY watching lectures.)

Thinking about it in the above manner will probably help you improve faster.

If you can spare the time, this is the way to go. (I think).

RBerenguel · #7

OtakuViking wrote:

I don't know if time is limiting the amount of games you can play but 12 is a little on the low side imo.

12 serious games a week on the low side? I can't manage more than 3 or 4, since I don't have so many uninterrupted time chunks. For me a serious game lasts at the very least 30 minutes, and can go up to 1h30 with a review later. Even with 45 minutes (30 minute game + 15 minute review) would make 12 games take 9 hours a week, which is not a small amount of time to devote to Go.

hailthorn011 · #8

SoDesuNe wrote:

hailthorn011 wrote:

And I might start reading a Go book. Any suggestions for a 7k-8k?

Attack and Defense and Tesuji are in my opinion the only two textbooks you need on your way to Shodan ; )

Attack and Defense was one I considered, actually, so I'll definitely give it a look. And the other one too. Thanks for the suggestion!

hailthorn011 · #9

OtakuViking wrote:

I don't know if time is limiting the amount of games you can play but 12 is a little on the low side imo. Playing games is such a good way to get better (If they are serious, and you learn from them by reviewing ofc), that it takes precedence over things like go books and lectures. If you read go books and listen to lectures, you may know an awful lot about theory, but it won't help if that theory can't be applied in practice. That's the significance of playing games.

It helps you practice, and the more practice you get, the faster you will improve.

First, you acquire some piece of theoretical knowledge from a lecture or a chapter from a go book, then you play games to help integrate this knowledge into your game. If I read a good book on go theory, like an opening book, I can't think of how slowly I would improve if I didn't take a time out from reading in between the different concepts presented in the book, to play games in order to solidify the theoretical knowledge I gained.

It's a little bit like a cup of tea. You prepare the tea and pour it into a cup, the tea is the knowledge and preparation means reading a chapter of a book or watching a lecture or something. But if you don't drink the tea (playing games), the tea will just go cold and be of no use to you whatsoever.

(Note, you can also gain some piece of theoretical knowledge from just playing, which means just playing and reviewing, is better than ONLY reading theoretical go books or ONLY watching lectures.)

Thinking about it in the above manner will probably help you improve faster.

If you can spare the time, this is the way to go. (I think).

Well, like I posted before, I said at least 12 serious games a week. The reason I said that number is because I tend to play less. Think of it as me setting a goal to achieve each and every week. My goal is to hit 12, but I can play more than 12, of course. 12 is just the minimum number I would like to reach. Any more than that would be great!

hailthorn011 · **#10**

Self-Review Game #1:

This game was rather disappointing because of several things:
1. Played way too fast.
2. Several beginner mistakes.
3. Resigned far too early.

This game could have gone in a completely different direction if Black changes a few moves. And even at the end Black still has a chance to win the game, but resigns too early. The last move of Black was a really, really bad self atari move. (Obviously it leads to inescapable atari)

Of course the game was with a 3k, but I believe Black played below ability in this game. My comments could be off, but I'm doing my best at self reviewing. :salute:

shapenaji · **#11**

RBerenguel wrote:

OtakuViking wrote:

I don't know if time is limiting the amount of games you can play but 12 is a little on the low side imo.

12 serious games a week on the low side? I can't manage more than 3 or 4, since I don't have so many uninterrupted time chunks. For me a serious game lasts at the very least 30 minutes, and can go up to 1h30 with a review later. Even with 45 minutes (30 minute game + 15 minute review) would make 12 games take 9 hours a week, which is not a small amount of time to devote to Go.

This is why playing serious games can actually slow down your progress.

Most of the time, you're better off with 2-3 10-20 minute games than 1 30 minute game + review.

