Understanding

[EdLee]

1. How do we get strong at fighting?

Hi daal,

The million dollar question.

I haven't talked about it because
I don't know the solution.

Because, for many amateurs, "stuck" at kyu or low dan levels,
this is the same question as: How to improve at Go, period.

But I do know some pros' opinion on this:
improve our reading skills and knowledge of all kinds of shapes, tesujis,
vital points, etc. from tsumego, and from studying reviews of our games
from a good teacher.

This means to study and improve ALL our basics, which I mentioned
ad nauseum in many threads where people ask your same question.
Someone quipped, "But that's a bit tautological" --
indeed: who said Go is easy ?!?

Earlier in this thread I asked about the guy who's doing the 10,000-hour thing
to make golf pro: it's related, because if he succeeds, we can take a look at
how he spends his training time on golf basics, and see how that works.
for him. Alas, they said not going so well for him, either.

[EdLee]

Why are so many of us so lousy at this core competency?

Hi daal,

Another million dollar question. You hit the jackpot today.
Good news: I have a slightly better idea about this one than your 1st question.
Bad news: it's not what many people want to hear, which is another meta-theme running in this thread.

Cliché: to solve a problem we first have to admit there is one.

My thesis: many or most adults, at least here in the U.S.,
don't even know their Go fighting skills are lousy.

My evidence: do a search on game reviews on this forum.
See how many times I've mentioned to people their biggest problems
are NOT the opening, NOT direction of play, etc., but rather,
it's their basics -- without good basics, nobody can fight well.
Now look at how many people ask about the opening, about direction
of play, about "general, vague questions" ( sorry, Tami ).

And when I mention it's the basics, what kind of response ? Blank stare.
( See also post 40 of this thread. )

Want more evidence ? OK. Search on YouTube, there are quite a few popular
Go videos. Some with over 10,000 or even 20,000 views. By some mid-dan amateurs.
Look at how much time they spend on the opening. And other areas like
"the big picture," "direction of play," or otherwise vague, "general" topics.
Compare to how much time they actually spend on a DETAILED analysis of
a local fight, a local life-and-death, etc.

Want more evidence ? OK. Do a survey: ask how many amateurs have actually
studied with a good-level pro who also happens to be a good teacher.
For a non-trivial, meaningful amount of time, say, at least 10 years.
This is a key question. I don't have solid, hard numbers, but my guess is
this is a low number. This is one key to your question.

Thought experiment, A: we walk down the street, we do a random
survey: how many people in the general public are classically trained
pianists who can play well ? Why would anyone expect that
a large portion of the general public are good-level classically trained
pianists ? Wouldn't it be much more natural and normal to assume that
most people have zero to terrible basic piano skills ?

Thought experiment, B: now we limit our "random" survey to people
who have had lessons with piano teachers, and who have had practiced
for 10 years, we look at their basic piano skills. We're not surprised
this second group can perform better than the general public;
we're also not surprised there is some sort of bell curve to their piano
skill levels.

I think, given that Go is for the most part still non-existent ( at least here
in the US -- I hear it's much better in Europe ), given this abysmal spread of
Go ( outside of Asia ), I think a more natural question is,
"Why would anyone expect many of us NOT to have lousy basics ? "

Corollary questions:

• Why do most people understand and accept if you want to improve at the piano, you need to pay for good piano lessons ? That otherwise your basic piano skills are probably lousy, or at least not very good ?
• Why do most people, at least in the US, and on this forum, have a Completely Different understanding and expectation to Go basics, as evidenced by your very question ?
  ( Hint: please see Post 40, again. )

Thought experiment, C: imagine a forum exactly like this one, but for classical piano. Imagine 99% of the forum users have zero pro lessons. They all try to learn classical piano from books, from other random amateur pianists with varying piano skills and teaching levels. Repeat: 99% of them have ZERO experience with a good, classically trained pro piano teacher. Now you ask, "Gee, how come so many of them have such lousy piano basics?! " I wonder!

See, it's not what ( many or most ) people want to hear.

