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 Post subject: Telemann's go
Post #1 Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 1:39 am 
Beginner

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Rank: KGS 6k
Hello everyone,
It's my first post on this forum and I'm glad I've finally joined here (I've been reading you guys for some time).

I'm currently 6k on KGS and 12k EGF (not updated recently).
I've started playing go 7 years ago. But after buying equipment and playing maybe for 2 weeks I left it on the closet. In august 2009 (year ago) I came back to go and discovered it from scratch. Unfortunately 7 years ago there were not many (if any) books covering the basics of go idea and strategy in Poland (and on the web). With fresh motivation my studying begun :)

After few games on KGS I've started thinking about how to make progress. It was really hard, because there are so many different approaches on studying go. So it was logical for me, that if very strong players got very different methods it is probably not so important how you will mix up the "go ingredients of study" :) I've came up with my really personal study schedule.

- no 9x9 games - the deep waters of 19x19 was so appealing that I just couldn't get enough patience for playing boring (for me) 9x9 - so first point - only 19x19

- early openning studies - no 9x9 stage of development made me think how to approach go. People who play 9x9 before 19x19, practice the middle and endgame, and then jump into the big board. I've choose to start from the beginning and studied openning (yes, joseki, corners, sides etc.). It felt so natural that good game must be build on strong fundamentals. Studying openning gave me first really strong feeling of influence. Not the good usage of influence (I still got problems with that), but just the fact that influence exist :)

- tsumego - I've never organized my tsumego studies. I was reading tsumegos at very different places and times, in the bus, in the kitchen, in the park, on the university - just spend some free time on reading few problems. I think that "being ready" to read problems is important for the effectivity of reading. I've discovered that when I force myself to "read problems for 30 minutes" or something like this it becomes less effective than taking some printed tsumegos everywhere and just taking a look whenever I want :)

That's how I got to 9k KGS in less than 3 months of playing. I'm aware that many players would say it's not good to study joseki early or not to play 9x9 - but it worked for me =)

I've get to the point where my openning was VERY strong compared to rest of aspects of go (and still openning is my favourite stage of the game). Then it was HARD to advance. The next step was to "pull up" middle game and endgame to openning level which should make me stronger - and it happened =)

After thinking A LOT about this way of starting and studying playing go I've came up with an answer for following question:
Why hard studying of openning made it easier to advance really quickly at the beginning?
- Because most of beginners are told not to study openning :)
Most of stronger player suggest to develop middlegame and leave openning for higher ranks. So early studying openning is something like exploiting overall weakness of beginners.

Now when I play in SDK area players are well rounded and only way of advancing is steady growth of whole strength. I don't have particular study plan. I'm just aware that reading is a core of strength and around it all other skills are focused. Problems are only thing that is constant in my studies all other aspects are 100% flexible. After losing a game I just try to figure out where I've failed and work ONLY on one or two things from recent game. It can be one joseki, pattern on the side, tsumego in the corner, tesuji, some wicked ko or even a simple endgame trick that I've messed.

I'll try to post some recent thoughts, patterns, games or anything that will come to my mind which is correlated with go growth :)

I hope you are not bored to death after this overlong post :D
Have a nice day and good luck with all your goals! :)

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