In my day, the existence of plateaus was confounded with periods of not playing because of lack of someone to play with. I spent about two years as a 2 kyu, playing only a few games, but then I moved to Hawai'i and quickly became shodan. If I had been playing all along, would I have had a plateau at 2 kyu? Who knows? I spent over a year as 4 dan, but was that a normal slow-down or a plateau?

Anyway, here is what I count as plateaus: shodan, 3 dan, 4 dan, 5 dan.

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When I first started playing it took me a while and many games to improve past 20k. I'm around 15k right now, but playing some people who are about 14k or 13k I'm finding that they way I currently play just isn't good enough. I think I may be in another plateau : I do tsumego, replay pro games and read on go theory but everything just seems so abstract. Hopefully I'll improve...

I never noticed a plateau until I hit 5K and got too busy with my kids that I never attended any tournament for about 15 years. Of course way back then progress was so slow that I only gained a stone every tournament which was about 2 or 3 time a year. Today many of you would call that a plateau every stone, but back then playing opportunities and study material was so rare that I though my pace of improvement was fairly fast.

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Michael Dobbins; Dragon: mdobbins, KGS: mgd, AGA#: 4253,
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In August 2009 I *finally* reached 7k on KGS after being at a plateau back and forth between 8k and 10k for over two years. Now I'm starting to play and study a lot more often, so I hope my rate of improvement will increase (so far so good, I reached 6k last month).

It makes me wonder - does anyone think "plateaus" are only caused by playing/study frequency? During my "plateau" I would sometimes take one or two-month breaks from Go, so it's not a big surprise that I did not improve too much. Then again, I'm sure there must be other factors which affect people. It also took me 18 months to pass 20k on KGS, Perhaps because I studied with other 25k players and our "teacher" was 17k... Although I was surprised that 20k-12k didn't take too long (I think the KGS rank adjustment was around this time).

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I dunno, I seem to improve a stone every time I take a break for a year... I think it has to do with forgetting bad habits.

I'm a weird case, in that I pretty much started out at 10k (I probably read through the entire Elementary Go Series twice before I had played a dozen games), but that was definitely a plateau right there, as I learned to actually play the game instead of read about it. Then I went from 10k to 6k or so really fast, as I went on a huge winning streak - I didn't feel much stronger, but suddenly everyone I played seemed to be making stupid moves all the time. Since then it's been pretty slow.

I guess, one could say so.
While reading Attack and Defense I experience that a lot of middlegame play revolves about knowing certain patterns of reducing and invading and when to do which of them. There's also a special thinking involved to not just react but better search a way of counter-attack a reduction, for instance.
I find this really hard to grasp because it's widening your board view, e.g. looking for threats, which help you build thickness to better counter-attack.
Or the whole inducing moves, forcing your opponent to move, so that you can defend efficently. Let alone probing...


Of course you could read your way through all this without knowing such patterns, but I guess, it needs a not-so-small sparkle of ingenuity to do so. Therefore being able to learn this standardized patterns and moves will help you a lot to consider your possibilities.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

If we're talking strictly playing frequency or strictly studying frequency, then no I don't think so at all. I know people who have done tons and tons of studying (high study frequency) while playing very little (primarily older adults) who don't see themselves improving and breaking from their plateau. Likewise, I've seen people who play dozens of games a day (high playing frequency), hardly study, and also don't improve.

An interesting case to note is a Tygem 1k player who has racked up nearly 50,000 games and has been stuck at 1k for a loooong time:

To put 50,000 in perspective, that's roughly 2x the number of games TheCaptain, who has a long history on KGS and likely an anchor, has played (~20,000).

Hope, I'll have this feeling in the future, too. Must be nice

- Mic

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Go is easy: don't play bad moves.

No, most definitely not - for me, at least. I haven't taken a break from OTB play longer than about 10 days since ... er ... as far as I remember, since I took up Go in 2001. And as I say, my rating mostly consists of long periods at a strength interspersed with short period of rapid improvement. Only the last of those improvement periods has coincided with a change in study technique.

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My European rating.

I've always felt that plateaus represent stagnant understanding, which is not alleviated by mere rote activity. The feeling that my perspective to the game is not changing causes frustration and boredom, and I drift away to other things. I can't will a change of perspective; I can only seek a mindset that's favorable to its appearance, and obsessing about improvement with my nose in the board isn't it.

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So you've got an eye?
That don't impress me much

I've been stuck at kgs 2d for the last 2 years and the length of this plateau has overtaken any sense of stagnation i might have had in the past. i was at 1k and 1d for a long while, and i'm sure before that there were places where i felt i couldn't move up... but this has really taken the cake.

Are you sure this is a coincidence? It seems likely that there is a connection. What have you changed with your study technique?

Oh! Sorry, different sense of the word coincide - I do believe that my last bout of improvement relates very much to the change in study habits. I meant "coincide" only in the literal sense of "at the same time as".

What changed was fundamentally hitting the jackpot in my long-term improvement strategy, which has been: recruit bright young players, teach them until they get stronger than me, then have them teach me. I was fortunate enough two years ago to recruit two particularly brilliant freshers, both of whom are now dan players, and one of whom in particular is an awesome teacher with a knack for explaining the strategic stuff I just don't understand.

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My European rating.

I hit a relative plateau at 9k on KGS ... I had spent the previous 9 months building up from 17k. Life got complicated (which probably had some effect on my plateau) so I hung up my go for 18 months.

Funny thing about KGS rank ... it drifts ... when I came back, there was a spike in my rating just before I hit ? again ... I had hit 2d as my losses dropped from the rating graph.

Anyways, coming back, I played a few games to solidify my rank ... at 7k apparently. I played at 7k for a while and plateaued there. Made a few discoveries a little later on and made it to 5k by the end of last year. Recently boosted to 4k, and wondering if I'm about to hit another plateau. So, I'm trying some different study habits, to see if I can keep my learning momentum.

i had a bad one at 20k, then at 15k, and then took a two year break and an now playing about about 11-12k kgs standards....hopefully i dont get stuck here

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"Only a warrior chooses pacifism; others are condemned to it."

I hit the wall at 12k and then again at 8k. Now I bounce back and forth between 4 and 5k on kgs. I think I am stronger then that (or the stronger players I play say I am) but I really don't like playing on line that much which is the only way I can get a real idea of rank.