Understanding

[EdLee]

A very common experience, at least among many
kyu or low-dan level adult Go students, here in the US:

I'm frustrated. Please could I have some general advice.

My problem is knowing what to do in the following situations:

1) When opponents initiate middle-game exchanges prematurely

2) When opponents keep leaving a weak group behind to take big points

The kind of thing that I mean by (1) is when your opponent plays a shoulder hit or capping play against an extension, but at a very early stage. In general, should I regard such plays as a form of kikashi, to be responded to and then left until the situation clarifies?

As for (2), I frequently have my attempts to build up frameworks interrupted by what seem to be premature invasions. The opponent typically ends up with a weak group, but I never know how to judge whether to continue attacking it. For instance, a very common scenario is when the opponent comes into my area, I threaten to deny him a base, and then he makes a two-space extension and leaves it as is. A two-space extension, in itself, is not alive, but I'm often at a loss as to how to follow up play against it. If I play an extra move to add pressure, he may take a large play elsewhere; and even if I play a severe move such as peeping underneath to remove the base or playing a shoulder hit I find my attack rarely has killing power.

Similarly, and again under (2), sometimes an opponent will come into my area by playing on the fourth line, and then will abandon the stone. I want to attack it straight away, but often he gets way ahead by ignoring me.

As I say, I'm hoping for general advice; even the proposal of some kind of heuristic. My biggest concern is not so much unfamiliarity with specific lines (although I admit I obviously have much to learn there), but rather with knowing how to time procedures.

Thanks if you can help!

From Post 12 of this thread.

Also, post 10 of When to stop attacking.

Another generic advice thread, posts 8 and 9

[EdLee]

For Tami's question above, here is one version of my reply:

I'm frustrated. Please could I have some general advice. ...
As I say, I'm looking for general advice;

( my emphases. )

Hi Tami,

This is not what you want to hear -- from your previous posts
and our previous exchanges, I know -- but I'll say it anyway,
because (a) I'd like to help you, save you time,
and (b) I believe it's correct.

You're frustrated precisely because you are looking for
general advice and heuristics. Go doesn't work like this.

What Bill says is correct, "There is no easy answer to that question."

You must look at the specific board position,
and have it reviewed by a good teacher.

The possibilities are endless, but the usual suspects include:

• Your real mistake happened 20 moves ago. ( Say, basics mistakes. )
• Your real mistake happened 20 moves LATER. ( Say, basics mistakes. )
• Your real mistakes lie in your basics -- basic shapes, tesujis, reading errors, etc. throughout the game, not where you thought was the crux of the game.

There is no way to diagnose the real problems
unless you have your game reviewed. And not just one or
two or a few games, but consistent, regular reviews
with a good teacher.

I know this is not what you want to hear. And your experience
and frustrations and thinking happen to be very common,
unfortunately, among adults, at least in the US -- perhaps
it's different in Europe and other countries.

Go is extremely specific, to the point of being cruel ( for me ).
Every single liberty, ladder, stone, hane, tesuji, atari, extend, cut,
jump, connect, throw-in, tenuki, ko, matters.
Every sequence matters, down to the very last move.

General advice and heuristics may make you feel better,
but they most likely will not help improve your Go.

I've seen this discussion on KGS, on this forum, and elsewhere for years.

One of my current projects is to find (better) analogies to share with Tami, and others who share her frustrations.

[EdLee]

Go-Man: a Pac-Man variant.

Pac-Man:

pac-man.png (3.08 KiB) Viewed 15692 times

Play Pac-Man Doodle

In addition to Tami's question above, here are a few other favorite questions or topics on KGS or this forum, over the years:

• I want to reach N-dan in X months.
• Why am I stuck at x-kyu or y-dan ?
• I just made 4 kyu yesterday! Damn, today I drop back to 5k. Why ?!

Here's an analogy that touches upon these topics.

Some of us who were around in the 1980's may remember Pac-Man.

