I'm about half-way through the first part (60 Maeda problems) of the ins and outs of life and death. The book is quite difficult and has excellent answer diagrams so I can only recommend it for serious dan students above 2d kgs (perhaps 3-4d is more suitable). I've also done the first part of GGPfD vol 7 which is the opening and middle game problem book. The first part about the opening was a piece of cake, but the middle game problems are a different thing entirely. I got almost all of the ones I solved wrong. Answers are educational so it's good work.

I'm at game 10 of invincible, though it has to be said that I skipped the first two games because I've already done them a couple of times. I think I might want to repeat this book after I've done all the games, just like with tsumego books repetition seems to be good.

On the subject of replaying pro-games (especially with commentary): I've found that alot of players around my level play improper, unelegant moves all the time, both on IGS, Tygem and KGS. These improper moves are often responded to improperly by me, starting huge violent fights or something else that leads to an odd game with 'unprofessional' shapes all round. What I'm trying to say is that you can't really learn that much from just imitating the players you play against. Playing a ton of games against such players will probably lead to bad habits through imitation. This imitation is a consequence of only seeing the same type of moves over and over again. For example, alot of players on tygem like to play the handicap attachment from the 4-4 point. I've set up an arbitrary position below.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c Example of 4-4 attach 'tygem joseki'
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O . . X . . X . . . . . . a b . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . 8 . . . 7 . X 5 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . . |
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1 W . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . X X . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | X O X O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . X O , . . O . . O . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . O . O . . . . . . . . . O . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

This is one of those 'tygem' joseki moves and I theorize it has come about from the players on tygem imitating players that are a bit stronger than them, stealing their tactics to win but never actually realizing the proper play is a pincer of backing off. In the diagram I have artifically constructed, the position is meant to illustrate some weaknesses of the attachment. First white 8 is the shoulder hit reduction. If you don't like black's result it's possible for white to try the guerilla tactic of playing at a. Alternatively, if a black wall is really good on the top but not very nice along the right side, white can invade at b, taking the corner profit. On Tygem, there's also a preference for establishing large territorial frameworks all the while invading your attempts at the same thing like mad. Sometimes punishing such invasions requires indirect finesse, a touch of elegance or some strategic principle other than brute force. It's through studying the subtle depth of professional games that you can learn to appreciate such things, aswell as proper shape, fighting spirit and flow of stones.

There's also a certain kind of thinking that can only be grasped from studying high level games. For example, a first line kosumi move to capture stones instead of bending. I hope you know what I mean. The kosumi is played to give the option of a ko later. This difference in thinking also encompasses principles like 'attack is the best form of defense' and knowing when you must protect your shape or get harassed. Also when you should sacrifice a group because running it away would lead to a huge loss. Setting up exchanges to gain benefits elsewhere is flexible and this flexible mindset is very important for me to remember sometimes. I can be a bit stubborn. Instead of doggedly pursuing an unclear and probably bad course of action, stop and think at each move if there's a better way. Maybe you made a wrong move, but you don't have to continue your descent into ruin. Maybe there's a way to recover, to set up some kind of exchange or use your dead group for ko threats elsewhere. One must be flexible, bending without breaking. Looking at the board as a whole. Knowing when to tenuki and when to protect your shape with a seemingly slow move (example: yoda norimoto game in a previous post).

So in short, as a student of the game without a teacher, one must acquire both tactical and strategical strength, but how? Theory Books+pro games provide one side of this while problems provide the other. They are both important, but your strategy can only come to fruition if you have the tactical strength to back up your plays and counter your opponents plays.

I'm thinking about joining the YGD sometime in the future. I think having a strong teacher to point out mistakes in my games is very valuable. Also, those games are more serious than most internet games. There's also alot of lectures to make it easier to study the strategical principles of go. Something which can be very hard for self-taught people like myself to come by. However, I feel like improving my reading is still extremely important. That being said, having studied some of Shusaku's games in invincible, I am beginning to realize the value of sound strategic principles and the professional way of thinking. So I will continue to improve both!

I'm currently not strong enough to get the most out of 'the ins and outs of life and death' so I will leave that and continue with Gokyo shumyo + reviewing GGPfD books. Most of the problems in the aforementioned book that I've encountered so far are mid-high dan problems with various tricky sequences and traps. I need a bit more experience before tackling it. Also, alot of the problems so far aren't 'realistic' like the ones in Gokyo Shumyo for example. The problems are more about 'raw reading and creative solutions'. One of the goals of the book is to introduce the artistic aspect of Life and death problems, which it is certainly doing. Some of the problems I've done have had quite beautiful solutions. I could continue struggling through the book but I'd rather get a bit stronger so I can enjoy it more.

I've also begun going through Cho's intermediate problems from tasuki. The reason for this is that I have started studying Japanese again (using anki) and someone made a deck with those problems. So far it's been a positive experience SRS'ing those easy problems but I have been wondering about how the maker of the deck did it so that I can continue implementing the method with Cho's advanced problems or indeed other collections.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Thanks for that link. Seems like it's a bit of a pain to convert pdf's to anki cards

Tried SRS'ing easy tsumego for awhile. Not my cup of tea, and not sure if it actually makes me stronger or not. I do not feel it like when I have been studying hard tsumego and replaying professional games for a long time, or alternatively when I have played a couple of 1 color go games.

