So I've been playing Go for around 18 months now and my ranks bouncing around between 10 and 13 kyu, occasionally going as low as 15 kyu when I go on long losing streaks. The thing is that I've been at this same spot for almost six months now and I'm thinking it's time to step up the studying a bit. Instead of asking about specific practicing regimens, I'm wondering if anyone passing through this phase noticed a particular area of study that needs to be worked on in order to plunge into sdk. I'm currently working through "Attack and Defense" and I have gone back through "In the Beginning" and "38 Basic Josekis" among many other beginner books.

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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...

Tsumego and reviewing your games (and having them reviewed).

Highly recommend you read this advice:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?BenjaminTeuber/GuideToBecomeStrong

From easy to harder:
* Graded Go Problems for Beginners vol 2
* Graded Go Problems for Beginners vol 3
* 1001 Life and Death Problems (*highly recommended*)
* Get Strong at Tesuji

Problems don't just teach you about their particular topic, but help you exercise your reading muscle, which is vital to improving.

My regime:
* Daily problems, at least a page worth of 1001 L&D.
* Weekly, multiple games (usually 8 or so) focused games, with reviews (I'll choose 1-2 games to post on gokibitz, here, or elsewhere). I'll play on KGS, Tygem, or IGS, depending on mood.

Attack and Defense is a good book, but its theory, make sure you're doing problems daily as well.

On doing problems:
* Don't just randomly guess. Read out all the variations, making sure your variation works. Only once you're sure, then check the answer. I usually do a full page, double check my solutions, then check the answer.
* Do problems daily, even when reading theory books. Its slow, but you'll get stronger at reading.

On playing games:
* Play serious games. Think about your moves, your opponents follow ups, big vs urgent, and don't slack on reading. Once you start getting lazy about reading, your game will fall apart.
* Review your games. Even if its only for 5 minutes after a game.
* Have someone stronger than you review them.

For reference, I'm 9k, half way to 8k, and still progressing. I attribute most of that to doing problems daily.
Graph: http://www.gokgs.com/graphPage.jsp?user=sparky314

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Go Books

Learn from your own mistakes. For this you need to review your own games.

Play serious games.

Improve your tactical reading: a) generic non-life-and-death, b) life and death.

Get advice from (much) stronger players. If necessary (because all your other efforts do not let improve you quickly), take teaching.

Read suitable books so that you understand most of their contents and apply them.

Find out whether a particular aspect of go skill is much weaker than other aspects.

Read

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/improve.html

Get a new server account, because it might be the server rating system's fault that your rating is stuck and you lose series of games just out of frustration about the rating system. Play real world games - they give you a much more accurate perception on your own rank.



In order to meaningfully comment on your book reading, please tell us (in the Go Books forum) which "the many other beginner books" are, if you do learn and permanently remember all josekis and joseki theory from 38 Basic Joseki and if you think that Attack and Defense might be too advanced for you.

I looked at some games - you're lacking on basic technique. Consider playing through some professional games and see what they do different from you, maybe?

Edited:

See my articles http://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofsta ... oBeginners and http://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofsta ... mprovement.

I used to think that the cycle "ideas - play - review" plus a diet of tsumego is sufficient for progress. Lately I've come to think one also has to develop the right attitude. I've added two articles about that: http://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofsta ... mesmanship and http://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofsta ... Management.

I've added those because of the study journals I've been reading here. Players do play games and offer them for review here, while doing tsumego, but many reports are laden with a kind of despondency or excuses, along the lines of "then I played this blunder" or "I was playing blitz" or "my reading is bad" ... It seems that at a certain level you should first establish the proper attitude and make sure you're playing games the right way before reviewing them for cognitive aspects. In particular, reviews become pointless if the intellectual effort spent on them is of a whole different order than the one applied in the game. And this happens often, not only by the poster but by the reviewers too: they offer reviews with too many ideas.

So play games and offer them for review, but make sure you play those games with the right mindset to start with. And this can be practiced! You can play games with the single purpose of evaluating your mindset while playing and train yourself to play games with that mindset.

Good luck!

Do you review your games? Never start another game until you have reviewed your last one and found at least three moves in it which could have been played better.

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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).

• What if you cannot find even one, let alone three or more ?
  Especially for slow time settings, very serious games,
  you've tried your best on every move during the game.
  Your moves during the game, your best moves -- are by definition your current level.
• What if the "better" moves you find in your self-review all turn out to be worse than your actual moves in the game ? (When later pointed out by a good teacher)

I've had substantial experience in both cases above.
I wonder if others have similar experiences, or not at all ?

Well, as a DDK the chances of all moves being best are small, so there are better moves. The very act of looking for them will be instructive, even if they are not found. But in reality, the chances of finding improvements during review are high.

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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).

I don't there is a facile answer on how to bridge the "social player" to "club player" gap.