In the original Pac-Man, you travel through a blue maze and gobble up the yellow pac-dots
along the way. When you've eaten up all the pac-dots, you continue to the next level.
Four monsters (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde) chase you; if any of them touches you, you lose one Pac-Man life.

Now let's imagine a variant with these changes:

• You don't need to eat all the pac-dots to get to the next level.
  (Of course, you can still choose to gobble them up all.)
• There is now an Exit on each level. All you need is reach it to move on to the next level.
• You now have a stun gun with which you can stun the monsters.
  A stunned monster will freeze chasing you for some short period of time; then, it'll unfreeze and continue to chase you.
• Your stun-gun bullets are the same pac-dots that you gobble up.
• As you reach higher and higher levels, the monsters require more and more bullets to stun.

( If you're not familiar with Pac-Man, it's easy to substitute other
"playform" games with similar basic properties; e.g. Mario, Sonic, etc. )

For this discussion, let's call this variant "Go-Man", and the dots "Go-dots".

[EdLee]

Let's imagine one strategy for Go-Man (see previous post):

If we just want to reach higher levels as quickly as possible,
we learn to evade the Monsters. We "sacrifice" picking up the Go-dots.
We improve our evasive maneuvers and traversing techniques.
We become better and better at reaching the Exit fast.

But here's the rub: eventually, we will get stuck at a certain level.
Because in order to get past the Monsters at these levels,
we must freeze them periodically. And to freeze them we need a lot of Go-dots --
Go-dots that we lack because we were so keen on passing all the previous levels
that we didn't pick them up, at least not enough of them.

To get past this level barrier, there is only one way:
we must return to the previous levels and pick up the Go-dots that we missed.

We don't necessarily have to gobble up 100% of the Go-dots on previous levels.
Perhaps 75% to 90% of Go-dots on each level is sufficient.
But less than 50% on every level is most likely not enough.

There is no way around it -- we must acquire enough Go-dots to reach the higher levels.

[EdLee]

If you're read this far, by now most of you know where this Go-Man analogy is going.

The growth curve for Go is in some ways analogous to Go-Man. For some people, anyway.
There are probably exceptional cases where the Go-Man analogy fails completely.
I'm not concerned with the exceptions here. I'm looking at where the analogy works,
which I think is most cases I've seen, including the original favorite topics mentioned earlier:

• I want to reach N-dan in X months.
• Why am I stuck at x-kyu or y-dan ?
• I just made 4 kyu yesterday! Damn, today I drop back to 5k. Why ?!
• I have a general question on how to improve (e.g. Post 51 above).

Now we're ready to use Go-Man to dig into these topics, one by one.

[EdLee]

Favorite topic/question:

• Why am I stuck at x-kyu or y-dan ?

Short answer: because you lack Go-dots.

Imagine two people, Jane and Tom, both amateur "1 dan" at Go. ⁽¹⁾
The "1 dan" is in quotes for a reason, explained later.

Jane has done her homework. She has done sufficient life-and-death and other tesuji Go problems
appropriate for her Go levels as she came up. She knows many of the L&D for 1 dan level.
Her basic shapes are 1 dan level. Her tesujis are 1 dan level.
Her reading is not brilliant, but sufficiently 1 dan level.
Her other basics -- opening, sense of direction,
sense of strong and weak groups, etc. are all 1 dan level.
She is lucky to have a good teacher along the way,
so she has either removed many of her bad habits (in Go),
or has very few bad Go habits to begin with.

Tom is not like Jane. He thinks tsumego is boring, so he has done very few Go problems.
His basics are so-so: his basic shapes (some hideous) are not quite 1 dan level.
Because he never studied L&D much, his corner L&D is quite miserable.
For whatever reasons, he's never had a good teacher, so he has acquired many bad habits in Go over the years.
But he enjoys fighting and has decent fighting skills.
So despite his lackluster basics, despite his bad habits,
his reading skills compensates for them, and he can maintain a "1 dan" ranking at some Go servers.

Jane can be considered a solid 1 dan. Without the quotes.
Tom is a "1 dan". With the quotes.

Not all 1-dans are the same.

Going forward, Jane will have a much better chance to advance to 2-dan or higher.
Her basics are solid 1-dan. She has few bad habits. She has a good foundation.
She has sufficient Go-dots to move forward.

Tom lacks Go-dots. When he faces other 1-dans or 2-dans who are similar to Jane,
who have done their work, who have solid basics and fewer bad habits,
Tom will lose to them more often than not.

Compared to people like Jane, Tom is missing a tremendous amount of Go-dots.
If Tom is "stuck" at "1 dan," this is a big component.
To get past this Go level barrier, Tom must go back to study all the basics
he missed or neglected over the years. He must go back to pick up many of the missing Go-dots.

_____

⁽¹⁾ For this discussion, amateur 1-dan means approximately 6 or 7 stones from pro.
I'm trying to make this Go level independent of any particular Go server or associations.
A pro is someone who actually passed the pro qualification exam
in China, Korea, or Japan. "Honorary" pros don't count.
Pro level is another huge topic -- beyond the scope of this Go-Man discussion.
I'll use another completely new post for that.

[EdLee]

Favorite topic/question:

• I just made 4 kyu yesterday! Damn, today I drop back to 5k. Why ?!

Short answer: Because you lack Go-dots.

This is the same answer to the question "Why am I stuck at x-kyu or y-dan ?" ( See previous post ).

If you are flip-flopping at the border ( say, between 5k and 4k ),
it means you are exactly at that level -- you are not yet a solid 4k.
You are borderline. You don't have enough Go-dots to face other solid 4k's and
beat them 50/50. It doesn't matter if you "touch" the 4k mark for a few hours,
a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months -- if you lack the required Go-dots,
you will eventually drop back to 5k.

Because other people who have done their work, who have picked up enough Go-dots
will eventually beat you back down to 5k.

There is only one way to make a solid level: to acquire enough Go-dots.
( Also, not all "4k's" are the same -- see previous post on why not all "1 dans" are the same. )

Related: people who set a goal of "1 dan in N months". Most of them don't distinguish
between a solid 1 dan level and a borderline 1k-1dan level. There's a difference.
Also, not all "1 dans" are the same ( See previous post, again. )
Some solid 1-dans can advance to 2-dan or higher levels much more easily
than some "1 dans" who lack many Go-dots -- many people also don't distinguish
between these. They are also different.

Some are very happy to "touch" the "1 dan" mark and announce it to the world.
Only some time later -- a few days, a few months -- they drop back to 1k.
So.

[EdLee]

Favorite topic/question:

• I have a general question on how to improve (e.g. Post 51 above).

Short answer: if you understand Go-Man, you'll see why general questions like these are not very productive.

Because what you're really asking is this: there are these thousands -- tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands -- of Go-dots. You want to ask a few general questions.
You want people to give you some general answers to:

• help you pick up some of these hundreds of thousands of Go-dots quickly.

There is no such thing. If such general answers existed, we would all be high-dan levels by now.

You're asking for an Instant Go pill ( like Instant Coffee or Instant Noodle ).
You're asking for a magic Go bullet.

There is no such thing.

There is no such thing in Go, no such thing in karate-do, no such thing in piano.

We must pick up these Go-dots one by one. Yes, there are tens, hundreds of thousands of them.
( Separate topic: children can pick them up much more quickly than adults -- for various reasons.)

Here's an example:

$$B Example: 3-4 point: high vs. low approach
$$ -----------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . |
$$ | . . O , 1 . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Example: 3-4 point: high vs. low approach
$$ -----------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . |
$$ | . . O , 1 . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

In Takao's Basic Joseki dictionary, the high approach, , is about 154 pages.
The low approach, , is about 95 pages.

Think about this for a moment.

No, I mean really think about this for a moment.

People on KGS, or here on this forum -- most of them are nice, reasonable people.
They want to help you. When you ask a general question ( like in post 51 ),
people are eager to help. They give you some general answers.
Some provide a few diagrams, sometimes more than a few diagrams.

But nobody really knows what is happening, exactly, with your Go and in your games.
The "exactly" is important. Because we know every single stone can make a huge difference in Go.

Nobody knows which Go-dots you have acquired, and which ones you are missing.
Maybe your basic shapes are brilliant -- we don't know.
Maybe your basic shapes are hideous -- we don't know, either!
If you lack many Go-dots in your basic shapes, then that's a problem!
You simply cannot improve with invasions or attacks, etc. until you go back to pick up
your missing basic shape Go-dots.

This is the meaning of "Go is extremely specific."
If you can figure out by yourself which Go-dots you're missing, great.
If not, then you need to find a good teacher, and ask them to review your games.
Identify which Go-dots, like vitamins or nutrients, you're missing the most.
Fix it. You need to go back and pick up these Go-dots.
Then, identify the next-most deficient Go-dots. Fix that.

Pick up these missing Go-dots one by one.
Rinse and repeat.

It's very specific. And it's a lot of work. This is Go.

General questions and general answers -- without specific board positions from your games,
without identifying exactly which Go-dots you're missing -- are quite philosophical,
and even entertaining.

But do they help improve your Go ? If yes, please show us some solid evidence.

[EdLee]

Generic/specific question: what's the shape of the Go-dots graph ?

If we plot Go levels ( from 20 kyu, through amateur 1 dan, through pro ) on the x-axis,
and the required number of Go-dots on the y-axis, what's the shape of the curve ?

This is related to the favorite topic "I want to reach N-dan in X months."

My suspicion is it's exponential, but I am not sure.
Even if it's exponential, I don't know what kind of exponential curve, exactly.

My suspicion is also that it's not a linear curve.
This could explain, at least partially, why many people under-estimate its shape. ( So. )

[Uberdude]

Waiting for Godots?

[EdLee]

Waiting for Godots?

Excellent.

[paK0]

If you are talking about a curve made out of dots do you weight them as well? Clearly not every area is equally important/easy to grasp.

Also some might be interchangable, but not in a 1:1 ratio.

[EdLee]

If you are talking about a curve made out of dots do you weight them as well?
Clearly not every area is equally important/easy to grasp.

Also some might be interchangable, but not in a 1:1 ratio.

Hi pak0, interesting question. I didn't think of weighing them.
As in, "some basics are more important than others,
so grasping them is worth more than others." Interesting!
I'm not sure.

So the answer is to improve your understanding of basics.

From this thread.

[topazg]

Also potentially interesting, to me at least, is a premise that "some go-dots, either individually or in combination, are a pre-requisite of other go-dots". Some of the finer aspects of fighting with thickness or sabaki are pretty much useless in the hands of a beginner. Of course, this is because they don't understand them, but importantly I think is the fact that they are probably incapable of understanding them because the building blocks upon which they start to make sense aren't currently in place.

[EdLee]

A friend asks:

Do Go-dots correspond to something in the game, like stones, or just basic principles?

Go-dots are the basics, fundamentals. They don't map to any physical elements of Go, or to any of the rules.
Some examples from chess:

• we can assign rough values to the pieces: pawn=1, bishop==knight==2, rook=5, queen=9, king=infinite; to help evaluate the position.
• in the opening, be careful if you move a particular piece more than once, because you may be losing tempo; instead, you could develop another, unmoved piece.
• in general, the order of development in the opening: first develop your minor pieces, then the rooks, and finally, the queen.
• if you pull your queen out too early, she may get in trouble because your opponent can attack her and profit from the attack.
• beware of a doubled pawn -- it could be a weakness.

The basics include things like basic skills or techniques, basic strategies. Often, there are exceptions to any of the basics. That's one reason they are so difficult to master,
because it takes a tremendous amount of work, time, and (painful) experience to learn when something works, and when it fails miserably.