The harder part of Go

gowan · **#21**

PeterPeter wrote:

Phoenix wrote:

The problem is when you get to the nitty gritty of Go. I'm referring to that period where you are faced with a large 361-point board and have no idea what you're doing. Worse, you play as hard as you can and things never line up. You want to win and learn but you're just not getting it.

In short, the part of learning Go when you have to push through the tunnel until you see the light.

The beginning is fresh and new and exciting, and the journey towards new strength and enjoyment is breathtaking, but there's a part of the whole experience that's simply frustrating. This is where your love of Go is tested. This is where players are won or lost.

I can relate to this, having played/studied the game for a couple of months, got to around 15 kyu maybe, and then just lost interest in it.

I think that at that level, you understand well all the rules of the game, and have some basic tactics and strategy. You know some simple shapes, and whether they are generally good or bad. You can follow another game quite well, and understand the flow of the game, who is winning, and you can see reasons for most of the moves. So, you are quite pleased with yourself for having got that far.

Then your progress slows right down, and realise that to get any further is going to take an awful lot of hard work. You learn about the idea of josekis, and that the more of them you know, the better, but there are thousands of them, so where do you start? Life-and-death problems look impenetrable. You need to know the status of loads of corner shapes - Ls and Js and boxes and all their subtle variations, but again there are so many of them, and it is tedious trying to remember them. It all seems very dry and abstract.

No-one that I know knows anything at all about the game, and the nearest club is struggling along with a handful of members that meet in the corner of a bar if enough people agree beforehand to go that week. It is just not part of our culture, and could therefore be seen as irrelevant. Proudly announce to 1000 random people that you are a 5-kyu Go player, and it will mean nothing to 999 of them. With so little encouragement, it is easy to lose interest.

You get so much conflicting advice, you do not know what to believe. The answer to most questions is usually “It depends...”, followed by a specific example that is never going to come up again. It can be frustrating never getting a simple answer. As an early beginner, your questions can often be given simple answers, and as a sdk you can work a lot out for yourself, but for me at least there is a difficult area between these 2 stages. You cannot even ask a computer to tell you the best move or assess a particular move, like you can in chess.

Having said that, I am grateful for the advice I received from the other forum members, and appreciate that it was the best help that could be offered given the nature of the game.

I hope this doesn’t come across as moaning or criticism of the game, as I can see that it is a wonderful game, especially if you are introduced to it as a child, and you live in the Far East! Instead, please take it as a list of the issues that you may want to think about in your own situation.

I will probably return to the game at some point, if something triggers my interest again. In the meantime, living in the UK and in my advanced years, chess seems to be a better option.

People who advocate memorizing joseki and complicated life-and-death shapes are on the wrong track. To learn go you have to find out for yourself whay various moves are good and others are not. The best way to do this is to play serious games where you think about every move. Then when the game is over go back and analyse what happened. Most of us don't have the time to do this with every game but still it is valuable to go over as many of your games as you can. If you keep on playing gradually you will learn what good shape is and what balance is. Then you won't need to memorize joseki because you'll be able to think out what most good move sequences are. As for life-and-death shapes, it helps to learn some of the most basic ones but you can also just try to analyse them in your games when they occur. You need to develop reading ability anyhow so practice by doing in real games. By the way there are many ostensibly strong players who can solve life-and-death problems in a book but are much worse at it in a game situation; you have to practice in real games in any case.

As for choosing to play chess because you don't have to memorize so much, I think that's a delusion. To get good at chess (say Elo 1900 or better) most people have to spend A LOT OF TIME studying openings and endgame technique.

There is another option: just play for fun and don't worry about whether you know this or that particular thing. Places where we get frustrated with go are in investing self-worth in playing well and in having unreasonable expectations. We all play go because we enjoy it. Focus on what you enjoy about it.

P.S. Years ago there was a 15k player (now deceased) who came to all the US Go Congresses and had been playing for decades, and he wasn't discouraged because he hadn't gotten out of ddk range.

Phoenix · **#22**

PeterPeter wrote:

No-one that I know knows anything at all about the game, and the nearest club is struggling along with a handful of members that meet in the corner of a bar if enough people agree beforehand to go that week. It is just not part of our culture, and could therefore be seen as irrelevant. Proudly announce to 1000 random people that you are a 5-kyu Go player, and it will mean nothing to 999 of them. With so little encouragement, it is easy to lose interest.