You need quite a lot of tactical chops, none of it very profound though. The most standard life-and-death formations and proverbs: get strong at eye-stealing. Realise that the endgame is "played for money": fight for each point, and use reading rather than guesswork. A few standard shapes and invasions. About ten go proverbs.

I don't think life-and-death as drill is specially useful, unless you like it. Ladders, nets, snapbacks - yes. Simple capturing races can gain you a great deal.

Try to get one thing out of each game you lose. That is enough to improve. If you can get one strategic idea, so much the better.

At this level go shouldn't be homework. But be a good student, anyway.

If you have reached a plateau after only 18 months, it means that there are things that you need to unlearn. You have developed some bad habits. Studying books is unlikely to help in that regard. Best to get at teacher.

Good luck!

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I crossed this barrier (pffff).
If there is one word which can describe how I made it to SDK (without proper studying), it is this: guts.

All tips & tricks by better players than me are useful of course.
But I have the idea that generally, DDK's play too passively and too responsive.
Dare to play your own game, dare to disregard opponent's move, play bigger moves (unless an urgent move), dare to subtly pressure your opponent, and don't feel threatened if you are already alive or can make life.

So, IMHO, it is more an attitude thing than knowledge or theory. By now, you will already have a fair understanding.

Good luck, and keep us posted.

excellent ideas from everyone, but this one hits close to home for me, personally.

I went slowly from about 25k to 12k over the first couple of years, then kinda got stuck there for a long while.

But then suddenly something clicked, and in less than 4 months, I jumped to 8k.

I don't really know what it was, and it felt rather anti-climatic skipping right past the 10k line. But suddenly, my usual opponents who have mostly mirrored my own progress, seems to be playing really stupid moves. I kept thinking to myself, "why are they playing that, there?", as I crushed them.

The only thing I recall that I was doing different during those times, was playing through professional games -- a lot of them. I'd usually memorize one new game a week. Just simple playback, no real conscience "study". And I could only keep one game in my head at a time, so no long term memorization, just short-term memory. I probably did that for almost a year maybe (probably started some months before my big jump).

That doesn't appeal to some people, but I found it fun to do. Even without the memorization, just playing through the games from printed record on a real board, which I think helps involve all the senses (and helps with memorization too). Just having to search the paper for the next move, made me think more about the game and think about where the next move should be. Now, many moves seem quite obvious and predictable to me.

The only other thing I did, was that I also started game recording/broadcasting -- so watching a lot of high level play (but not merely watching, but closely paying attention to each and every move, as I had to record them).

Thank you all for the much needed feedback. I think that the worst bad habit I have as of now (I hope) is that it seems that there at least 1 to 2, sometimes 3 places where I finish my shape and don't really think I need another stone, but I'm second guessing myself and say things like "I really can't afford to lose that wall/ influence/ eye space whatever" and so I'll make one more local move, giving away sente. I think the most common example of this is when I have a cut in my shape but I also have the ladder working for me so I haven't blocked it yet. However, I know that a conflict will so take place that could potentially block my ladder and I don't want to be in the middle of a fight and then have to go cover my cut, leaving myself a stone behind. The way I see it, I'm letting my opponent get a stone up regardless but by blocking the cut first, before the fighting begins, I don't have to do it later once a shortage of liberties is in issue. The following is a basic example of what I'm talking about.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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

As white, looking at two opposing enclosures at the top, I would worry about the conflict in the upper left blocking my ladder at P4. Especially considering the very weak shape at B16 needing to run into the center.

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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 don't need a ladder at P4. Capture it with a net.

_________________
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).

more life and death practice will help you know when you need another stone or not.




You should worry less about ladders, and look for more grandiose (yet basic) methods of surrounding

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c simple net.
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . X . . |
$$ . . . 4 . O . . . |
$$ . . . . 3 O X . . |
$$ . . . 2 1 O X . . |
$$ . . . . O X . . . |
$$ . . . . O X . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ -------------------[/go]

Study your basics.

People in this thread have already told you that at DDK level you can get a serious strength boost just by working on basic tactics.

Case in point:

1st of all, thats not a ladder, its a net.
2nd of all, theres this aji

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . , X . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . X 9 . |
$$ . . . . . O 5 . . |
$$ . . . . . O X 7 . |
$$ . . . . . O X 6 . |
$$ . . . . O X 1 3 8 |
$$ . . . . O X 2 4 . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ------------------+[/go]

3rd of all, with a shape like that I would be more worried about peeps than cuts, since even if the cut worked, you could still squeeze the cutting stones and get some shape.

Second guessing yourself is a bad habit. In such situations you might try and tenuki all the time. Remember my proverb, When in doubt, tenuki. Sometimes that will be wrong, but you can learn from that. At your level, a single insight can be worth one stone or more.

Good luck!

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

You ask the wrong questions. You overlook the important questions. You need external advice from books, clubs and / or teachers. In order to get advice about books, see my earlier message.

If you spray enough weak groups all over the board, white can't possibly attack them all.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.