From DDK to who knows where

MagicMagor · **#21**

Some thoughts from a stronger player:

First of all, it is pretty hard to determine what your greatest weakness is, without seeing any games. Maybe try posting one or two games of yours, then people might point you in the right direction.

1. Opening Theory made easy is a great book. I found it pretty easy to read, but then i read it as 2k. Still it is very light on theory and explains some key concepts for the opening with a lot of small diagrams. Actually i wished i had read it earlier.

2. You may know only one joseki, where you know it is joseki. I think it is impossible to play for a year and not pick up some other basic sequences. The pitfall of studying joseki is actully just looking them up, trying to memorize the sequence and then thinking you "know" the joseki. You have to try to apply the joseki in games and experiment with what happens if one player does derivate from it.
I would advise you to look up one joseki after a game. If you had a corner sequence where you didn't like the outcome or didn't know how to play - look it up if there is a joseki for it. And then compare you're actual game to the joseki.
And afterwards try the joseki in other games.

3. I don't know the book, so i can't say anything here sorry.

4. If you feel weak in fighting this can have two different reasons. One is lack of reading strength, which can be "easily" fixed by doing more problems. The other is a lack of strategic or whole board thinking. Attacking at the wrong time, from the wrong direction and not stopping when you should can all leave you in very bad situations.
While doing problems can never hurt i assume it may be probably more a case of the second cause, especially as you said you haven't done any formal study yet. Reading is also trained just by playing, but getting the right strategic thinking can be hard.
(This would be a case, where a game record would really help)
If you want to improve on that area, maybe the book Attack & Defense might be worth a look. It's one of those rare books every go player should have and i think 9k is strong enough to gain something from it.

5. The smaller boards, especially the 9x9 is all about fighting. They are good in the beginning to train basic tactical skills but they can teach you nothing of strategic importance. People might be better than you in reading and tesuji-skills, which i assume is not uncommon. Many people like fighting and as you experienced yourself, getting to SDK is possible with just a lot of playing practice.
I enjoy the strategic aspect of go more than the pure tactical fighting, so i'm not a big fan of 9x9 games. If you want to improve there, it's all about reading and tesuji.

joellercoaster · **#22**

Thank you for the detailed reply!

I feel like my attacks are often clumsy and I definitely get a sense that they are mistimed as well; Attack and Defense goes into the shopping cart.

And I definitely know my reading is weak. Many more tsumego it is. And maybe a deliberate program of doing them, although the book series seems pretty good at providing motivation through clever difficulty progression :tmbup:

I have an 11-hour plane hourney coming up and Otake seems fairly slender, might as well read that and think it over in the meantime.

Thanks again.

[edit: recently suffered a painful half-point loss in a 13x13 game and have a couple of 19x19 games in less than great positions, so I'll post them to the Game Reviews forum as they complete.]

Bonobo · **#23**

Joellercoaster, I think I’m in the same boat, DDK and not knowing where the journey goes …

Don’t know what OSs you use, but for iOS I really love doing Tsumego with EasyGo & SmartGo Kifu, and on my olden 1st gen. iPhone (iOS 3.1.3) with SmartGo Pro (not sure it’s still being sold). Perfect when waiting at the dentist or something.

And then I’ve done almost all of the problems on 321go.org, and perhaps 3.5K problems on ootakamoku.com, all in all I guess I’ve meanwhile done 10.000 Tsumego, including a few on GoChild and goproblems.com which have been mentioned before, IIRC.

Greetings, Tom

joellercoaster · **#24**

joellercoaster wrote:

win ratio makes me think I haven't been aggressive enough in picking my opponents (I have failed at the "lose a hundred games as quickly as possible" task

Aha.

I seem to have found my level - I am losing nearly all my in-progress games against 7k-9k players.

This is, actually, a good thing! And I am already noticing patterns - these people are owning me at life and death situations, and noticing my groups' space problems a critical move or two before I realise they're in trouble.

The answer is, of course, tsumego.