I'm in a small town. People like hockey, horses and fruit-picking.

And everyone seems to think they're dumb as dirt.

I tell them about Go and how you have to surround space with your pieces. Nope! Too hard, too complicated, I'm too dumb for that. Chess is much too hard already, so is Solitaire.

I have no idea where they picked this up. These are normal, healthy people who are afraid of any sort of complexity. Not to mention newness. They've been told over and over that they're simpletons and that they shouldn't try. It's sad and weird. :-?

No one so far in the Asian community plays Go. It's frustrating.

So my PR plan is to present Go as a game of fun and excitement with simple rules. I really have to emphasize this, or no one will show up at all. :mad:

By the way, you guys are giving some seriously awesome feedback. Thank you all so much!

EdLee · **#23**

Phoenix wrote:

They've been told over and over that they're simpletons and that they shouldn't try. It's sad and weird. :-?

Sad and weird, indeed. WHO told them? :evil:

PeterPeter · **#24**

Bill Spight wrote:

FWIW, I did not study life and death until I was 4 kyu, and I have never memorized joseki or corner shapes. (Not that I don't know a number of them, but really!

)

Yes, I was probably too concerned about josekis too early.

But, you soon realise that there must be a handful of josekis, that come up all the time, and which every player must know. Sure enough, you can find lists of between 5-10, and you soon get familiar with them, either through recognition by repeatedly playing them, or simple memorisation.

My next step was to get hold of the book “38 Basic Joseki”, which I had seen recommended. This sounds manageable enough, but it turned out to be packed with hundreds of variations and very dry commentary. This looked really offputting, and no fun at all. At whatever kyu level it was appropriate for, if this was typical of a book with “basic” in the title, then this was probably not the right game for me.

Phoenix · **#25**

PeterPeter wrote:

My next step was to get hold of the book “38 Basic Joseki”, which I had seen recommended. This sounds manageable enough, but it turned out to be packed with hundreds of variations and very dry commentary. This looked really offputting, and no fun at all. At whatever kyu level it was appropriate for, if this was typical of a book with “basic” in the title, then this was probably not the right game for me.

I found it to be a helpful book. Then again I didn't expect a joseki book to be in the least bit entertaining. What I liked about this book is that it put the joseki and their variations in context. Now I have a better idea of which joseki move to play in what situation. :mrgreen:

In fact, though I'm about 4kyu (maybe a bit stronger), I've found re-reading all the basic books including "38 Basic Joseki", Kageyama's "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go", Davies' "Tesuji" and "Attack and Defense", and for the first time "Shape Up" has helped more than just about anything. And of course I keep re-reading my favorite, Takeo Kajiwara's "The Direction of Play". :mrgreen:

This close to dan level, I feel revisiting and strengthening the fundamentals is more important than all their strategic derivatives. I have a good handle of that for my level. But I'm thinking maybe I'm just trying really hard to avoid doing my tsumego. ;-)

Boidhre · **#26**

PeterPeter wrote:

At whatever kyu level it was appropriate for, if this was typical of a book with “basic” in the title, then this was probably not the right game for me.

Ah now, you have to be just as cautious when buying books in the chess world when they have the word basic attached! Basic in the title of a book about a strategy board game can have many meanings.

I wish you luck with chess by the way, it's a fascinating game.

jts · **#27**

PeterPeter wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:

FWIW, I did not study life and death until I was 4 kyu, and I have never memorized joseki or corner shapes. (Not that I don't know a number of them, but really!

)

Yes, I was probably too concerned about josekis too early.

But, you soon realise that there must be a handful of josekis, that come up all the time, and which every player must know. Sure enough, you can find lists of between 5-10, and you soon get familiar with them, either through recognition by repeatedly playing them, or simple memorisation.

My next step was to get hold of the book “38 Basic Joseki”, which I had seen recommended. This sounds manageable enough, but it turned out to be packed with hundreds of variations and very dry commentary. This looked really offputting, and no fun at all. At whatever kyu level it was appropriate for, if this was typical of a book with “basic” in the title, then this was probably not the right game for me.

38 basic joseki is (IMHO) a pretty awful book, and pretty inexplicable considering what Davies did with the other books in that series, which are great.

