I also try to focus on playing with good shape and get a feeling for the correct timing of "active" moves. My role-model is Shuei, though :p

So far I'm okay-ish successful but I also don't really confront my weakness of playing 50%-moves. I'm often content with simply defending and then count on my opponent's mistakes to make up for my slow play.

I really should learn to make the game broader and more complex.

We should play sometime on KGS : )

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Panic and chaos seem to be the norm these days. Glad you're managing to channel these things into your go game!

I'm being fairly successful with applying aforementioned heuristics:

- corners first
- big points on biggest sides
- enclosure/extend
- reduce sides to build center
- avoid complex joseki
- make shape
- don't go all out fighting
- A, B, C
- see sequences
- use time

On KGS I have a winning streak of 7 games as a 1d. I'd like to get back to 2d and when this damn crisis takes the full year, I'd like to take advantage of it to reach a long abandoned goal of becoming 3d.

That's the rank objective. The question is: (how) can a life long 1-2 dan make that leap at 48 years of age?

Any advice on how to go about it? Does my condition make a difference?

Doing the same things I've done before is probably not a good approach. One thing I've always neglected is studying joseki and openings altogether.
Another idea is: if I have a hard time avoiding fights, perhaps I should accept my nature and become better at fighting?

Given that go, since 2016, changed a lot in regards to opening strategy and josekis you can either take away that now is the best time to play catch-up or that it was never an important point to focus on (at least at amateur dan rank below - arbitrarily - 5-dan or so).

My money is on it was never important for our rank - and I did grind a lot of opening problems a while back (get strong and the mastering-series) - did not make me even (solid) Shodan.

I'm a broken record about this and I know you even opened a thread about this topic, but my take is and has always been: Tsumego, tsumego, tesuji and some more tsumego problems to get stronger ; ) This is also by no means a shortcut: As Baduk docter in his series to become a dan-player points out, you have to solve problems regularly and thoroughly (ie really reading out lines to the end). It also has nothing to do with age but with time spent. If you can do two hours a day effortful tsumego practice and play a serious game than you will get stronger. Add reviewing and instructions and it will become even faster.

Important: The time-frame is still months for progress and not days or even weeks.

I also read an insei report from Antti (I couldn't find this post anymore, so maybe it was some other report on senseis, Benjamin Teuber?, or the other parts of the internet) that he was often ahead in the opening because the other inseis had a way worse understanding of this stage then he had. But their reading was far stronger and so they often catched up.

So, yes, I think embracing the fight (when necessary) is good, at least to build up confidence and experience.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Obviously I don't know how to become a strong go player, but here are some thoughts:

• Unless you suffer from senile dementia, you can learn at any age, maybe more slowly than teenagers but learning is not at all impossible. I know people in their fifties who resumed studying at university, and who were as successful as young students.
• What is harder is to overcome bad habits that have been ingrained for many years.
• 1-2 years ago, Tami (a member of this forum who also was in her late forties) said she managed to improve from IGS 1k to 1d. Besides studying, one of the things she did was to change her playing style. I don't know if this method works to improve from 2d to 3d but it may be worth a try.

I suggest getting better at fighting. Without implying that you should focus on this, I noticed when I became 3d that most 2d don't get much out of their attacks, and 3d get a lot more.

I forget, have you ever taken regular lessons from a good teacher e.g Hwang Inseong?

A long time ago I studied with Guo Juan from the Netherlands.

More recently but still a long time ago I studied with Minue until he disappeared.

I'm not terribly keen on having a teacher right now but if you think it's necessary I'll consider it.

Here's a game of today. I was happy with the collected way of playing.

I lost the game late in the middle game or early endgame, playing "honte" where I should have taken a big point and then later losing sente.

It shows errors in judgment, not so much in tactics.

A few comments and questions.



BTW, I had to remove the [] around 2d and 1d.

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

Banana Republic. It's not just a store anymore.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Who would everyone else be? In my copy of GoGoD, there are only 5 examples of the approach to the bottom left corner in this position. Three are from AlphaGo self-play games (all won by White). But this is a relatively rare position currently. In the AI era, Black's high approach in the upper left has been replaced with the low approach as the "main line". Beyond that, the hanging connection for (with or without an intervening approach at F3 to test the water) has been the main choice both before and after the AI's appeared.

Once Black connects solidly, the human choice for has historically been D10 (high extension rather than the low one in the game). This D10 is also blue for the the Katago 20-block at around 15K playouts and remains unchanged at 500K (i.e., when I leave it running over lunch ). Katago is basically indifferent between the lower left approach and tenuki to enclose the lower right.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Just a memory glitch. What was popular was an approach to the bottom left corner for , with the connection at . OC, with an approach to the bottom left corner in this game the play can transpose to those once popular positions.



Checking now, I see that AlphaGoTeach prefers the approach at C-06 slightly (by 1.2%) to the high extension to D-10, and decidedly (by 3.1%) to the low extension to C-10. Interesting that KataGo disagrees. What are the playouts and winrates for each of those moves at 500K? Thanks.

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

Banana Republic. It's not just a store anymore.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

how about 43 @ r9? the extra liberty matters a lot, and i don't really feel like connecting underneath

Looking at the last game and trying to extra general principles for improvement, I would say:
- think more about maximizing local efficiency of shapes, don't just settle for a move which does the broad strategic job you want but look for more candidate moves that may do so in slightly better ways. Finesse in move order/timing as taught by book "Beyond Forcing Moves" could help.
- when fighting think about where the points for you and opponent will and will not be when the dust settles.

Thanks all, more than I hoped for!

Bill, I see that you've already converted to more modern play. I thought many of my choices in the opening were a little old fashioned and slow but not wrong, not by Katago's account. The real mistakes were rather late in the game.

Dave, I'll investigate the high extension and may convert to it.

Shaddy, yes 43 would have been simpler at P10

Uberdude, SoDeSuNe, jlt, Shaddy, based on your general recommendations I will

- read, read, read: in my games, when doing tsumego and when studying joseki. A current goal is to read at least 10 moves deep in at least 1 variation.
- embrace fighting and apply reading there; at least for a while stop trying to hold back on fighting, as it seems to be in my nature
- take Uberdude's last recommendation to heart; rephrasing: look for the best shape that globally achieves your goal; look where the opponent may play when the dust settles
- and consider taking a teacher, but not right away

So far I'm doing tsumego, studying joseki and playing games.
The key challenge is to read, read, read. Not going through the motions, read the solutions, check joseki ... but read.
In the games I embrace fighting and it seems to pay off.

Just if anyone was interested, I found it again: It was a testimonial for Guo Juan's go study in China (https://internetgoschool.com/ruben.vhtml).

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Since taking this new approach, I'm 6-3 on KGS. I'm doing daily tsumego and about 90% of the time I can keep the discipline of reading out the full problem, including variations that don't work even if I already found the solution. I've studied a number of corner patterns. I'm reading 5-10 moves deep and 3-5 variations. Especially in corner patterns I'm able to read fairly deeply. In tougher tsumego I have harder time picking the candidates, for example in carpenter square variations. In the games I'm embracing fights and those have turned mostly into my favor, even if they weren't always well executed but the opponents made more crucial mistakes than me.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Stabilizing at 2d on KGS, lost by 4,5. The review was interesting to me.