Bill Spight · **#25**

joellercoaster wrote:

This is, actually, a good thing! And I am already noticing patterns - these people are owning me at life and death situations, and noticing my groups' space problems a critical move or two before I realise they're in trouble.

The answer is, of course, tsumego.

Maybe not. I recall, back before the modern Monte Carlo programs got good, playing on a 9x9 against a program that incorporated Wolf's 5 dan level tsumego solver. I expected to get creamed. However, I killed its groups right and left. Why? By the time the tsumego solver kicked in, its groups were already dead.

That sounds a lot like your experience. Tsumego is not all there is to life and death.

joellercoaster · **#26**

I think that post contins a lot of truth about my situation. I continue to get creamed at 9x9 by SDKs, and you are right - I'm not actually getting to life and death problem territory. It's more fundamental; I overreach and get split or I get cramped and killed at leisure.

Interesting.

Think I'll spend a few evenings putting up a bunch of live 9x9 challenges and thinking about that while I play.

joellercoaster · **#27**

So not much has changed - which is to be expected when I don't change anything. I keep plugging away at OGS when I have a minute or two, maybe a dozen move-a-day games at a time.

Grade has stalled at 9k, though it grazed 8k briefly.

Some things I now know though:

- I am weak at L&D, so I've bought myself a copy of Life and Death to read on the plane

- I don't play enough games! Correspondence is not doing it for me, I need to make space in my life to play in real time. It's not like games aren't available to me. Hopefully this will make the rate of lesson-learning pick up.

- I am terrible at 9x9. I'm entered in a 9x9 tournament against opponents 12k-8k or so, and I lose almost every game. I'm not sure if this matters particularly as I just enjoy 19x19 more, but it bothers me.

EdLee · **#28**

joellercoaster wrote:

I am terrible at 9x9.

Some people consider 9x9 to be vastly different from 19x19.

1/7,000,000,000 · **#29**

That's because it is

joellercoaster · **#30**

My 9x9 travails continue, though I am visibly improving at 19x19 (comfortably 8k at present) I continue to lose to nominally weaker opponents on the small board - I'm trying to decide whether to just not play 9x9, or to use the game records to try and figure out what I am missing.

I am leaning towards the latter. It's frustrating to suck so badly at what should be a much simpler form of the game. Obviously "should be" is not the same as "is" but still...

SoDesuNe · **#31**

Well, 9*9 gives a much more immediate feedback. One bad move can literally cost you the game, whereas on 19*19 (especially as a 8-kyu) you can compensate via other parts of the board.

So, I wouldn't say 9*9 is simpler. It is more manageable due to less space but that also means less room for errors.

I think, one of the important points of 9*9 is keeping the initiative (even more than on 19*19), so (counter-)attacking instead of defending.

Maybe you can show some games and I try to give sensible comments? : )

joellercoaster · **#32**

After a blip where I had a losing streak that further highlighted my somewhat-wishful approach to the liveness of groups and got busted back down to nearly 10k, I read the first half of Life and Death.

Since then I've won about a dozen games in a row, some by resignation after the death of groups (admittedly not all against equal opposition, but with a few 9k-7k players in there) and have (re)gained a stone in strength. Even 9x9 is going OK.

Maybe I should read the other half?

Other things that have helped: a couple of Sibicky videos to do with joseki where one adds liberties to a dead group in order to get "free stuff" (I haven't been using the joseki, just found the concept repeatedly useful), and a general feeling of improvement in local fighting.

Feeling motivated again.

joellercoaster · **#33**

It turns out that the better results I am having in 9x9 are because I got bumped down to the bottom bracket in the McMahon correspondence tournament I am playing in. So there's that.

I'm definitely feeling better though and am winning 19x19 games consistently. Re-reading the first half of Life and Death to make sure I've taken it in properly (I don't really think I did, though it helped a lot already).

Repeating the mantra: stay connected, disconnect the opponent's stones. Seems huge.

Knotwilg · **#34**

"Life & death" by Davies is one of the fundamentals. I'm not surprised your rank gets a boost after reading (and applying!) it.
"Tesuji" is another such book and "Attack & Defence" is probably the best of them all, a lifetime companion for any go player. I'd do well rereading them. Last but not least, let me mention "Get strong at the endgame" by Bozulich, which in my opinion will double your winning percentage in those games that reach the endgame (and that should be nearly all games).

