I can`t afford to spend a lot of time on go, but I do feel the urge to play again, so I think I`ll be very disciplined. I won`t consciously attempt to apply anything I learn from books, but simply remain vigilant while playing and hopefully will be able to see opportunities or necessities as they occur.

Actually, my current opinion is that "thinking" in the sense of a little internal voice going "he goes here, I do that...must not play near thickness...bad aji there" is distracting and misleading, if anything. Isn`t it just that you either know what to do in a given situation or you don`t? For an experiment, I`d like to play purely by instinct, slowing down to ponder if I don`t have any immediate idea of what to do. It should take the stress out of things, because all one has to do is hush the ego and just play. What`s the worst that can happen? After losing, you can find the mistakes and then you`ll know better for next time.

_________________
Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

Thanks for your verbalization, Tami!
The "four months" immediately reminded me of the wonderful Go comic by Colette Bezio (inkwolf):
http://home.earthlink.net/~inkwolf/Inkw ... Quest.html

The first sentence there is:

This is so lovely a start, and it continues wonderfully. You will like it.
The story is so beautiful and encouraging for beginners that I decided to
translate it into German which is my native language. With permission of
the author I gave it the title "Ajis Weg" which is exactly the same as the
title of your topic (in German we omit the apostrophe, and Weg = way).

If you like to study the guitar, Go and German too then please visit
http://www.rwro.de/Go/AjisQuest/AjiHeft1.pdf
and
http://www.rwro.de/Go/AjisQuest/AjiHeft2.pdf

Cheers,
Rainer
(GoChild GoRo with 1699141 points)

For GoRo, yes, I have seen and greatly enjoyed Aji`s Quest

Today, just another variation on a theme.

Is there a mental illusion to which some or most of us succumb most of the time? Namely, do we mistake the chattering of the ego for thinking?

Isn`t true study simply to engage completely, i.e., to pay full attention? If you are self-consciously arguing with a concept or idea you read or hear or see, does it not mean that you are trying to fit your ego to it somehow?

Could it be that logic and rational discourse are merely sophisticated fronts for the ego?

The older I get, the less I trust those things, and the more I yearn to return to childlike intuition. That is, I`d like just to perceive the situation and possible actions, without confusing myself with reasonings. In other words, to understand the reasons before me, and not to be distracted by the reasons within me.

I`ll be purchasing Malcolm Gladwell`s Blink later on. I`d like to find out more about the way intuition works.

By the way, on the "How to Avoid Blunders" thread, some people argued that they usually made blunders when "playing intuitively". Actually, I suspect they mistake "playing without paying full attention" for "intuitively". If you`re paying attention, a trained intuition should know how to respond. An analogy: road accidents happen because people are fiddling with their cell-phones instead of looking at the road ahead, not because they don`t know how to drive.

Sorry if this doesn`t make a lot of sense to you. All I can say is that I appear to be arriving at an outlook diametrically opposed to everything I used to think about everything. It`s kind of exciting, because it offers a new way to live my life. I don`t even care about "achievement" anymore, just being and doing.

Less ego, more igo!

_________________
Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

Second that!

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

The traditional way of teaching is to present new material and then to have students practice and produce it. But trying to do this with go self-study for many years, I`ve found this to be frustratingly ineffective. It seems like I either end up arbitrarily trying out new ideas and losing because they`re inappropriate, or losing because they never seem to occur in real games until you`ve forgotten them.

However, it`s not all doom and gloom. Recently I greatly speeded-up my progress on the guitar by jettisoning my "how-to" books and focussing on learning to play by ear. The more you independently figure out what Hendrix or Blackmore is doing, the more you begin to grasp the principles behind their licks. So, I`ve decided to try an analogous approach with go. When reviewing my games, instead of running to the Sensei`s Library page that explains how to handle such-and-such a position, I`m attempting to work out where I went wrong for myself. Of course, in some situations, I can`t do this, and that`s the moment to consult a how-to book, but first must come the problem-solving, and only then the instruction.

And it seems recent cognitive science supports me. Look at http://www.jobs.ac.uk/careers-advice/ma ... -approach/ The researchers are saying that we learn best by solving problems out of necessity, not by being told what to do first and then recalling it as and when.

Therefore, from now on, my tools will be lots of quick games with review, tsumego and books from Kiseido, which teach through setting puzzles.

To coin an aphorism, you don`t learn to do, you do to learn!

_________________
Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

This is interesting to hear because I'm experiencing a similar effect on my double bass playing from working on my sense of tuning and harmonic awareness. My theory is that I'm now better able to tell what a note should sound like before I play it, and so of course it's much easier to make sure I do play that note.