It's funny to me that you feel this pushing you towards chess. I just thirty minutes ago was in a bookstore, perusing books with titles like Simply Slav, Attacking with the Sicilian, Nizmo-Everything, Changing up the Tyigorin, Stylish Openings and You.... (There was also a great book about a bridge murder that I wish I had bought for my grandmother!) At that point I was thinking rather loftily about how superior go is. Like Xed, I tend to feel that memorizing joseki is hopelessly dull and don't mind if my game suffers a tiny bit as a result. (This doesnt even start to get into all the tedium of chess "tactics", which can devolve into memorizing the specific spaces on the board which are good for a certain kind of fork.)

Anyway, you say that you're still around 15k, Peter. May I suggest you just start playing away from 4-4 and 3-4? No one at your level knows joseki for the 5-5, the 3-3, the 3-5, etc, so if it stresses you out to wonder if you should know "the" joseki, just play something off the beaten path. If people reviewing your games try to talk to you about joseki, ignore them unless they can explain why each move is good in its own right.

PeterPeter · **#28**

I must say I am impressed by the concern and advice being offered to someone who might have given up on the game. The old stereotype about Go players being more helpful and friendly than chess players is mostly true, in my experience. Makes me more likely to pick up the game again.

jts wrote:

I just thirty minutes ago was in a bookstore, perusing books with titles like Simply Slav, Attacking with the Sicilian, Nizmo-Everything, Changing up the Tyigorin, Stylish Openings and You.... (There was also a great book about a bridge murder that I wish I had bought for my grandmother!) At that point I was thinking rather loftily about how superior go is.

That has gone over my head :oops:

. Was it the fact that there are openings with names that you picked up on, or the use of "simply", "attacking", "stylish"?

jts wrote:

(This doesnt even start to get into all the tedium of chess "tactics", which can devolve into memorizing the specific spaces on the board which are good for a certain kind of fork.)

That has also gone over my head. Forks depend on the relative positions of pieces, not spaces of the board. The only squares that are slightly more interesting than the others are f2 and f7 in the opening.

EdLee · **#29**

PeterPeter wrote:

I can relate to this, having played/studied the game for a couple of months, got to around 15 kyu maybe, and then just lost interest in it.

Peter, do you enjoy equally in-person games and online games?
For me, it's definitely much more fun with a physical set.
It also helps a lot if you have a friend around your level
who can play you regularly face to face. If there's someone just slightly better
than you, that's even better -- where I live, I don't have such a person.
So the closest thing I can manage is set up my physical set for my online games,
with an extra-slow time setting so I can relay my own game between the computer
and the physical board. Maybe you can give this a try, too?

PeterPeter · **#30**

I can definitely relate to what Lyzl said on viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7505:

Quote:

I think for me personally, it has a lot to do with the anonymity and seriousness of games online.

recently, I've played more games where I chat about my moves to my opponent, and I know that isn't completely 'competitive' but it really calms me down and turns the game into a friendly match and lesson with learning on both sides. There is something about the hollow "hi, gg" signed at the beginning of each game and final, crushing "thanks" that just makes the whole experience a bit of a shell of real life Go to me.

I like to 'share' a game with someone in person. Discuss positions and the flow, and comment on moves. The game is, after all, a negotiation about dividing up a cake. Online games leave me cold. They feel like a mathematical exercise against a computer, and all you get out of it is a final score. I know you can chat by text online, but the effort of typing compared with speaking, and the lag (the game has moved on before you can type and post a comment) mean that it is a poor substitute.

I have never played with physical stones, but I do not think computer graphics are an issue for me.

Phoenix · **#31**

PeterPeter wrote:

I like to 'share' a game with someone in person. Discuss positions and the flow, and comment on moves. The game is, after all, a negotiation about dividing up a cake. Online games leave me cold. They feel like a mathematical exercise against a computer, and all you get out of it is a final score. I know you can chat by text online, but the effort of typing compared with speaking, and the lag (the game has moved on before you can type and post a comment) mean that it is a poor substitute.

I have never played with physical stones, but I do not think computer graphics are an issue for me.

On KGS I sometimes play games with no-time after chatting with people in rooms and setting it up that way. It's been a great experience every time. :mrgreen:

Also, get a set! I've found playing Go in person is much easier with one.