One shouldn't swallow all these books right away. Take your time. "Life & death" is a great starter.

joellercoaster · **#35**

So.

My study habits have been almost nonexistent, and my time to play live games has been effectively zero (other than very occasional handicap games with a friend) - I just started up a big pile of correspondence games, and read through Robert Jasiek's Easy Learning Joseki.

While I don't think I have really absorbed the book - and I certainly haven't properly learned even half the joseki therein - some of the ideas have already been extremely helpful. I appear to have gained three stones [edit: to 6k - realised I am not recording this in the thread anywhere] in the course about 20 games.

My immediate plans are: Work through the book again more carefully and review it here, and start playing through pro games mostly because it seems an enjoyable thing to do, that will hopefully drill some of the shapes and plays I got from ELJ. I've played quickly through a couple of games of Takagawa Kaku, and feel like I'm getting something out of them, so I've accumulated about a dozen promising-looking SGFs and will set aside one night a week to play through one and try and digest it. I nominate Wednesdays, which means tonight's the night

Also: time to venture forth to the City of London Go Club in search of live games, I think. Can't just play correspondence on the Internet forever.

[edit: I still haven't gone back to the other half of Life and Death, but that seems like a good idea. Cheers Knotwilg for the other two recommendations; I have copies and am looking forward to them assuming I ever get time to myself ever again

]

joellercoaster · **#36**

So.

Time for Go has been limited; I've played fewer games than I'd like and read no books, but I've been trying to improve my reading by doing the "ridiculously easy" 150 stock problems on GoGrinder over and over again. And it seems to be helping. I can now see little sequences I couldn't before without playing them out. It might seem weird to some people that I have got to this point without really being able to read, but there you go - my strengths have been elsewhere. I've also gone back and tried to watch as many of the Nick Sibicky lectures as I can, since I am commuting every day and have my phone. Nearly caught up now, and I get a lot out of them (I've compiled a list called "Sibicky Lectures To Rewatch" - should make a YouTube playlist out of it).

Playing only correspondence and at a reduced rate, it's hard to tell progress or otherwise, but the OGS rank graph has gradually been drifting towards 5k.

Last night something anticlimactic happened - a 2k player timed out and bumped me up 30-some rating points to a comfortable 5k. I feel like my new rank is not fully earned, and somehow expect to lose it. But then, I have felt that about every rank increment since 10k, and mostly it hasn't come true.

My collection of Go books is looking at me accusingly. In order, this time I swear, honestly guv:

Life and Death
Tesuji
Attack and Defense

Maybe this winter I'll find time to play some live games. But then we have a baby on the way... somehow my weird, sideways Go progression will have to keep doing its thing.

PS I still haven't lost 100 games. This is getting slightly ridiculous. But I'm nearly there

joellercoaster · **#37**

Have been trying to improve my reading a little bit by doing between 20 and 50 "super-easy" tsumego a day on the train.

It's interesting. First, my accuracy stayed the same (I am fairly terrible at them) but my speed went way up. So maybe at least I know what I know and don't have to think so hard, but the stuff I don't know, I really don't know.

Now I am forcing myself to never guess, working through the same 150-odd problems. I have found a weakness in my brain - after a while I am overcome by impatience and have to exert a massive effort of will not to just click where I think the answer might be to find out. Sometimes this works, but frustratingly, sometimes it does not. Guess I now have something I can get hold of, a genuine "character flaw" for want of a better word, that I can hammer away at. In the meantime my accuracy is gradually increasing again.

Have just picked up GGPfB 3 again - I am still getting them wrong fairly often, but at least now when I see the solution and go back to look at the problem, I can always read my way to the right answer. This is tiny, but actual, progress for me.

Learning to read is proving to be hard. But I think other parts are getting better?

Won my first even OGS game at 5k, so I don't feel quite so much of a fraud.

From DDK to who knows where

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