The Way of Samura

Samura · Post by **Samura** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:22 am

Hi everybody!

Today is my 6th month "anniversary" since I started to learn Go and I feel ready to start a more serious study plan. Currently I'm 14 kyu at KGS and I must say I was expecting to be 10 kyu already when I started. Probably, the cause is that I played very little against people (only 25 games), but mostly against Many Faces of Go (400+ games) and other bots at KGS. I got trapped in the idea of "get strong alone in the comfort of my home before facing other people" :oops:

So my first goal is to play at least 1 game against humans everyday at KGS. I plan to post every week the game I felt I did my best effort that week, no matter the result.

The other goal is to do 15 problems daily from the elementary tsumegos from Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia Life and Death compiled by tasuki.

I read bits about almost everything concerning Go, but the books I plan to read thoroughly at the moment are:
- Life and Death, by James Davies
- Tesuji, by James Davies
- Get Strong at the Endgame, by Richard Bozulich
- Attack and Defense, by Akira Ishida

The choices of books reflect what I think are most urgent now: a) Mastery of life and death and tesujis; b) get a notion of endgame (I heard that it's the best "profit/time of study" of Go studying); c) today, I can get out of the fuseki stage quite balanced with my opponent, by I don't how to invade or reduce, so I think Ishida can help me here.

CnP · Post by **CnP** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:31 am

My suggestion about those books would be not to bother with get strong at the Endgame (I've not heard that advice and as far as I know it's not good advice). Get strong at Tesuji from that series would be much better. 1001 life and death problems would also be another good book to get.

Dokuganryu · Post by **Dokuganryu** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:35 am

I would replace Tesuji and Life and Death with Get strong at Tesuji and 1001 life and death problems. And wouldn't touch any endgame related stuff till kgs 1d or more.

Samura · Post by **Samura** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:43 am

My thought was that could be an analogy between studying endgame and studying fuseki: You can improve a lot at the beginning just learning the basics, like making a base in the 3rd line and playing the wedge in the fuseki. Maybe I'm wrong.

About tesuji: I think I need to learn some "classic" tesujis before doing the "Get Strong at Tesuji". I found this book too hard! But reading it is in the plan, definitively!

And "1001 Life and Death Problems" is in my dreams already for a long time. I'll try to purchase soon!

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 1:45 pm

Studying some basics in the fuseki (Opening Theory Made Easy, In the Beginning, Fundamental Principles of Go are all good) is useful because it'll be relevant in every game and even then it's easy to overdo it! The endgame only really matters in close games and only there will your study pay off for you, the problem is close games are rarer and rarer as you get weaker than dan level. The vast majority of games are decided in the midgame, so that's ideally where our study should focus. Studying the endgame can be fun, endgame problems can definitely be interesting, but they won't be relevant to the majority of games you play for quite some time.

Don't get me wrong, I do endgame and fuseki problems for fun quite often and really enjoy the change from tsumego and tesuji problems but I don't do either with the idea that they'll especially help me get the next stone in strength.

tomukaze · Post by **tomukaze** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 2:01 pm

Good luck with your studies.
I personally would recommend playing more humans, as bots lack a certain fighting spirit.
Also try and get stronger players, in fact you will pick up alot of tesuji and endgame stuff from just playing stronger players through osmosis.

Have you read the fundamentals by Kageyama, too?

CnP · Post by **CnP** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 3:42 pm

Elementary Go series "the Endgame" also has a chapter on endgame tesujis. If you're interested in endgame tesujis check out the SL page http://senseis.xmp.net/?EndgameTesuji, and fundamentals by Kageyama has a chapter on how to think about the endgame. If you want an understanding of endgame tesujis (and being familiar with things like the monkey jump is pretty essential for self respect issues

) I'd choose the Elementary Go series over the get strong book, but that's just me (and the chapter on endgame tesujis in Elementary Go is easily understandable by us SDK and DDK players). I bought all the Elementary Go series books when I was 20k plus (1-6 anyway, the out of print volume 7 came later) - completely the wrong level but it's not been a waste in the long run, just maybe not the most efficient use of my time (I also spent far too long playing Many Faces of Go before I got the nerve to play real players).