Seriously though, my experience of studying anything Go-related while placing stones on a board compared to clicking on an empty computer board has been great. I think it's very much the same with most players. There's just something about physically handling the stones and considering the position on a real board while thinking through that gives the process an extra boost, and an extra level of fun. ;-)

jts · **#32**

PeterPeter wrote:

I must say I am impressed by the concern and advice being offered to someone who might have given up on the game. The old stereotype about Go players being more helpful and friendly than chess players is mostly true, in my experience. Makes me more likely to pick up the game again.

jts wrote:

I just thirty minutes ago was in a bookstore, perusing books with titles like Simply Slav, Attacking with the Sicilian, Nizmo-Everything, Changing up the Tyigorin, Stylish Openings and You.... (There was also a great book about a bridge murder that I wish I had bought for my grandmother!) At that point I was thinking rather loftily about how superior go is.

That has gone over my head :oops:

. Was it the fact that there are openings with names that you picked up on, or the use of "simply", "attacking", "stylish"?

I wasn't clear. In Go, 90%+ of books are about tactics, life and death, problems, general strategic ideas, etc. There are a few joseki books and encyclopedia, but no books on a single joseki, and I can think of only two books that deal with a specific opening strategy.

For chess, meanwhile, out of two shelves of chess books, 90%+ will be not just about the opening, but about a specific opening, and indeed a specific branch of moves along a specific, already somewhat unusual, opening. (For example, the branch of the Sicilian where black wants to develop an active attack). Thus, to a go player, it appears that a huge amount of effort in the chess world goes into learning the opening book inside and out.

Quote:

jts wrote:

(This doesnt even start to get into all the tedium of chess "tactics", which can devolve into memorizing the specific spaces on the board which are good for a certain kind of fork.)

That has also gone over my head. Forks depend on the relative positions of pieces, not spaces of the board. The only squares that are slightly more interesting than the others are f2 and f7 in the opening.

Right, f7 and c7 for knight forks, d5 and e5 as outposts for setting up knight forks, e7 and f6 knight forks after 0-0, h5 for queen forks... I don't mean to pick on chess, which is quite fun after all, but in Go after you've learned one tactic the next level is to learn about a more complicated tactic, or to apply the same tactic in more difficult combinations, whereas in chess the next step is to remember specific spaces on the board where the tactic is likely to work. Which, again, makes it seem odd to me that you are sticking to chess because you hate memorization -- but hey, if you simply say "I have more fun with chess", what's to argue with? I'm just commenting because I feel like you must have misunderstood something about Go!

PeterPeter wrote:

I can definitely relate to what Lyzl said on http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7505:

Quote:

I think for me personally, it has a lot to do with the anonymity and seriousness of games online.

...

I like to 'share' a game with someone in person. Discuss positions and the flow, and comment on moves. The game is, after all, a negotiation about dividing up a cake. Online games leave me cold. They feel like a mathematical exercise against a computer, and all you get out of it is a final score. I know you can chat by text online, but the effort of typing compared with speaking, and the lag (the game has moved on before you can type and post a comment) mean that it is a poor substitute.

I have never played with physical stones, but I do not think computer graphics are an issue for me.

I definitely feel this. Truth be told, I haven't played on kgs for a while, partly due to life and partly due to having a wonderful local club where we goof off and harangue each other while we play. But when I was on KGS, the ASR league was a great way to meet people who want to take a more friendly approach to the game. The beginner room and the teaching ladder room also had this flavor, to some degree. But nearly always in online go, people prefer to focus on playing during the game, and to be chatty and friendly during the review or while spectating another player's game. If you get to know a people on KGS that way, you won't be anonymous for very long... it is a relatively small community.

billywoods · **#33**

Just a ramble, but...

Phoenix wrote:

Too hard, too complicated, I'm too dumb for that.

My brother (early secondary school age) likes to play chess against me. He loses every time (worries about pieces too much, doesn't bother to mount an attack), and insists that he's far too stupid for the game. I wish there was a way I could convince him that:

he is making huge progress,
I win because I'm more careful than him, more thorough than him, and a little more practised than him, not because I'm more intelligent than him,
in the real world, even average-level club players would wipe the floor with us both,
given a couple of months of quite basic and fun study for half an hour a day, he could start beating me easily.

Of course, I tell him these things, but he doesn't believe me. He simply doesn't have the perspective that someone older with self-taught skills has. He has never dragged himself up from being a complete beginner to being reasonably good at anything. He's never felt humiliated at being an idiot and then sorted the problem out through his own volition - there have always been people (parents, teachers...) standing behind him pushing him forwards. He's grown to rely on authority figures to do the thinking for him. Perfectly natural at his age.