Quick update. I yolo'd through the first Tesuji volume of GGPfD while listening to audiobooks (because that volume is generally very easy). I have thus repeated that book and begun on the second tesuji volume which is alot harder. I'm also at problem 10 of the ko section in Gokyo Shumyo. The going has been slow, but I feel like it has gained me alot of good stuff. Gokyo shumyo is definitely a book I will repeat. Especially since some of the solutions are so elegant and simple in their reasoning that I missed them. The book is really great and deserves a spot at the podium of the all time greatest collections afaik. No wonder people recommend studying it. So yeah, I'm taking my time going through Gokyo Shumyo by laying the problems out on my board, but never going over variations until I have found my solution and checked if it was right or wrong. If I was wrong, I play out the correct solution on the board, then remove the stones and visualize the correct solution in my mind as if I'd read it myself. Along with Gokyo Shumyo, the tesuji volume will be my focus regarding problems for now. It's not that the second tsumego vol of GGPfD is harder than Gokyo shumyo. I'm thinking most of it is probably the same level or easier since the hints in that book are in English and not chinese

The first experiment I'm running atm involves going through Invincible. I dunno if I can really call it an experiment, but I generally opt for speed and several games a day instead of slowly going over all the diagrams. I do play the games out on my board. Note: I feel like touching the stones, placing them, moving them around in shapes while setting up tsumego problems etc, helps me learn better. Maybe something to try if you're stuck?
So far I've found Invincible alot more rewarding than when I first went through it at around 7k. I'm at game 32 atm.

The second experiment I am running, or perhaps the only one depending on how you look at it, is playing one color go on KGS. I haven't reached a stable rank yet, so I cannot report back how many stones weaker I am when doing this (cause my opponent isn't playing one color go, only me). Current rank is at 9k and while the games I've played so far have never actually been 'easy' I have won them convincingly. The games aren't 'easy' for me because I have to keep track of everything, and I must also remember not to play crazy stuff and muddle up the board. One color go forces me to focus at every move, remind myself of where my stones are etc. I've observed so far that I play more solid and thick, unhurried moves. Make shape when attacked and leave the aji my opponent has for later. Generally, I think one color go reinforces good habits if played the way I am playing. This is an ongoing experiment and since my rank hasn't stabilized yet (I still have quite a few ranks to ascend I think), I cannot give a definitive report. However, I can guess that It's very useful for improving certain aspects of my Go that perhaps have seen little to no direct improvement in awhile. I think it's made it easier for me to replay games from memory, but I'm not sure yet. Atleast when I tried replaying a game from invincible from memory I found it quite hassle free. The problem is that I haven't done this in awhile so I have no reference point of how easy/hard it used to be for me when I was weaker. Whatever the case may be. If you're stuck in a rut, one color go can be the cure I think. Perhaps the greatest benefit is that it makes you use your brain at each move, and that it generally reinforces good habits (ofc a prerequisite of this is that you actually have the foundations for good habits, so perhaps it's best to start this only when you're dan level.)

An interesting experiment so far, but inconclusive as of yet. I feel like I've done a mental workout after finishing a couple of games (though I noticed that I got better at it surprisingly quickly, and playing several One color games in a row grew less fatiguing.)

_____________________

A thought on improving. You know how athletes try to switch up their workouts to keep their body guessing. My take on this is that it's probably applicable to studying Go aswell. Instead of settling into a routine way of playing, we change it up and play one color go, or in case of less extreme measures, we simply play experimental openings, old openings, new openings, strange moves, tengen, change our style from territorial to takemiya uber moyo style or vice versa. In the case of tsumego, if you do them in a book, try on the board and vice versa. If you do hard problems try easy ones and vice versa.. you get the point. Shaking things up like this forces our brain to be flexible and create new neural pathways to learn the same things, thus making what you learn 'stick' better. It also makes studying more fun, and fun is the most important thing.

Hello. I've decided to join the Yunguseng Dojang. So far the lectures I've watched have been great and I'm looking forward to getting started with the program in a month's time. Until then my plan of doing problems continues. I will lectures on top of that and try to play games where I test out the stuff I've learned in the lectures.

So far I've tried this with a couple of lectures, but I've found KGS to be a strangely bad place to test out new things. My experience with Tygem has been far better in this regard. The players on tygem will always doubt everything you do, try to take your formations apart, invade where they shouldn't etc. KGS players are generally much more timid and reserved. There's also the issue of playing black and white. On KGS the frequency with which I play white is almost ridiculous, but on Tygem there's alot of players and I can play more even games where I can test out black's openings and not just play it 1 in 5 games.