If you want to get strong, the trick is experience and experimentation. When I was coming up through the ranks, I could easily play 3-4 games a day. And that would maybe take an hour to an hour-and-a-half.

shapenaji · **#12**

hailthorn011 wrote:

Well, this actually isn't a limit. I'd be playing more if I played 12 serious games a week. My biggest problem has been not playing often enough, and that's one of the things I'd like to fix. So I figure 12 serious games a week will equal 48 a month. I'm not saying I can't go over that total, but I definitely don't want it to be less.

No, my point there was just that I don't think the "seriousness" of the game necessarily increases the improvement you derive from it. (except at the extremes of not thinking at all and spending hours thinking)

You're right, what you need are games under your belt, and so you want to play a time control that's just fast enough to get lots of games in, but not so fast as to be complete blitz. It should be a brisk pace.

Lots of folks seem to think that "serious games" with lots of review are the trick to getting better. But from personal experience and the experiences of most other dan players I've seen, that's rarely ever the case. We LIKE playing serious games occasionally, since it's the best measure of our skill at a given time. But that doesn't equivocate to being the best learning tool.

So play (relatively) fast games, do tesuji problems, and you should shoot up pretty quick.

RBerenguel · **#13**

I agree with you shapenaji. Currently I'm trying to get my fuseki to look a little better, and to do so I need just to play more. No amount of reviewing or doing will make me realise what is big, urgent or just stupid. Only playing a lot and then looking at a few games as a set, at most.

Numsgil · **#14**

You just gotta pump go problems. There's no other secret to it.

My guess is that it takes about/at least 10K go problems to get from low SDK (10-6kyu or so) to dan. I manage about 1500 problems every 4 months on my iPhone with SmartGo, but I take a pretty relaxed approach to the problems and only really do it during my commute and in the bathroom so my pacing is slow. After I finish the set I rinse and repeat that problem set again, since it's too many problems for me to ever really memorize them all. I usually do a few percentage better the next time through (yay, progress!)

You also have to play games, but in my experience the number of games played doesn't matter beyond a certain point (maybe 50 games a month is the threshold. More than that doesn't really help you more than doing the problems.)

But really I'd say it comes down to the problems. Drill and drill and drill some more until you can't stomach looking at one more contrived position.

RBerenguel · **#15**

Except for yesterday and today I'm averaging 40 problems a day, making it like 1500 a month (there are days when I catch up). Still a while to get to 10000

Numsgil · **#16**

I envy you. I just go crazy trying to do more than 30 minutes of problems a day.

OtakuViking · **#17**

Numsgil, 10000 go problems from 10k to dan sounds absolutely ridiculous. If you need that many, you're not doing it right. You need to mix it up with playing games too. So far I've solved about 2000 go problems, some being opening, endgame and middlegame problems from the graded go problems set... and I'm 1kyu on KGS. So you see ... solving 10000 go problems to get to dan level seems a little ridiculous to me :lol:

karaklis · **#18**

shapenaji wrote:

Most of the time, you're better off with 2-3 10-20 minute games than 1 30 minute game + review.

This is probably not the whole truth. I've seen people playing hundreds and thousands of such games and haven't improved a single stone.

Numsgil · **#19**

OtakuViking wrote:

Numsgil, 10000 go problems from 10k to dan sounds absolutely ridiculous. If you need that many, you're not doing it right. You need to mix it up with playing games too. So far I've solved about 2000 go problems, some being opening, endgame and middlegame problems from the graded go problems set... and I'm 1kyu on KGS. So you see ... solving 10000 go problems to get to dan level seems a little ridiculous to me :lol:

It's in the thousands certainly, and it's more than 1K and less than 100K. Beyond that, I dunno dude. It's probably different for different people. I don't know any dan players who made it to dan without doing a metric ton of problems. I stand by my number as a good estimation of the median.

illluck · **#20**

I also think 10k is absolutely ridiculous. I think I did less than 1000 before hitting kgs 1d, and I don't think they were a significant factor (they definitely sped up the process, though).

No Longer Blindly Reaching

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