Tami's Way

[RobertJasiek]

Here is another point I forgot to mention in the other thread: What really worries me about how, if correctly, I understand your current joseki learning proceeds is that you take a newly learnt joseki and try in your games when it works or does not work well. This means that, for ca. 400 josekis to be learnt, you are likely to make 400 good and 1000+ bad choices. You will lose too many games due to wrong choices, and continue to do so less frequently during the following years. Such was my experience because I had to rely on tactical joseki literature. You want to improve and you are in the lucky position to choose your literature. So why do you want the hard trial and error way? Of course, everybody makes (also strategic) mistakes, but 400 good to 200 bad choices would be so much better, would it not? This I mean with reading also literature about (joseki) strategy. You have the chance to relax your current experience of hardness of remembering new josekis; by better understanding their possible strategic intentions, it should be much easier to remember them. Understanding the local aspects of a joseki also greatly helps, but is at best half the motivation.

[Tami]

Here is another point I forgot to mention in the other thread: What really worries me about how, if correctly, I understand your current joseki learning proceeds is that you take a newly learnt joseki and try in your games when it works or does not work well. This means that, for ca. 400 josekis to be learnt, you are likely to make 400 good and 1000+ bad choices. You will lose too many games due to wrong choices, and continue to do so less frequently during the following years. Such was my experience because I had to rely on tactical joseki literature. You want to improve and you are in the lucky position to choose your literature. So why do you want the hard trial and error way? Of course, everybody makes (also strategic) mistakes, but 400 good to 200 bad choices would be so much better, would it not? This I mean with reading also literature about (joseki) strategy. You have the chance to relax your current experience of hardness of remembering new josekis; by better understanding their possible strategic intentions, it should be much easier to remember them. Understanding the local aspects of a joseki also greatly helps, but is at best half the motivation.

Thanks for this Robert. I`m starting to realise that you are a good deal more well intentioned than I had given you credit for, and I`m sorry for suggesting that you only wanted to advertise your books.

I admit that I do sometimes try out newly learned joseki without concern for context, but that`s by no means my habit. Generally, I do try to apply what I think is the right move for the situation...but I often get in trouble for lack of knowledge or for lack of reading or for lack of insight.

I think, actually, the culprit for finding joseki and techniques hard to learn has been that I have been trying too hard. What I thought were good study methods turned out to be less helpful.

For instance, for much of my life I`ve been a compulsive note-taker; but it`s gradually been dawning on me that my memory works better if I don`t take notes. To be more precise, I find my memory works better if I make notes some time after studying. I realised that by taking copious notes in a study session that I was concentrating more on making a paper or computerised record of the matter than of actually getting it into my head. With my Japanese, I found that once I stopped taking notes, I started passing exams!

So, recently, I gave up the kind of note-taking that involved copying from go books into my local copy of cgoban, and started just reading the books in a focussed way. Lo and behold, I`ve found that the material has started to stick! I do continue to make notes, but after the fact, and of a cryptic nature intended to stimulate my memory rather than serve as a replacement for it.

The other problem I have had is trying to learn too many new things at once. Actually I do believe it`s possible to learn a lot of new data in a short time, but the trick is to break it into small pieces and learn each piece in a separate mini-session. This is backed up by the pyschological literature, which notes the fairly limited nature of short-term memory and the way the mind uses offtime to begin transferring new information to the long-term memory. Neurologically, you need breaks to allow certain chemicals within the brain to replenish themselves. By trying to learn five or six complex items in one go, I was not only overloading the buffer of my mind, but working my brain too hard physically!

I`m confident I`m on the right track now, and besides which, I have already improved at go in spite of my poor study skills and the fact that go is only my third priority (after music and work). I may still be 1k on KGS, but I`m much higher on the graph than before. Okay, it`s nothing very impressive, but it`s better than not having moved at all.

I also attribute a lot of my losses on KGS to the fact that, go being my third priority, I tend to play late at night when I`m tired and irritable - the alternative being not being able to play at all. Finally, dullard as I am, I realised the obvious solution: create a second account to play on when you`re out of condition, and give yourself permission to make silly mistakes, losing streaks or to be irrational. The out-of-condition account allows you to play, and get experience, but does not reflect on your progress as a player.