[EdLee]

Here's fresh evidence, hot off the press, while I was still editing
the previous post -- from Defeat of the week, post 7 --

I am taking careful note of the fighting mistakes several of you highlighted,
even though my general priority is direction.

( my emphasis )

This is another kind of response. It's different from a blank stare.
It's active resistance. To low-level advice (mine). To high-dan advice. To pro advice.

Of course, I understand Go is "free". Most of us here are amateurs. This is
not a matter of livelihood for most of us. It's just for "fun" and/or
"self fulfillment." That's perfectly OK.

However, when you ask for Go advice, and sincere people -- a few of whom have
decent Go levels ( high dans, not me ), and some even share good pro advice
( me, doing the sharing ) -- all tell you, over and over again,

• the problem is not your opening, or direction, but your basics

and the response is: "No, thanks" --
well, what can you do ? Live and let live.

[jeromie]

Ed, when you tell people they need to work on the basics and get an ambivalent response, I don't think it's because they don't believe you. I think it's because it's such a broad answer that it transmits very little information. It's the flip side of the overly general questions that you (rightly) point out are not very useful for gaining strength at go.

I think this circles back to your first few posts in this thread. There are certain type of go knowledge that lend themselves well to study. Topics such as fuseki, joseki, direction of play, etc. can largely be learned by immersing oneself in theory and intentionally practicing that theory in games. I think that's why these topics are disproportionately represented in the go literature (including the literature by professional go players who are good teachers!) and talked about on go forums: it makes sense to talk about them because we can learn something. What we learn may not make us a whole lot stronger, but it does have some value.

On the other hand, fighting is a lot more difficult to talk about in a constructive manner. We can build up some mental shortcuts by learning a few tesuji, studying some basic ideas about good shape, and memorizing a few living/dead shapes, but in the end these ideas can only be solidified by a lot of practice in games (and, to some degree, tsumego). Getting better at reading is a lot of work, and I don't think there is a way to take shortcuts past the effort it requires.

What we can do for one another is to point out specific failures in the application of the basics. If you were to review one of my games and just tell me I need to work on the basics, I would agree with you but wouldn't learn anything. If you were to tell me that I missed a specific shape point during a fight or failed to recognize the key point for life and death in a corner / side problem, I would be likely to take something valuable away from the review. (Thank you for the times when you have done just that!)

It's also important to remember that many of us are here to engage with other go players, not just to get stronger. I doubt there's a strong correlation between time spent on L19 and the rate of improvement in our go. If there is a correlation, it's probably negative. I could/should be working through tsumego right now if gaining strength were my only purpose, but I care about engaging the community surrounding any hobby in which I participate. This biases the sort of questions we are likely to ask one another towards those that foster discussion.

As to the importance of professional lessons, I have no doubt they would be helpful. But they don't fit in my budget, and there are a lot of ways I can improve without a professional (even if they may not be as efficient). Classical pianists probably have a very high rate of tutelage under a professional, but many of the quite remarkable musicians that play at my local bluegrass jam probably took a different path to mastery of their instruments. One thing they probably did get, though, is invest a lot of time playing with stronger players--something that is hard to get in online go, where we almost always spend our playing time matched up with people at around our own level. Figuring out how to match up interested new players with stronger players who are willing to play high handicap games would probably be one of the best things we could do to help people improve more quickly (if that is even our goal!).

[Bill Spight]

One thing they probably did get, though, is invest a lot of time playing with stronger players--something that is hard to get in online go, where we almost always spend our playing time matched up with people at around our own level. Figuring out how to match up interested new players with stronger players who are willing to play high handicap games would probably be one of the best things we could do to help people improve more quickly (if that is even our goal!).

Years ago the New Year's issue of Kido asked all the pros to give a word of advice to amateurs on how to improve in the coming year. The most frequent bits of advice were to play a lot, to play thickly, to get a rival, and to play against players who are about 3 stones stronger.

That strength difference seems about right to me. 2 stones is not much of a difference, but 3 stones definitely is. You can learn a lot from someone that strong. 5 stones, however, is such a big difference that a lot of the time you won't know what they are doing.

[EdLee]

From S2W's journal, post 113:

Yes, extending. Hane at the head of two is already painful. The second hane (hane at the "ass") is even more painful.

