Abyssinica wrote:I think that the benefits of playing a lot diminish the stronger you get and the benefits of studying diminsh the weaker you are. What use is all the guidance, theory, and explanations in the world to a 28k player who still hasn't gotton much of a feel for basic shapes, concepts, or ideas yet? Just play more; it'll do you a lot of good. But what if you're a 6d amateur? You already know so much about the game (Which is probably still close to nothing at all in the grand scheme of things). Your opponets aren't going to be weak either, and I doubt there's more that you can figure out on your own that you already don't know just by playing. Maybe there's a balance of the two at SDK levels.
I don't know about the SDK level being the midpoint specifically (shodan is starting to looklike where you stop being a beginner, as I get stronger), but this idea seems quite reasonable to me. After all, one usually doesn't give rank beginners the advice to spend 10 hours studying tesuji before they start playing.