Samura · Post by **Samura** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 7:33 pm

Ok, I'll let the endgame study for later and focus in more basic things. BTW, I already suffered the monkey jump and know the pain. :lol:

And about the Kageyama's book, I read bits of every chapter and I am definitively on the side of the people who thinks it's a must read for all players!

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Sat Dec 15, 2012 7:55 pm

I forgot to ask, have you looked at the Graded Go Problems for Beginners books? They've a nice selection of problems to work on and Vol. 2 could give you a set of easy problems for drilling.

Samura · Post by **Samura** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 7:05 am

Yes! I did the 1st volume already (pretty easy, I must say) and did some problems from the 2nd volume (getting hard times sometimes). But then I stopped and almost forgot this book! I should come back soon, and buy the 3rd and 4th volume too.

Boidhre · Post by **Boidhre** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 7:29 am

The fourth volume you can probably hold off on buying for a while, it's around 5k level if I recall correctly.

Samura · Post by **Samura** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 6:10 pm

After some time, I'm back to the log.

Things didn't go even close to the plan. A lot of factors are responsible for this: the old fear to play against humans (I still played a lot against Many Faces, and now Crazy Stone too); watch Zen19 play all the time on KGS in December; a lot of time spent on programming a tsumego generator on small boards; discovering that solve 15 problems a day is infeasible (there is always some very time-consuming problems on Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia).

But not everything is bad. I still read random bits of Go knowledge all the time. I solved dozens of tsumegos now and then. And recently I played 20 games against people in 2 weeks. I learned some things: It's not very hard to keep a routine of playing 2 or 3 games a day on KGS; still it's impressing how a streak of winning or losing 2 games in a row is enough to impact the emotions. 2 games won and I feel I'll turn a 1 dan in no time, 2 games lost and I doubt if someday I'll see this day...

As a sample of these last days, I'll put the last 2 games I played. The second is very interesting to me as an perfect example of how no to play go: I was totally territory-oriented and played safe, without fights, feeling I had enough of territory... and lost. If I played a bit like the first one, trying to fight for every space, I could have won.

billywoods · Post by **billywoods** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 7:11 pm

Samura wrote:solve 15 problems a day is infeasible (there is always some very time-consuming problems on Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia)

I think the Cho Chikun problems are a little too hard for 14k (even though they say "elementary"). Try Graded Go Problems for Beginners. You'll be surprised at how tough even some of the "30-25 kyu" and "25-20 kyu" problems can be.

I added a few comments to one of your games.

Samura · Post by **Samura** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 7:25 pm

Thank you, great revision! :tmbup:

Just a note: I never play :b7:

like I did this time. I would have played at D14, as always in this joseki. I don't know how I forgot when playing this game. :scratch:

Now I will study your comments! :study:

Samura · Post by **Samura** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 9:32 am

I would like to register what I thinked at move 19, when the board was like this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Bc $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . O O . O . . . $$ | . . . X . X . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ ------------------[/go]

C3 looked absolutely urgent to get points in the corner. I had the feeling that if a did'nt played there, white would play immediately then. I believe my reading of the move suggested by billywoods would be this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code: [go]$$Bc $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . 7 . . . . $$ | . . . 8 2 5 . . . $$ | . . O O 1 O 6 . . $$ | . . 4 X 3 X . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ | . . . . . . . . . $$ ------------------[/go]

I never play this wedge in this kind of situations because I feel I end in gote with :b3:

. I understand that F5 is necessary (honte?) for white but I doubt most people would play it at my level. I played C3 because of the fear that white would take this point with :w4:

. Even after two ataris ( :b5:

and

) white looks better to me.

I would like sugestions about this situation!

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