This is a good one; I'm keeping it.

[daal]

Cliché: to solve a problem we first have to admit there is one.

My thesis: many or most adults, at least here in the U.S.,
don't even know their Go fighting skills are lousy.

I can't say that I agree with this. The key skill for fighting is reading. From my anecdotal evidence, practically everyone I talk to admits that their reading skills are poor. (Anyone disagree? Anyone here whose reading skills are "good?"

My evidence: do a search on game reviews on this forum.
See how many times I've mentioned to people their biggest problems
are NOT the opening, NOT direction of play, etc., but rather,
it's their basics -- without good basics, nobody can fight well.

Now look at how many people ask about the opening, about direction
of play, about "general, vague questions" ( sorry, Tami ).

And when I mention it's the basics, what kind of response ? Blank stare.
( See also post 40 of this thread. )

"Basics" is a wide field. It includes such concepts as: shape, joseki, the opening, tesuji, reading, whole board vision... etc. Not every question about these subjects is a vague or general question.

Want more evidence ? OK. Search on YouTube, there are quite a few popular
Go videos. Some with over 10,000 or even 20,000 views. By some mid-dan amateurs.
Look at how much time they spend on the opening. And other areas like
"the big picture," "direction of play," or otherwise vague, "general" topics.
Compare to how much time they actually spend on a DETAILED analysis of
a local fight, a local life-and-death, etc.

I have also observed this, but I don't see it as evidence for people not admitting that there is a problem. The people making the videos want to teach a lesson that their viewers can understand. They know that their viewers won't be able to follow long discursions about reading. To me, this indicates that they recognize the problem.

Want more evidence ? OK. Do a survey: ask how many amateurs have actually
studied with a good-level pro who also happens to be a good teacher.
For a non-trivial, meaningful amount of time, say, at least 10 years.
This is a key question. I don't have solid, hard numbers, but my guess is
this is a low number. This is one key to your question.

Not having had a good teacher for a "non-trivial" amount of time is also not evidence that people don't see their reading skills as poor. It is rather an indication that they either a) don't want to invest that kind of money in improving their go skills or b) they are not convinced that a good teacher is necessary.

Thought experiment, A: we walk down the street, we do a random
survey: how many people in the general public are classically trained
pianists who can play well ? Why would anyone expect that
a large portion of the general public are good-level classically trained
pianists ? Wouldn't it be much more natural and normal to assume that
most people have zero to terrible basic piano skills ?

Thought experiment, B: now we limit our "random" survey to people
who have had lessons with piano teachers, and who have had practiced
for 10 years, we look at their basic piano skills. We're not surprised
this second group can perform better than the general public;
we're also not surprised there is some sort of bell curve to their piano
skill levels.

What this thought experiment shows is that people (in the west) have skewed assumptions about how to improve at go and how to improve at piano. Counter question: How many amateur high dans (with strong reading skills) in Korea, China and Japan have had a professional teacher for a "non-trivial" amount of time?

I think, given that Go is for the most part still non-existent ( at least here
in the US -- I hear it's much better in Europe ), given this abysmal spread of
Go ( outside of Asia ), I think a more natural question is,
"Why would anyone expect many of us NOT to have lousy basics ?"

I agree; I just disagree with your thesis that the general tendency in the West is to not admit that our fighting skills are poor.

Corollary questions:

• Why do most people understand and accept if you want to improve at the piano, you need to pay for good piano lessons ? That otherwise your basic piano skills are probably lousy, or at least not very good ?
• Why do most people, at least in the US, and on this forum, have a Completely Different understanding and expectation to Go basics, as evidenced by your very question ?
  ( Hint: please see Post 40, again. )

Thought experiment, C: imagine a forum exactly like this one, but for classical piano. Imagine 99% of the forum users have zero pro lessons. They all try to learn classical piano from books, from other random amateur pianists with varying piano skills and teaching levels. Repeat: 99% of them have ZERO experience with a good, classically trained pro piano teacher. Now you ask, "Gee, how come so many of them have such lousy piano basics?! " I wonder!