There is something more profound to the decision to make an "out-of-condition" account. It is namely the acceptance that I cannot always control my mental or physical state. It is not easy for someone like my to acknowledge that I cannot beat tiredness, hormonal swings or sickness by will power. It is not easy to accept that one cannot always be at peak form.

Of course, I make sure to rest before working or giving a musical performance; but I often don`t have that luxury with go, as it`s something I do after the other things.

[Buri]

Greetings,
your comments about note taking are very interesting. Actually I am a compulsive note taker. The small room I have studied so lectures and books on Go over the summer is littered with kifu of interesting variations and joseki I will probably never remember n time in a game....
Some years ago I was teaching at a woman`s college here in Japan and I decided to make use of the NeuroLinguistic Programming training I took for learning English. The basic premises were as follows.
1) Note taking in class pre-programs the brain `not to bother.` One is taking notes, after all.
2)In order to retain and understand what is being said one should repeat it in the head to a mental construct of someone who is very meaningful to you in some way, such as a spouse or lover. That person asks questions , or parapharases what is said.
3) The most powerful means of embedding material in long term memory is `re^teaching.` In other words, after you leave the classroom, immediately explain to a friend what you just studied. Failing that, teach it to the person in your head.
4) Ue a tape recorder in class as back up.
Using this approach, significant improvements in learning and usage occurred very rapidly.
In the same way, I suppose, one could mentally talk ones way through a joseki with a partner, explaining the reasoning behind each move, have them ask questions and paraphrase. Then when one gets home, reteach the new material to the dog who is trained to sit patiently in front of the goban.
Best wishes,
buri

[RobertJasiek]

lack of knowledge or for lack of reading or for lack of insight.

Knowledge: Easily overcome, just read the books providing it.
Reading: a) psychology, b) effort
Insight: Be patient. It improves along with playing strength and more knowledge.

I have been trying too hard.

Really? It does not matter if you learn two dozen josekis a day and forget 50-60% within the following weeks. You can learn the forgotten ones later at a similar rate of success. I did that about 4 or 5 times. Learning and forgetting was not wasted: it made the next learning cycle easier.

What I thought were good study methods turned out to be less helpful.

And a problem is: for everybody, it works differently. So, e.g., your learning problems would not apply to me.

It is namely the acceptance that I cannot always control my mental or physical state.

Every player has this problem. I needed many years to overcome it - almost (and so far only in real world tournaments with sufficient time). IIRC, my blunder rate as 1d was 2 per game. Now it is varying from 0.3 to 0.1. (Server games are completely different, but for many players.) Even top pros are not beyond making infrequent blunders. The human mind wants to make mistakes.

[Tami]

At the moment, I`m reading several books on go, in my spare time. I`ve been slowly working through Segoe`s Tesuji dictionary for the last two weeks, and I`m just starting to feel an improvement in my ability to see ahead - the horizon is being pushed. Also, I picked up Yamashita`s Tesuji Dictionary just over a week ago, and found myself enjoying it in a new way. On the backburner, I have Yoda`s book on pro thinking techniques (which seems more like a kind of autobiography to be honest), and I`ve just picked up a MyCom book on the subject of sabaki, by O Rissei.

The reason I`m enjoying the Yamashita Tesuji book is that it`s causing me to see the whole business of tesuji in a new light. I`ll compare my old and new ways of thinking:

OLD - tesuji are special moves, mainly to capture stones but sometimes for other purposes like connecting or spoiling shape.

NEW - there are about 30+ kinds of ordinary moves (e.g., ikken tobi, keima, kiri, hane). There are a number of strategic and tactical goals. For example, "cutting" is a tactical goal and "blockade" (sealing in) is a strategic one. There are obvious ways to accomplish the goals, but depending on the situation any move can turn out to be the tesuji necessary for achieving the goal. Rather than thinking "Oh, there`s a Slapping Tesuji" or "here`s a Nose Tesuji" or whatever, it`s better to look for the move that works! Taking the chapter on cutting, as one illustration, Yamashita shows situations in turn where a cut can be achieved by a straightforward cut, a push and cut, a keima, a warikomi, a two-step hane and even by unlikely-looking placements and contact plays.

