Memory Palace

[quantumf]

I've recently been reading about Memory Palaces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci and after some experimentation I've been quite impressed by how well the work.

Recent discussions in the Tami's Way topic and the Intuition topic have prompted me to wonder whether there is any mileage to be gained by trying to apply this memory technique to Go.

If indeed one can store hundreds, or even thousands of facts, in a reliable and retrievable way, what should one attempt to store?

Just a checklist of things to remember? A pretty lengthy and detailed checklist could be kept.

A list of principles and techniques? Which ones?

Joseki sequences? An encoding method is not clear to me.

A 'shape' database? What does this even mean?

Has anyone tried this? If not, do you have any opinions or suggestions?

[pwaldron]

Recent discussions in the Tami's Way topic and the Intuition topic have prompted me to wonder whether there is any mileage to be gained by trying to apply this memory technique to Go.

I'm going to butcher the joke, but I remember Keith Arnold joking about a "Japanese Name Dropping Diletante" several years ago. It was a fellow who couldn't find a tesuji to save himself over the board, but once he was shown it after the game he had memorized the correct Japanese name for it.

I have a similar vision every time someone talks about memory work in go. The game has so much variability and depth that it's going to swamp any memorization methodology. Better to learn to read those tsume-go out from scratch.

[jts]

It really works best for collections of things where each item is pretty easy to remember and it's the number of things you need to remember or their order that is difficult. It also works best for things that are themselves easy to visualize, like faces - if you need to create a symbol to remember something, then how do you remember what it was a symbol for?

As I've been memorizing games I've been giving each game a location and a time. I seriously doubt that it helps to memorize them initially. I'll tell you in ten years if it helps them stick.

[Tami]

IMO, there is a difference between memorising, and knowing and understanding.

If you memorise joseki and tesuji shapes, without considering what function they perform or meaning they contain then, if my own experience is any yardstick, you will not only find it hard to remember but also be just as confused as ever.

If you study joseki, strategic principles and everything else, slowly endeavouring to understand how they are applied, and if you practice them in your own games, then doubtless you will come to know them and to understand them at a better level. Again, if my experience is of any service, I find it much easier to remember things I have studied with careful attention. Memorisation comes naturally when you`re enthralled by something!

For example, let`s take these "five priorities" to get you started in fuseki:

1) First, occupy corners
2) Then, Enclosures/Approaches
3) Extend in front of an enclosure/deny the extension
4) Play any checking extensions (mutually big points)
5) Finally, move into the centre or begin activities against the opponent

There is vastly, vastly more to fuseki than these five principles, but if you first study them in examples, and try them out for yourself, then they will give you something to work with, and you will be able to apply them with reasonable confidence. But if you simply memorise this list, without doing the study, then I suspect you will find yourself feeling pretty confused when you sit down to play a game.

After all, what do you do if the opponent interferes with your order of play? What if you cannot decide whether to make an approach or an enclosure? What if something completely unexpected appears?

I`ve already tried using checklists, "compasses", mind maps and all kinds of complicated memory systems to remember principles and moves and shapes, and found them to be a big burden. The quickest way to master principles is to study examples, to look out for how they are applied in all the games you see, to see what happens when somebody "breaks" a principle, and to attempt to apply them for yourself. If you do that, you should find you`ll come to remember them when needed.

For one more example, I`ll summarise the contents of one of Takemiya`s books for you:

1) Play where the opponent wants to play
2) Don't surround territory
3) Know the state of play (in Japanese, 自分をわきまえる, "Know yourself")
4) Don`t make bad shape carefree

To see what Takemiya means, you`d have to read the book and think about the examples. You`d have to try to apply those ideas to your own games. Without such a foundation, I am pretty sure those "principles" won`t mean anything much to you.

I believe the psychological reason is because a skill is basically created by forming very strong and robust neural connections. You can learn the principle, but without the extensive practice you just cannot obtain the powerfully and broadly wired support for it in the brain.

I`ve used this example before more than once, but it`s a good one: take alternate picking on the guitar. It`s extremely simple, just hold your pick (I won`t go into the details of how you do that) and move it up and down in time with the beat. Strike the strings on the downstroke or upstroke according to the rhythm you wish to produce. That`s it. You probably grasped that within a few seconds (provided you didn`t know it already), but I can assure you that it would take many, many hours of concentrated practice before your alternate picking could compare with, say, Steve Vai.

So, to conclude, I`d encourage you to use memory palaces to help with certain things, but to use honest-to-goodness study as your principal method.

[RobertJasiek]

The quickest way to master principles is to study examples [...] You`d have to try to apply those ideas to your own games. Without such a foundation, I am pretty sure those "principles" won`t mean anything much to you.

There is a good chance to understand correct and good principles simply by reading them. Examples and application in games can be another way to understand principles. IMX, it depends on the nature, quality and presentation of a principle whether the fastest understanding comes from simply reading it, studying applying examples or other means towards an understanding.

1) First, occupy corners
2) Then, Enclosures/Approaches
3) Extend in front of an enclosure/deny the extension
4) Play any checking extensions (mutually big points)
5) Finally, move into the centre or begin activities against the opponent

Although you use this list as an example of principles a learner might be confronted with, repetitive statement of this or related lists are suggestive for beginners. They deserve a much better list of first opening principles, a list related to their by far most frequent opening mistakes:

- Avoid premature endgame.
- Choose the bigger space, direction or group.
- Do not play on neutral intersections.
- Take and deny the opponent from taking the valuable shape points.