See, it's not what ( many or most ) people want to hear.

I get your point that we have little reason to expect our fighting skills to be anything but sub-optimal, but... I didn't say "Gee...?!" (Aren't you usually a stickler for not wanting misleading words placed in your mouth?). In other words, I asked a simple question, without incredulity, or the implication that it should be otherwise.

In any case, I don't think you can reduce the answer to lack of professional teaching. Most of those with good piano skills have not only had a teacher, but also, most of them have started at a young age. Most of them grew up in an environment in which good piano skills were valued and appreciated. Most of them had a piano at home, that others in their family also played. Most of us in the West have none of these advantages regarding go. This has not dampened our (we go-aficionados') desire to improve our understanding. A good professional teacher is one way, but not the only one. This is also the case for adults learning the piano. I would point out that in your fictive* piano forum, probably none would achieve anything close to a professional level of skill, but many would nonetheless improve, glean a greater understanding of the skills involved in playing the piano, and increase their enjoyment of (making) music.

*If you are curious to explore the differences, you might check out: http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/

[EdLee]

Hi Jeromie, yes, you bring up some good points.

(Ninja'd by daal during the long edits. )

I think it's because it's such a broad answer that it transmits very little information.

A few months ago I was chatting with someone around 8k level.
Maybe we were reviewing one of his games. Naturally, the topic of how to
improve at Go came up. By this time, we already knew that he also plays golf.
The topic of the basics also came up. I asked him, "How do you improve in golf?"
He said, "I go to the driving range." I said, "That."

I don't play golf. (My entire golf experience was twice at the driving range --
I forget how many balls we rented in the bucket -- and maybe once or twice at
a miniature golf place.) But I have a feeling there are a lot of similarities
between golf and Go. (Thus, my curiosity about that 10,000-hour guy to try
to make golf pro.) Once, I saw a golf magazine article with Michael Phelps
in it. I think a golf pro was giving Mr. Phelps some tips. There were "before"
and "after" photos of Mr. Phelps' postures and techniques, with red circles
highlighting his "errors" and "corrected forms."

point out specific failures in the application of the basics.

Again, we see some similarities between golf and Go.

Suppose two people, Mary and Joe, are chatting at a coffee shop. Let's say
Mary is more experienced than Joe at golf, and the topic of how to improve
comes up. Let's also suppose Mary has never seen Joe play golf, but she knows
how long he has played. When Joe asks, "How to improve at golf?"
Mary has a few options (there may be others):

• "I dunno how to help you." Abstain.
• "Without looking at your actual moves, it's almost impossible to discuss this. But you probably need to work on your basics."
• "Very helpful to see your actual moves. Either video, or show me live."
• "Depending on your situation, it may be helpful to watch pros live, or on video."
• "You could take lessons."
• "You could play along other golfers or friends who are better, and maybe learn some things from them."
• Very long chat at the coffee shop.

Back to Go, I've probably given all the above responses (on a server chat, or here.)
Usually, it's someone else's thread, so usually I don't give a very lengthy
reply there.

We see variations of all these on this forum (and on Go servers).
What to do when someone asks (general) questions without an actual SGF
or any diagrams ? The options are similar to the above.

About some answers being "too broad," this is actually a very difficult topic.
It's one of the very reasons I started this thread.

Jeromie, I'm curious about your views to the following questions:

• Someone asks a general question.
  Why do you assume, or how do we know, there must exist a non-general answer?
• We go back to the monk river story (post 3).
  To the question, "How deep is this river, to the nearest meter?" a specific answer like "About 4 meters." could be good enough.
  But to the question, "How does it feel to jump into this river?"
  (assuming the asker has never been under water)
  Do you think there's any verbal reply that's good enough, short of
  "There's no way to explain this verbally or intellectually.
  The only way is for you to experience it directly, by jumping into it."

[EdLee]

daal, Thanks for the piano forum. I had a feeling such a thing existed. There's probably a forum for many, many fields.

[PeterPeter]

A difference between Go and piano or golf is that it is quite difficult to replicate a piano performance or a golf action, but it is possible to replicate a Go-playing performance with complete accuracy and clarity using only a Go set or an electronic goban. This would make a big difference in a coffee-shop scenario.