The point I`m trying to make is that rather than seeing tesuji as specialised moves that don`t normally crop up, it seems much better to think that any kind of move, even a humble ikken tobi, can be a tesuji if it happens to be the one that works under the current circumstances. I think that minds trained on James Davies`s tesuji book and similar works can become too narrow in their focus, and playing experience only deepens this; the Yamashita dictionary shows how to look beyond the obvious, to find the tesuji that lie waiting to be found. In the case of cutting, if the obvious cutting moves don`t satisfy, try looking at the other candidates and see if they lead somewhere. In other words, you don`t apply a tesuji so much as find it.

So, for me, the Segoe dictionary is my way of training reading depth, and the Yamashita dictionary the book for broadening my vision.

[RobertJasiek]

rather than seeing tesuji as specialised moves that don`t normally crop up, it seems much better to think that any kind of move

Exactly.

[p2501]

rather than seeing tesuji as specialised moves that don`t normally crop up, it seems much better to think that any kind of move

Something similar applies to joseki as well imho.

[oren]

The reason I`m enjoying the Yamashita Tesuji book is that it`s causing me to see the whole business of tesuji in a new light. I`ll compare my old and new ways of thinking:

Just curious but the Yamashita dictionary is the new version of the old Shuko tesuji dictionary. I can guess changes in the Joseki and Fuseki dictionaries, but do you have an idea of what changed in the Shuko to Yamashita Tesuji dictionary?

edit... should have searched first

　日本棋院書籍のフラッブシップともいえる、新版基本事典シリーズから、布石、定石に続いての第３弾、新版基本手筋事典が発売された。
　昭和53年に上下巻で出版されてから、実に33年ぶりの全面改訂。著者は藤沢秀行から山下敬吾にかわり、新版は上下巻ではなく１冊にまとめられた。
　そのかわり総頁数は旧版から大幅に増やされ640頁と分厚い一冊となった。

So it's one volume versus two, and some updates. Since it's one volume, I might pick it up as well even though I have the old one.

[oren]

Also if you want a recommendation, I've been working through "中盤戦に強くなる 打ち過ぎ撃退法" which has been a very good book.

[Tami]

Just curious but the Yamashita dictionary is the new version of the old Shuko tesuji dictionary. I can guess changes in the Joseki and Fuseki dictionaries, but do you have an idea of what changed in the Shuko to Yamashita Tesuji dictionary?

Yes, indeed, this is basically the Fujisawa Shuko dictionary plus updates (just confirming this for those who could not read your quote in 日本語). Yamashita supplies some whole-board examples from his own games and other current top pros.

I also have the Fujisawa book, which I bought nearly 10 years ago, long before I actually learned to read Japanese. It's sitting in my parents` attic now I think having the work in a single volume is vastly more convenient. I don`t know why, precisely, but for some reason the work seems to have become much more fascinating and enthralling for me than before. Possibly it is simply the thrill of learning a new way of seeing.

Thanks for recommending the Nihon Ki-in`s middlegame book. I`ll have to bear it in mind next time I feel like buying a go book. For now, though, I think I`ve got enough on my plate.

I also like Awaji Shuzo`s book on the Counter-measures to Invasions that Amateur`s Don`t Know. John Fairbairn has done a review of it here. I`m reading it for the second time, in my new "bitesize" way, and I`m remembering a lot of it very well now. Indeed, it seems the best way to read a lot of go books, especially the dictionary-like ones, is to read them in lots of short sittings rather than as though they were novels!

Changing subject, I found a very enlightening page on Sensei`s Library: http://senseis.xmp.net/?HowToGetAlongWithKGSRatingMath Finally, I understand how it works. I`m not sure whether to be happy or faintly furious. Basically, ranks do not get stuck, but they may seem to if you play a lot of games in an irregular way. For all these years, I`ve been operating under the misapprehension that it was your percentage score per day that mattered, not the number of wins, but now I see that if you play 20 games in a blue rage over a drunken weekend, each of those games will carry the same weight as the 1 game a day you play over the next three months while calm and rational. If you want to preserve fluidity, then either play a lot and keep playing a lot, or play only one game a day; but do not play to an irregular rhythm, because then the rank petrification illusion will set in.