[RobertJasiek]

Joseki sequences? An encoding method is not clear to me.

While some learners of the first million digits of pi use symbolic encoding such as a city name or animal for every block of, say, four digits, the best "encoding" for joseki sequences is the understanding of their contained meaning: move meanings, Strategic Lines, group meanings, strategic choices, tactical choices etc.

[quantumf]

For example, let`s take these "five priorities" to get you started in fuseki:

1) First, occupy corners
2) Then, Enclosures/Approaches
3) Extend in front of an enclosure/deny the extension
4) Play any checking extensions (mutually big points)
5) Finally, move into the centre or begin activities against the opponent

...

I`ve already tried using checklists, "compasses", mind maps and all kinds of complicated memory systems to remember principles and moves and shapes, and found them to be a big burden. The quickest way to master principles is to study examples, to look out for how they are applied in all the games you see, to see what happens when somebody "breaks" a principle, and to attempt to apply them for yourself. If you do that, you should find you`ll come to remember them when needed.

I absolutely agree that I need to understand the principles or techniques or strategies or tactics involved, but...

In my analysis of my games, either by myself, or in reviews from stronger players, certain failures keep coming up. This list of key things to remember gets long, and I would very much like to remember them all, if only to remember to apply them in actual games to see how they turn out, which will help reinforce them.

To illustrate, here's a small subset of my personal list

- thickness is good, and avoiding cut points is important in the opening, but don't over do it
- when cut, think about which group is weaker - often this means the group with less liberties
- blocking a group in is often pointless, especially if playing on line 2 (unless there's a chance to kill)
- When pressured, try to get away without strengthening opponent
- When playing long extensions from corner, and opponent play a one space approach, think about stepping back (2 space extension) to the corner, rather than jumping out
- Don't overattack - take some territory when the opportunity arises
- Don't forget splitting attack - push opponent groups together, and then split them
- Don't be passive - look for active move.
- Don't miss the chance to make bad shape for opponent
- 8 point shape is already alive

All obvious things, when written down, particularly to stronger players. But I don't remember all these things and frequently one of these items (or items from my longer list) will occur, which may not cause losses directly, but will cause less than ideal results.

So I'm tempted to try and specifically remember this list, although as pointed out by jts it's quite hard to remember abstract things rather than facts, in the Memory Palace technique. The list above seems pretty abstract...

[quantumf]

Joseki sequences? An encoding method is not clear to me.

While some learners of the first million digits of pi use symbolic encoding such as a city name or animal for every block of, say, four digits, the best "encoding" for joseki sequences is the understanding of their contained meaning: move meanings, Strategic Lines, group meanings, strategic choices, tactical choices etc.

Actually the record for pi is some way short of a million Currently its about 68,000 digits. Although I'm sure they do something along the lines of what you're talking about.

In terms of joseki, if we assume its useful to memorize them (a questionable assumption, but lets ignore that), there's at least two problems: 1 - remembering all the moves, and presumably, all the variations (although these could perhaps be called different josekis), and 2 - remembering the justification/result of the joseki, i.e. why you would pick it.

Are you suggesting that somehow the 2nd problem could solve the 1st problem?

Note, btw, in the memory palace technique, you're supposed to heavily stylize the thing you're to remember, perhaps by dressing it in outlandish clothing, or by thinking of a ribald form of the thing. In general, this is easy to do with nouns, like, say, in a shopping list. When it comes to more abstract matters, I don't know enough to say what works. I've heard, for example, that one can use the syllables of the word involved, and have memorable entities associated with all the standard syllables. Whether that's viable I don't know.

[PeterPeter]

This guy has some YouTube videos about memorising joseki using mnemonics.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BasicGo

[Uberdude]

This guy has some YouTube videos about memorising joseki using mnemonics.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BasicGo

That was bizarre. I've never used these sort of memory techniques so maybe I am too quick to dismiss them, but aren't they for remembering random facts? Joseki aren't random facts, they make sense.

[RobertJasiek]

it's quite hard to remember abstract things

I don't think so. Have you tried to provide structure for the abstract things to be remembered? Thereby, you need to recall fewer things at first and need to recall details only whenever they are relevant.

[RobertJasiek]

Are you suggesting that somehow the 2nd problem could solve the 1st problem?

Yes!

[Tami]

This guy has some YouTube videos about memorising joseki using mnemonics.http://www.youtube.com/user/BasicGo

I watched a bit of this, but to be honest I think it would be easier (for me at any rate) to remember the purpose and meaning of each move rather than some quirky story about mothers, knights and teenagers. (And actually I did try something similar a long time ago - I called various sequences after characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I ended up forgetting them all!)

Very cute avatar, btw, PeterPeter!

[snorri]

So, I spent a fair amount of effort on this some months ago and learned a lot, but this thread is hijacked by people whose opinions may differ from what I found, so I'm reluctant to comment.

[quantumf]

So, I spent a fair amount of effort on this some months ago and learned a lot, but this thread is hijacked by people whose opinions may differ from what I found, so I'm reluctant to comment.

Doesn't seem hijacked to me yet? Anyway, I'd like to hear anything you found in relation to my original question.