I think there's a pretty obvious go equivilant in the form of positional judgement. How much better would we play if a bad move was as painful to see as a bad note is painful to hear? And is it a coincidence that two of the strongest players on this forum (Robert Jasiek & Bill Spight) have both mentioned time spent looking through books in a language they didn't understand and trying to judge the diagrams as good/bad?

I'd be really interested to hear peoples thoughts on this.

Well, I tried playing a number of games on instinct alone. In some ways, it is indeed more enjoyable, but the experiment has also helped me better to appreciate what the verbal, rational part of my mind is for.

Surely, you need to let as much as possible become automatic. However, in order to improve at something, you need to make some deliberate efforts too.

Probably, my error has been to overload myself. It`s hard to enjoy a game when you`re thinking about your thinking too much. So, I reckon the way forward is to identify the main points and to work on them as and when.

I`m glad that I`ve developed the habit of reviewing all my games. Up to now, I`d only review sporadically, falling prey to the temptation to forget about losses.

It`s understandable when people immediately exit lost games. The ego can feel pretty sore. Still, I`ve noticed an interesting thing. If I review, I get a sense of objectivity, and the loss no longer hurts. After all, you can`t complain when you see that you deserved to lose because your opponent played better and because you made serious mistakes. In fact, it becomes rather fun finding out what really happened, and what to do if similar situations recur. And it`s worth being reminded that the point of it all is to become more skilful, not to win all the time (after all, even the best players lose a lot of the time!).

Specifically, I noticed that

* I try to play opening strategies that are beyond my level
* I often neglect the basic tenets of corner-approach/enclosure-extension-centre for no good reason
* I panic when confronted with a large-scale strategy, instead of playing patiently
* I play a lot of sente-no-gote moves. It`s a lack of patience, again, because it comes from trying to get too much out of a move. Now I see the meaning of "beware of going back to patch up weaknesses". I need to aim for honte, and to appreciate that small-looking moves without weaknesses and with aims are much bigger than large-looking moves that you have to repair later.
* Finally, it`s necessary not over-react to strange or sub-optimal looking moves. Sometimes, their drawbacks only become apparent over time, so you have to accept sensing the opponent`s glee in the early stages. Patience, again.

These are all things I can work on without overloading my working memory.

Also, I believe there`s a difference between memorising and learning. I`ve often memorised joseki and sequences only to forget them when it counts. I think it`s good to read about or see lots of ideas, but the trying them out for yourself is where the understanding kicks in. The joyful approach is to pick up ideas and try them, as opposed to the miserable one of seriously trying to remember dozens of things exactly in advance.Again, it`s "doing to learn, and not learning to do".

_________________
Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

I encourage you to continue to play without uffish thought, at least for the practice. Save the uffishness for training and review.

As for honte, Go Seigen once remarked that an old man who keeps playing honte, honte, is hard to beat. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Bonne chance!

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Just a little tidbit based on Problem 65 from Attacking and Defending Moyos (Kiseido, 2012).

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c Problem 65 White to Play
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . O . . . . . . . . X . . . . |
$$ | . O . O . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X . . |
$$ | X O X X . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | O O O . O . . . . . . . . X . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Okay, spotting the right move here should be fairly easy.



Even I got this right, but it was actually one of the follow-up diagrams that interested me.

Black has several ways to reply, but perhaps the likeliest is to push up like this:





I found this problem illuminating, and I hope you enjoyed it too.

_________________
Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

I`m reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. What an interesting book! If you get chance to read it, I highly commend it.

It dawns on me that for most of my go life I have not been trying to improve - I`ve been trying to find shortcuts to improve. This is why I`m only a couple of stones stronger than I was five years ago.

I don`t want to go into details, but I realise that I`ve been my own worst enemy by avoiding necessary effort half the time, and trying too hard the other half.

Here is what I believe to be the way forward, based on experience and books such as the above:

STUDYING

Solve tsumego little and often, paying full attention but without trying to memorise patterns
Solve other kinds of puzzles, ditto.
Read strategy books and watch lectures attentively, ditto.

PLAYING

Play as much as possible
Pay attention
Try to play the best way you can for the position
By all means attempt to apply concepts, but don`t overload System 2 (the analytical mind) with checklists and such
Allow ideas to come automatically, but do not rely on autopilot unless you`re down to your last few seconds
If you start feeling overexcited, do something to release the tension (I squeeze a handgrip very hard until I calm down)

GENERAL
Don`t get involved with garbage - life is too short for wasting on fruitless arguments. Never read certain posts on rec.games.go out of curiosity, and definitely do not reply to them, ever.
Respect the opponent - if you expect your opponent to roll over, then you will receive unpleasant surprises. This is important to remember especially if you start to feel improvement, because there can be the temptation to stop trying.
Don`t be upset if you forget something. You`ll probably remember it better next time.
Memorisation does not work (it`s misdirected effort).
Compulsive note-taking does not work (writing things down won`t make you remember, paying attention will).
Be patient. It takes time. Remember that shortcuts make long delays.
If you emotionally unbalanced, don`t play go. I`m not a jerk, but I`ve behaved like one on too many occasions because I was in a bad way emotionally. Sort yourself out, and come back to go when you are stable.
With respect to the above, have compassion for your opponent if they behave badly and type something offensive. Resist the temptation to rub it in.