Well, my main account is currently "petrified" because of one or two days when I played a lot in spite of my better judgement - the 3-6 September stands out as a rather tiltly period (scoring 4-11). That`s actually not too bad, by my standards, because for the rest of the time I`ve been too busy with this weird little thing known as "life" to play any more frequently, but there have been other little stretches, such as 5-9 March, when I threw all self-control out of the window and a lost a lot of horrible games after being irritated or discombobulated by some factor or other. Anyway, I am not complaining about it: I should have exercised better self-discipline, and now I know that there is a heavy price to pay for rattling off a lot of blitz games trying to get that one elusive win before bedtime.

I wonder how many other players, especially the ones who don`t speak English and cannot read up obscure SL pages explaining the mysteries, fall into the same traps? My guess is that quite a large percentage of players have deflated ranks because they periodically get frustrated, go on tilt for a couple of days, and acquire a lot of losses that don`t really reflect their playing ability. I say this because I have noticed a wide variation in the quality of my opponents - I hardly ever have close games and I have played many a 2k who turned out to have been 1d or even 2d in better times.

At least with Kaya, you can see exactly where you stand. When you know what damage you are taking, it`s much easier to quit a self-defeating behaviour, and easier to understand what it will take to rectify matters if you do have a spell of lunacy.

Finally, for this post, which has consumed nearly 1 valuable hour already, I`m thinking of taking one month out of my schedule to go "hardcore" on go. The reason is that I`m now confident that I can learn what I need to learn to become stronger, and becoming stronger is more important to me than I have cared to admit. I would like to set aside a period of time in order to read the heavy-duty, hard-content books that contain the essential knowledge (such as the Yamashita Tesuji book and Takao`s Joseki Dictionary), to train my reading, and to study some professional games thoughtfully. I think I could learn enough in one month to power me for quite some time afterward (I did something similar with JLPT N3 and N2, and not only passed the exams, but also found that the improvement in my Japanese was ongoing and lasting). The only reservation I have is that I have a very serious goal to re-become a professional musician (I was a pro choralist, but that was radically different from what I do now), and at my age (40), giving up one month of practice, songwriting and recording time, to pursue an unrelated and essentially amateur whim is not something I take lightly.

If I did go hardcore, I would probably do it in December, when it gets too cold in my wooden Japanese house to play guitar for long spells. Who wants to encourage me to become a "go nun" for a month; who wants to say "get back to your guitar you slacker!"?

[xed_over]

I`ll try to keep you posted on the Yoda book.
...
he described his early days when he played through the games of Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru, and was thrilled by the way they would save stones he thought would be cast off, and would throw away stones he thought would be saved. To be able to play like this, he recommends laying out pro games repeatedly, saying that your ability to emulate their moves will increase without your being aware of it.

Ah ha. I like Yoda even more now
I wish I could read Japanese.

[Tami]

Dear journal, not much to report, but I think at last I have three clear steps to follow in the way of becoming stronger.

1) Practice reading, always stretching to new depth and breadth
2) Study books, because it`s a lot of fun and knowledge is power
3) Take your hand off the trackball when playing online, because how can you apply your strength when you play impulsively?

Although I bought it over a year ago, I finally got around to reading Ishida`s fuseki book (and my review is now in the Go Book Reviews section). I`m glad I did. To be honest, I wasn`t very much past the "corners-enclosures/approaches-sides-checking extension-centre" mantra, but now I have some useful ideas to add to that. Now I`m reading another MyCom fuseki manual, by Mimura Tomoyasu. The Japanese is a bit hard-going for me in places (which is good, because all this reading is doing wonders for my Japanese ability), but I already like this book enormously. Why? Because, like Ishida, it is not merely another statement of the above mantra, but gives alternative and additional ways of thinking about the opening. It`s especially good because he looks at the problems you face when playing White (another poster on L19 in another thread recently bemoaned the lack of attention paid especially to White in fuseki literature), and what to do when your opponent does not agree to your desired strategy!

In essence, Mimura talks about different styles of playing the fuseki, and how to be consistent within those styles. This makes me realise one way in which I`ve been going wrong for a long time. I have often played large-scale openings and then gone on to start invading, only to find my frameworks crumble as my opponent attacks my raiding party. The right way to play a large-scale strategy is to keep expanding, and welcome your opponent when they invade, because that gives you the chance to consolidate. Conversely, a different style of play is to make smaller, tight positions and then to go making shinogi in order to catch up; but this is more difficult to master.

