As the title says, I am looking for a syllabus of sorts to begin my study of the game.

I'd like you to break down a weekly schedule based on hours I can commit each day(which will always be the same) so I have a set structure to follow and know how to break up my time to the various aspects of the game from playing and what to study in particular.

Thanks!

Welcome!

At this stage of your go career, you should probably spend around half your time playing the game. You should also review your games, not every game, OC. When I was in training, which I did for a couple of years as a dan player, I spent about ¼ of my time playing and an equal amount of time reviewing my own games. I spent about ¼ of my time playing over pro games, and ¼ of my time doing problems. That was me. Everybody is different.

You will also want to spend some time reading books. There is a lot of good material out there, now. In the AI era, books on the opening and especially joseki are outdated. Pro games are probably your best resource for studying them. Books on handicap go are still worthwhile.

There is a lot of good material at Sensei's Library, and, if you can still get it, Bruce Wilcox's Go Dojo is a valuable resource.

From time to time post a game or two here for review. Several people are quite willing to help out.

Good luck!

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

My two main guides in life:
My mother and my wife.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hi Zen,

What Bill said. Also, please see PM.
Thanks.

Thanks Bill!

So far as analysis goes, is there any general questioning I should go through when trying to understand what has happened and why? Otherwise I fear I may simply be re-watching the game unless I know what I am actually looking at.

Thanks!

For analysis of your games, you usually need another person who is stronger than you. If you don't have access to such a person, you can post your games on this forum or elsewhere, like gokibitz or reddit and other players will give some explaining comments.

If you are talking about reviewing your own games, as gennan says, it is helpful to do so with another person. That person does not necessarily have to be strong, it can be your opponent.

I will have more to say later, but for now let me quote myself. Play around with positions.

From another post:

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

My two main guides in life:
My mother and my wife.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

First, Zenith, thank you for asking this question.

The answers are very helpful to me too.

I can relate to wanting to have some kind of curriculum to follow, because I'm finding it confusing to decide what to learn and how.

I'm using Cosumi to play (tiny!) games and replay them.
The advantage for me is that Cosumi will make the same moves when I play a new game, so I can try to choose better moves.

Question: Why are Joseki and openings dated?
("81 little lions" deals with openings on a 9x9 board; is it misleading to study them?)

Question: How should I as a beginner be able to analyse Pro games?
(I'm doing basic tsumego with tsumego pro app and the built-in tsumego of Hactar light, and very often I'll find myself wondering why the opponent would for heaven's sake play that move if it seems to make things worse. Only after that, I see that there was an atari or two groups in danger of being separated. Will pro games not be much too advanced for me to understand?)

Sorry, Zenith, I hope it is okay that I ask these questions in your thread!

Hi

I have tried on two occasions to set out a plan for someone else to become strong. I'm willing to try that again but I also want to learn from those previous times. It seems that inevitably a study plan, or a curriculum if you wish, puts an enormous stress on the person learning Go.

I wrote about that on my Sensei's homepage:

- Advice to beginners https://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofst ... oBeginners
- Ideas on improvement https://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofst ... mprovement
- Basic laws of gamesmanship https://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofst ... mesmanship

all of that leading to

Full Training Program https://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofst ... ingProgram

This starts out with developing fighting spirit:

1) Don't resign - play 10 blitz games where you focus on not resigning but instead find opportunities to come back into the game. Likewise, don't expect your opponent to resign but find and reduce opportunities for them to come back.
2) Don't follow the opponent around - play two serious games where you assess every move by the opponent on the need to answer it. Should you answer it locally or can you play elsewhere. If you tend to be overly confident, overcompensate by answering when in doubt. If you tend to be overly cautious, play elsewhere when in doubt.

Because the bots have pushed the clock a couple of centuries ahead in human time.



Even if they contain mistakes, you can learn something if you study them.



Don't set yourself the goal of analyzing them. Study them. For instance, try to guess the next move. Also, you may be able to analyze some tesuji and endgame plays. Play around with positions.

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

My two main guides in life:
My mother and my wife.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I also urge you to be careful in your studying. I have found, perhaps unintuitively, that beginners who are super serious about studying and mastering the game are more likely to burn out quickly than ones who just enjoy playing. The more seriously you take the game at the beginning, the more likely you are to become frustrated, or treat it as an intellectual field of study rather than as a game to play. The most important thing you can do at the start is play a lot and enjoy it.

Hi dfan,

@ BillSpight:

I don't know how the bots learn.
So, is it because they never learned Joseki they do not play traditional human style, so no need to learn standard play if they don't care about standards?
Will a human (DDK, SDK) play joseki??

@dfan:
You are correct, at least in my case.
I'm copy-pasting posts from here, and the most valuable advice seemed to me to enjoy playing, studying etc.
I'm having the thought this is a life long journey, not a day trip!

But as it is good to know how to pack your luggage for the journey, I'm looking for advice from other travellers.

I have got plenty here, but I often find it hard to structure what I do and not get lost in detail.
But... maybe getting lost in details is a good way to learn Go too

It is not that the bots don't care about standards, exactly. But, OC, they don't. It is that they have made a lot of joseki obsolete. On their own, modern humans, with the ability to see the game records of top players, make joseki obsolete on the time scale of decades. The bots have made so many joseki obsolete that it will take time for the books to catch up. In addition, they have indicated that some accepted opening plays are mistakes, and others are questionable. It may take even more time for books on the opening to catch up, because the human writers have to understand why the bots reject certain human plays. Are they really mistakes, or is it a matter of style? Besides which, the bots are not infallible.

Human SDKs and DDKs will play joseki to a fault. If they know one joseki but not another one that applies to the current situation, they will often not even consider making the play in the right joseki. And often the correct play is not joseki. Even worse, they may consider the best play and reject it because "I don't know that joseki." That is a terrible excuse for making the wrong play, unless you can afford to make inferior plays. In the end, you have to rely upon your own judgement. At best, making plays because they are joseki simply delays the day of reckoning.

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

My two main guides in life:
My mother and my wife.

Everything with love. Stay safe.