I'm 60 problems into ko in Gokyo Shumyo and 100 problems into tesuji vol 2. So far so good

Usually I'd recommend against such voluminous writing as part of a study path, as it distracts from the study itself, but in your case ... Every post has been a very interesting read and you make a lot of intriguing recommendations. Also, it seems like you have unlimited time, so a bit of writing won't hurt



Your quote runs parallel to a thought I had a few days ago on the ever lasting discussion whether one should look at solutions in tsumego collections or not. If you do, you might get into lazy reading habits and move too quickly into solution reading mode. If you don't, you may not realize where you got them wrong. The obvious answer is: do both. Pick up an easy collection, don't look at the solutions. Pick a hard collection and do look at them. Do vice versa. Later, pick up collections where you didn't look at the solutions, and do look at them now. Alternate looking while going through a collection. Etc etc ...

Your generalization makes a lot of sense. Focus on something for a while and then do the exact opposite. Play random openings. Then focus on the opening fad of the day. Play as thickly as you can while still trying to win. Then play as thinly as you can ... One color go might be on the edge of the experimental drift but I sympathize a lot with your light and heavy thinking about studying.

I like one color go because it forces you to remember the patterns you played. If you can remember (with support of the stones played) those past patterns it will also become easier to read deeper in the future without failing to see the stones.

Thanks for the kind comments! Interesting thought about looking at solutions. Sometimes I think it's important to just get new ideas of how to handle a situation. For example, some strange first line tesuji shape you've never seen is the solution. Once you see it, you can open your mind to that possibility. Then when you redo the book later, then you can solve the problem again without the solution, because you vaguely remember that that kind of shape exists.

About one-color go. I've noticed that I tend to play very simple, well defined shapes. I normally don't play the 3-4 attach joseki very much, but the shape is really easy to remember, so it's good for one-color go. It tends to lead me in a totally different direction to when I play normally, and sometimes I think one-color go filters out some of my more egregious mistakes by forcing me to play simple joseki moves and focus on basic principles instead of constantly trying new and strange things that I haven't yet studied properly. The end result is a much cleaner looking board in most cases, however, experimentation is also a part of learning and I suppose this might be one draw-back of one-color go. I mean, you can experiment, but it'll be excruciatingly hard to remember a whole board fight arising from a taisha joseki for example, and it'd be very easy to make a mistake and 'misplace' a stone during fighting.

A recent thought I had was how when I play on tygem I don't have to go looking for a fight. A fight will naturally arise just the way I like it. But on KGS the players generally don't play the way tygem players do, staying quite calm in the opening. I had a thought to begin experimenting with Mokuhazushi openings as a way to invite early fighting. Let them sit there as 'traps' while playing out the rest of the board, then if the traps aren't sprung I can just enclose for territory. As black a double mokuhazushi won't be so unusual. I'm more concerned about that kind of thing for white, but the main goal is not to take immediate profit, but to create shapes that invite early fighting so it might be okay, if not optimal. Only time will tell if my idea works and I get to play more early fighting games or not. Anyways, off to practice and study

With one colour go, I usually aim for complication, with the hope and/or expectation that my opponent will lose track of the stones while I won't. To some degree, also, complicated close quarters fighting can often be a sequence of pretty obligatory moves, which makes it easier to recalculate if you blank on the pattern. I suppose, though, that my thinking is that you have to embrace the challenge it presents to its fullest and try to use it to your advantage, rather than shying away from it.

I forgot to mention that I played one-color Go on KGS with the hacked client. That means I was the only one playing one-color Go, which was why I tried to play patterns I already know.

Anyways, a bit of an update. I'm almost done with the Attack section of the Gokyo Shumyo problems. I find these problems alot easier than the previous ones, as most are local situations in the corner where you have to employ a certain technique and then read it out. The sequences can be long (20+ moves), but since I know the techniques used so far, it's been smooth sailing. I still feel like I've gained valuable practice from the problems even though they haven't been hard. Solving these problems has given me reading practice and also reading discipline. In terms of problems only, I feel like I'm taking off and finally reaching a new level. I've also begun repeating the first tsumego volume and expect to be done with that in a few days to a week depending on how much time I spend. Speaking of time, it's not that I have unlimited time, but I do have alot of time right now and I intend to use it because it will not last forever

Also, here's a poem by kipling I love reading occasionally. For me, it is related to Go so I'm posting it here

If
by Rudyard Kipling

1 If you can keep your head when all about you
2 Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
3 If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
4 But make allowance for their doubting too,
5 If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
6 Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
7 Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
8 And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

9 If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master,
10 If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
11 If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
12 And treat those two impostors just the same;
13 If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
14 Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
15 Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
16 And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

17 If you can make one heap of all your winnings
18 And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
19 And lose, and start again at your beginnings
20 And never breath a word about your loss;
21 If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
22 To serve your turn long after they are gone,
23 And so hold on when there is nothing in you
24 Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

25 If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
26 Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,
27 If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
28 If all men count with you, but none too much,
29 If you can fill the unforgiving minute
30 With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
31 Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
32 And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

By that token I'm afraid I'm still very much a boy and will remain one until my last hour.