All I can add is that I`ve just started to re-experience the state of flow that I used to get when I very first start to play go. Intuition and the critical mind can work together like a team. It`s too bad that it`s taken so long to find ways back to that state, but it`s always better late than never. That said, I wonder if I will ever truly recapture the sheer absorption of my very first games, played with my next door neighbour in the small hours. That was surely the best mental experience of my life.

_________________
Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

I think a mistake I and, I assume, many others make is to do tsumego too quickly. It`s not enough just to see the answer. If you really want to get the benefit, I reckon you have to read it out as fully as possible, in order to understand the shape and all its quirks properly. Otherwise, you might find yourself in real games being able to see promising moves, but to be unable to make them work.

I`ve also become very interested in the endgame recently. For example, there are many, many situations where knowing the correct technique is worth an extra point or two. That doesn`t seem impressive at first, but if you were able to improve your technique to the extent of playing the right move only five times more in an average game, well, you`d be gaining anything from five to fifteen extra points cumulatively. That alone should raise you up by one rank.

Studying the endgame has made me begin to rethink what size and sente mean.

Do you, for example, tend to respond to when the opponent drops to the second line to threaten a monkey jump?

Do you tend to grab a lump of six or seven stones left in atari (or defend your own)?

Do you sometimes apply mutual damage, but find you receive more damage than you inflict?

These are typical experiences for me, and I don`t think I`m unique.

Take the monkey, for a start. The monkey jump is usually sente, but setting it up is not necessarily sente. To clarify, suppose I drop to the second line to threaten to send Mr Monkey into your territory. Well, what if you were to play elsewhere? I could then unleash my simian chum, but you could defend to cut your local loss to 8 or 9 points. If, in return, your initial tenuki were bigger than that, then you`d have done better than simply preventing the monkey jump. Indeed, even the monkey jump itself is not necessarily sente. The other side might still be able to find bigger moves than simply defending.

Again, suppose I`m threatening to capture a string of seven stones. That should be worth 14 points, but if you decide to play one of a number of second-line plays, it`s quite possible that you`d be the one gaining. It can be quite hard, even for experienced players, to believe that saving or capturing stones (in gote) is often smaller than making a hane-connect on the second line.

As for mutual damage. It`s not a test of machismo (okay, not something I`d know a lot about but still...). I suspect a lot of players choose mutual damage for pyschological reasons, i.e., not to be dominated. But what if you threaten less damage than you receive? The key is to assess size. Sometimes just submitting is the wise option.

You could roll this kind of thinking forward to the opening. Some people seem to tenuki for the sake of playing tenuki, but surely people frequently assume a move is sente when it is not.

Let`s consider the word itself. I`d imagine a lot of people, when asked what sente means, would reply that it means "a move that needs an answer". But that`s not really true at all. 先手 simply means "the leading hand", i.e., the one who goes first. Really, taking sente only means being the first to play in a particular part of the board. If you play tenuki, then you are literally taking sente in a different area of the board.

The real question is: "what is biggest?" If you are able to get the to biggest points first throughout the game, you will win.

This could give rise to an interesting illusion. I remember a strong player (high dan) offering to play a teaching game in which he promised to play gote as often as possible but still win. I wish somebody had taken him up on that. I suppose what would have happened would be that he would answer the other`s moves, but in such a way that it`d be big enough to win. But wouldn`t that really be just sente in a party hat? I mean, he might be answering his opponent`s plays, but still getting to the more important points first.

The proverb says "Urgent before big". Doesn`t this really mean "the biggest before big"? An urgent move is urgent because it is in fact the biggest! Taking a 30-point move won`t exceed allowing a 16-stone group to die. Usually the problem is realising that a move is actually very large. If the opponent threatens to cripple your shape or destroy your base, it can be tempting to play a big territorial move elsewhere, but that can often be like accepting a small loan on sharkish interest rates - you get a big move in the short term, but as the game goes on you pay for it over and over again.

Go is very, very difficult. It can be so hard to know when a move is big, but on a long-term basis only.

Anyway, I wonder if revisiting fundamental concepts could be profitable for me. After all, sente and size are among the first things you learn about, but thanks to looking at the endgame afresh I`m starting to see them in a very different light.

Anyway, you never have to answer the opponent`s move. You want to play where it is biggest. If answering is biggest, then answer, if playing elsewhere is biggest, then play there instead, but no matter what, you never have to play anywhere you don`t want to!

_________________
Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here: