The Start Of A New Journey (Plan To Become Pro)

[Boidhre]

Best of luck with it hailthorn.

[Buri]

Greetings,
of course you should go for it. Just prioritize family's, love friendship and work at the same time. Life has never been easy.
Why plan on losing a thousand games? I bought into the myth that one should lose a lot of games at the beginning to learn. After the first 150 or so it became depressing. With good teaching and correct study one should not be on a long losing streak in the lower rankings. It is not healthy and certainly isn't t the path to becoming a pros.
Cheers,
Buri

[hailthorn011]

Greetings,
of course you should go for it. Just prioritize family's, love friendship and work at the same time. Life has never been easy.
Why plan on losing a thousand games? I bought into the myth that one should lose a lot of games at the beginning to learn. After the first 150 or so it became depressing. With good teaching and correct study one should not be on a long losing streak in the lower rankings. It is not healthy and certainly isn't t the path to becoming a pros.
Cheers,
Buri

When I said lose thousands of games, it was meant as tongue and cheek. But if I'm going to try and reach pro level, I'm invariably going to lose thousands of games. But I treat losses as learning tools. I use the Idiotbot as a way to blow off steam, too. I'd rather sandbag a computer than humans, after all. <<

[nyuubi]

I suggest you consider my previous advice if you really want to become pro, but in addition to that, I know you only play on KGS. I think forcing yourself to play on tygem atleast 30% of your games will help you alot. Remember to always review your games, especially the ones you lost.

[Boidhre]

From tchan001's blog: http://www.igoindonesia.org/tutorial-go ... -hard.html

I can't vouch for its accuracy being as weak as I am but I found it quite interesting. Note the time he estimates to go from 2d to 8d.

[SoDesuNe]

I don't think it's impossible to become a pro at "late" age, but as others have said it all depends on means and material.

You will need a high dan teacher right now. You will need an enviroment of constant competition like in an asion Go school. You will have to make sacrifices in other aspects of life.

And even if you are strong-willed and follow those points, I think it will take at least five years.

Here are two links regarding kghin 8D on KGS. He scratched 9D a while ago but could not keep it, although he is 8D already about 2 years and has professional tuition if I'm not mistaken. MilanMilan a chinese professional says that kghin still plays a lot of amateurish moves despite this tuition and is far away from reaching professional level. Although, too be fair: Kghin says he does not aim to become a professional.

http://gosensations.com/index.php?id=2& ... new_id=792 (Interview with kghin)
http://gosensations.com/index.php?id=2& ... ew_id=1357 (MilanMilan's opinion)

[hailthorn011]

Here is my current strategy for getting stronger at my current level:

1. Figuring out the Chinese Opening and other flavor openings
When someone plays moves that I consider outside the norm, like the Chinese fuseki, the sanrensei (not so much because I'm familiar with it), ect. I often get flustered and do not know how to proceed. So studying these exotic fuseki will be one of my first steps.

But really, my main deal is the Chinese fuseki. I hate playing against this opening. And I mean, I HATE it. Of course that might change after I study some more.

2. Reviewing each serious game I play
I was thinking of using a pattern matcher to help me here. I figure if I use it to help go back over games, it'll at least help me with fuseki. And it might even help me learn some more joseki and how to apply them in a given situation. It's not a perfect method as I'll obviously have to use my own judgement in positional situations, but it should help.

4. Solve life and death and how stones work together
Life and death is essential knowledge to any player who wants to attain a higher level. But more so than that, I want to learn how stones can function together and be able to know that if I'm trying to capture a big group, I don't need to patch non-existent weaknesses.

Also learning how stones work together will help my middle game dramatically. For example, if I need to run, where will I run to if all my stones aren't reachable? How can I make it to where my groups are light and can get to safety with ease?

5. Observe High Dan players
This one needs no explanation. This will be especially beneficial for the fuseki side of things. Later on, maybe not since high dans tend to play blitz, but I'll at least glean some sort of knowledge from how they play the openings. Maybe.

I also just like watching high dan games. Twoeye, miao, bum, ect. are some of my favorite players to watch.

6. Play blitz games for fun
Why, you're asking. What good is that? How does that help? Well, it doesn't. Blitz games seem to be good for testing instinct, and that's about it. However, these games aren't to help my studies at all. They're a way to just enjoy the game.

I don't want to be in serious mode 100% of the time because I would crash faster than someone coming off a sugar rush.


So this is my current strategy. I've been told to also read attack and defense, so I plan to read that as well. Does anyone happen to have any suggestions? Maybe there's something I haven't thought of, and it would be great to know.

[RBerenguel]

Here is my current strategy for getting stronger at my current level:

1. Figuring out the Chinese Opening and other flavor openings
When someone plays moves that I consider outside the norm, like the Chinese fuseki, the sanrensei (not so much because I'm familiar with it), ect. I often get flustered and do not know how to proceed. So studying these exotic fuseki will be one of my first steps.

But really, my main deal is the Chinese fuseki. I hate playing against this opening. And I mean, I HATE it. Of course that might change after I study some more.

Be sure to check Battousai's lectures on fuseki: http://www.youtube.com/user/dwyrin And I know at first they are odd... but there's nothing "exotic" in the Chinese (or Sanrensei, or Kobayashi or mini-micro Chinese)

2. Reviewing each serious game I play
I was thinking of using a pattern matcher to help me here. I figure if I use it to help go back over games, it'll at least help me with fuseki. And it might even help me learn some more joseki and how to apply them in a given situation. It's not a perfect method as I'll obviously have to use my own judgement in positional situations, but it should help.

Get kombilo (free) and a game database (GoGoD is pretty cheap, but I don't have it yet, so I can recommend it faithfully)

4. Solve life and death and how stones work together
Life and death is essential knowledge to any player who wants to attain a higher level. But more so than that, I want to learn how stones can function together and be able to know that if I'm trying to capture a big group, I don't need to patch non-existent weaknesses.

Tsumego tsumego tsumego. Do tons of them. TONS.

Also learning how stones work together will help my middle game dramatically. For example, if I need to run, where will I run to if all my stones aren't reachable? How can I make it to where my groups are light and can get to safety with ease?

5. Observe High Dan players
This one needs no explanation. This will be especially beneficial for the fuseki side of things. Later on, maybe not since high dans tend to play blitz, but I'll at least glean some sort of knowledge from how they play the openings. Maybe.

Beware of watching blitz games among dans. They are not that useful.

I also just like watching high dan games. Twoeye, miao, bum, ect. are some of my favorite players to watch.

6. Play blitz games for fun
Why, you're asking. What good is that? How does that help? Well, it doesn't. Blitz games seem to be good for testing instinct, and that's about it. However, these games aren't to help my studies at all. They're a way to just enjoy the game.

Always enjoy

I don't want to be in serious mode 100% of the time because I would crash faster than someone coming off a sugar rush.


So this is my current strategy. I've been told to also read attack and defense, so I plan to read that as well. Does anyone happen to have any suggestions? Maybe there's something I haven't thought of, and it would be great to know.

Also lots of tesuji, of course. But tsumego should be like 40-50% of your time, 25%-35% playing and the rest for the remaining items.

[Redundant]

Also learning how stones work together will help my middle game dramatically. For example, if I need to run, where will I run to if all my stones aren't reachable? How can I make it to where my groups are light and can get to safety with ease?

5. Observe High Dan players
This one needs no explanation. This will be especially beneficial for the fuseki side of things. Later on, maybe not since high dans tend to play blitz, but I'll at least glean some sort of knowledge from how they play the openings. Maybe.

Beware of watching blitz games among dans. They are not that useful.

I have to vehemently disagree about this, at least for the case of high dans. Sure, sometimes it degenerates into a ton of desperation plays, but most of the time watching high dans blitz is one of the best ways to gain intuition about shape. High dans don't have time to do much reading, so they're playing off of knowledge of shapes. I attribute a lot of my getting to 5k in 6 months to watching high dans play.

[RBerenguel]

There are high dans and high dans, I've seen plenty of blitz among high dans that are just a mess, no shape whatsoever, just lumps of stones. Far better to watch slow games from dans: the shape is always there.

[Joaz Banbeck]

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

Your biggest obstacle is not your age, but the bad habits that you have already learned.

[hailthorn011]

There are high dans and high dans, I've seen plenty of blitz among high dans that are just a mess, no shape whatsoever, just lumps of stones. Far better to watch slow games from dans: the shape is always there.

They're just teaching us how NOT to play in those isntances. lol (jk)

[oren]

Why watch high dans blitz? You can always watch pro games quickly if you want to learn good shape.

[hailthorn011]

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

Your biggest obstacle is not your age, but the bad habits that you have already learned.

True, but I feel as if I'm constantly shifting because I keep learning new things. Maybe these bad habits will gradually go away.

For example, one of my biggest problems used to be that I was using too little time in 25-30 minute games. But now I'm getting to byo-yomi in almost all of my serious games.

But that took a long time for me solve that problem. So you may have a good point there.

[hailthorn011]

Why watch high dans blitz? You can always watch pro games quickly if you want to learn good shape.

True, but it's really fun to watch high dan games. Not just for the game itself, but for the kibitz. It may not always be useful, but the kibitz can be very entertaining.