Another thing I`d like to note in this entry is that I`ve decisively given up on things like compasses and checklists. Basically, you can`t play go "top down", because it is simply too large a game. While it`s desirable to have systems for choosing the move, I think the unconscious mind is much, much better at creating them than the conscious mind. It takes a long time for this to occur, but it is a lot more natural and effective than trying to convert oneself into a human computer. For example, I keep thinking about Ilya Shikshin, when asked about how he got so strong. He said he studied everything he could get his hands on. I doubt he uses artificial systems to analyse the position; rather I imagine he must look at the situation, and allow his mind to produce automatically the necessary ideas to handle it.

Anyway, I spent 10 years (!), although I often take long breaks from go, on repeatedly trying to come up with shortcuts for getting stronger, and I have only got about 2 stones stronger since 2002. That`s not good enough, so at last I`m changing my ways, and I would warn all who read my journal never to be too stubborn, because when something just ain`t working, it ain`t working!

Thinking about fuseki, it seems many people copy pro-level fuseki, and even if they don`t really understand the reasoning behind the moves, it can still be very difficult to play against somebody who has recently been viewing the latest ideas from Korea or wherever. After all, even if you are not an expert fencer, carrying a samurai sword about can still make you very dangerous. But rather than swing about my own sword, I`m going to try to learn the reasoning behind the moves, and hopefully I shall become better able to dodge the attacks and disarm my opponents.

[Loons]

Go nun! I am up for some rigorous sparring when I eventually remember my password on Kaya*.

I'm also gradually learning the best shortcut to getting stronger at go seems to be putting long hours of hard effort in (apologies to Tabemasu who has said exactly this to me over and over and over).

On the checklist front, that seems to be my experience also. Study and revise diligently, then trust your feeling in game (obviously counting and reading are implicit). To try and follow some hard and fast rules seems gimmicky to me.


Aping pro fuseki does not seem so bad to me. You must be familiar with the moves to learn about them, it seems to me.


*Making passwords inconceivably long and arcane sounds like a way better idea than it is.

[RobertJasiek]

the unconscious mind is much, much better at creating them than the conscious mind. [...] I`m going to try to learn the reasoning behind the moves

Seems you can't decide which is better for you - unconscious or reasoning:) Why not trust both?

[Tami]

Tami wrote:the unconscious mind is much, much better at creating them than the conscious mind. [...] I`m going to try to learn the reasoning behind the movesSeems you can't decide which is better for you - unconscious or reasoning:) Why not trust both?

the unconscious mind is much, much better at creating them than the conscious mind. [...] I`m going to try to learn the reasoning behind the moves

Seems you can't decide which is better for you - unconscious or reasoning:) Why not trust both?

Yes, I believe in using both. My experience of and research into the learning process suggests it works like this: you study ideas consciously with great care and attention, but it is the unconscious mind that synthesises new learning with old to produce a greater understanding. That process, I believe, is called "relational memory".

Of course heuristics and mnemonics are extremely useful in the acquisition of new skills, I don`t dispute that. But the bringing everything together workably, I think, is something that comes naturally as learning is absorbed. You cannot force it, because I don`t think anybody can consciously carry around enough principles to do so; rather, the right principle comes to mind when the situation arises. Or perhaps your system is perpetually present in your waking mind?

When I jam on the guitar, I used to try "let`s play such-and-such a lick here" but it was impossible to keep the tempo when I did that. Now, I just let the lick come out naturally if it feels right, and that seems right. Likewise, wenn ich deutsch sprache, ich denke nicht zu Grammatik, nur von ausdruecken. (I know my German is horrible, but I can only get my point across in it when I forget about rules, and just speak.)

Okay, I`m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater here, either. If the relevant ideas don`t come to mind in a situation, then you have to tackle it top-down from principles; but it`s ideal if you can already recognise the situation and have some grasp of how it works first.

As it should be obvious, I`m only someone with an amateur interest in pyschology, but I should think even an amateur grasp of cognitive psychology could be very be useful when trying to find ways to learn and progress.

I have a terrible feeling that I`ve merely said "just learn a lot but keep an open, critical mind" in a very verbose and pretentious-sounding way.