My brother is young, and may still grow out of it - but I wonder if there's an extent to which the people you mention suffer from the same thing, and simply never grew out of it? The go community is full of autodidacts who have a lot of faith in their own ability to perform mentally challenging tasks, most of whom have gone from being beginners to mid-DDK, SDK or dan level off their own bat - relying heavily on endless valuable games, guidance from stronger players and so on, but ultimately being driven by their own desire to get better, spurred on by their own success, and not disheartened too much by their own failure. Intelligence doesn't come into it.

Perhaps such people in the wider world are rare. I dare say I know a lot of them.

hyperpape · **#34**

Hmm, I think go may have been the first thing I tried hard at. I'd pretty much done things I was smart enough to do, slacked off at those, and given up on everything else. As for Go, I didn't try hard at it either.

I think I learned how to work at things that were tough sometime after age 25.

Edit: so I looked at this again, and it's blatantly self-contradictory. What I'd say is that go is the first hobby I cultivated and persisted at, putting forth some effort, but I still didn't really work hard at it. I just kept playing.

Even that might be wrong: I'd been reading political theory and philosophy on my own for several years when I picked up go. So if you count that as a hobby, go wasn't first.

But I still didn't work hard at things until later, after I'd played go for several years.

jlaire · **#35**

jts wrote:

I don't mean to pick on chess, which is quite fun after all, but in Go after you've learned one tactic the next level is to learn about a more complicated tactic, or to apply the same tactic in more difficult combinations, whereas in chess the next step is to remember specific spaces on the board where the tactic is likely to work.

It's always entertaining to read what Go players think about chess. :lol:

jts · **#36**

jlaire wrote:

jts wrote:

I don't mean to pick on chess, which is quite fun after all, but in Go after you've learned one tactic the next level is to learn about a more complicated tactic, or to apply the same tactic in more difficult combinations, whereas in chess the next step is to remember specific spaces on the board where the tactic is likely to work.

It's always entertaining to read what Go players think about chess. :lol:

I've seen this in several books for teaching chess tactics to beginners. (Looking for presents for my brother.) I'm happy to believe that B&N, the lamented Borders, several university bookstores and local game stores all have equally bad taste when it comes to chess. Can you recommend a tactics book that doesn't take this approach? I've had my eyes peeled.

PeterPeter · **#37**

jts wrote:

I don't mean to pick on chess, which is quite fun after all, but in Go after you've learned one tactic the next level is to learn about a more complicated tactic, or to apply the same tactic in more difficult combinations, whereas in chess the next step is to remember specific spaces on the board where the tactic is likely to work.

That is not my experience at all. In chess, once you have learnt the tactics, the next step is to string them together in longer and longer series of moves. If you can pick out a series of 8+ forcing moves from nowhere, that ends up with a decisive advantage, you are on your way to mastering the game.

PeterPeter · **#38**

jts wrote:

Can you recommend a tactics book that doesn't take this approach? I've had my eyes peeled.

"Winning Chess Tactics" by Yasser Seirawan is a good overview.

billywoods · **#39**

jlaire wrote:

jts wrote:

I don't mean to pick on chess, which is quite fun after all, but in Go after you've learned one tactic the next level is to learn about a more complicated tactic, or to apply the same tactic in more difficult combinations, whereas in chess the next step is to remember specific spaces on the board where the tactic is likely to work.

It's always entertaining to read what Go players think about chess. :lol:

I'd love to read what someone who played chess and go to a decent standard thought about the two games. I'm sure that must have been written, but I'm not quite sure how to find it...

John Fairbairn · **#40**

Quote:

I wasn't clear. In Go, 90%+ of books are about tactics, life and death, problems, general strategic ideas, etc. There are a few joseki books and encyclopedia, but no books on a single joseki

This made me smile because of a blast from the past. Just two days ago, at the London Open, some stranger mentioned that he had a copy of my long-forgotten translation of Fujisawa's book on the Avalanche (for which you need the original, before you ask). But apart from this there have been (large) books on e.g. the Magic Sword and Taisha, and you can also find books on other single josekis even if the titles are not so sexy. Admittedly not in English, but....

The harder part of Go

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