[Knotwilg]

Whether someone asks a specific or a generic question, answering "the basics" or "the fundamentals, it's huge" or "that", is not helpful. Such answers are either telling a person that there is something you know and they don't without telling them what it is, or being mystical about Go for whatever reason.

If you give generic vague answers to generic questions, and specific answers to specific questions, you are missing opportunities. A question lacking specificity may need an answer with concrete examples to bring more focus to the question, perhaps clarifying what the question actually was. Similarly a game review may reveal a generic flaw in the player's reasoning, not merely a move that could be played elsewhere. You infer the generic from the specific and explain the generic through the specific.

The basics start from the rules. What else could they start from? Here are the rules and some basics to be deduced from those:

1. players take turns; so whenever you play a move, think what your opponents answer might be and if you like the result
2. a stone/chain is removed when it has no more liberties; so, keep track of liberties of stones and groups
3. the purpose of the game is to have (the potential to put) more living stones on the board; so, keep track of the health of your stones while increasing the scope of development
Some more fundamentals:
4. towards the end of the game, liberties become scarce, so it becomes especially valuable to have unremovable liberties (eyes)
5. in the earlier stages, it's up to twice as easy to increase liberties than decreasing them, so defend before you attack
6. the more groups you have the more eyes you need, so connect

etc etc

This is where the basics start. I found greater knowledge of the fundamentals in Minue's Haengma tutorial for beginners than with the much hailed Kageyama, who's also guilty of giving esotheric advice like "it's the fundamentals".

Nothing like a good mystification now and then to arise interest, but when it comes to real understanding, some real explanation and/or thinking is called for.

[EdLee]

The key skill for fighting is reading. From my anecdotal evidence, practically everyone I talk to admits that their reading skills are poor. (Anyone disagree? Anyone here whose reading skills are "good?"

From what you wrote above, correct me if I'm wrong, I take it you're thinking
of reading to mean "the ability to visualize unplayed stones and sequences".

Yes, that's an important part of reading. But that is not all of reading.

Another crucial part of reading is pruning. As we know (at least I think you
and I agree on this; some people may disagree), the combinations of Go moves
and variations are exponential (even for a very small space, like the corner.)
This means it's literally not possible for any humans to "read" even a tiny
fraction of all the local moves (forget the whole board) during a normal game (turn-based games have more time, yes.)

Faced with the vast amount of possible variations, we must choose which branches to continue to read, and which ones to discard. In some cases, yes, the "basic shapes don't matter as long as it works in this fight." However, in other cases,
and I don't know the stats or percentages, the "basic shapes, tesujis, vital points, etc. -- in other words, all the basics, still matter.
Because they help us decide which branches to pursue and which to prune.

I may have a different set of experience and anecdotal evidence as yours.
My anecdotal evidence suggests many people -- especially in the kyu ranges,
and maybe some low dans as well -- think their biggest problems are in things
like the opening, direction of play, etc. (anecdotal evidence from threads
stating and asking about these, to server chats). My anecdotal evidence also shows many people don't realize there are huge missing gaps in their understanding of the basics. ( Dunning-Kruger effect. )

Yes, fighting skills and reading are closely linked: they are a combination of visualizing unplayed sequences, keeping and pruning branches, and understanding of the basics.

[EdLee]

"Basics" is a wide field. It includes such concepts as: shape, joseki, the opening, tesuji, reading, whole board vision... etc. Not every question about these subjects is a vague or general question.

True.

I didn't say "Gee...?!"

Sorry, that "you" was confusing. It was the same we-"you"
as in "if you want to improve at the piano" in the immediately preceding corollary questions.

Most of them grew up in an environment in which good piano skills were valued and appreciated.

Actually my focus there was not about pro lessons, but the cultural differences --
On Go servers and here, sometimes people ask about pro lessons prices.
And time and again some people (including myself) would suggest they think about private piano lesson fees. Many people (all over the world) understand and appreciate about the piano. This is different for Go.

[EdLee]

I don't see it as evidence for people not admitting that there is a problem. The people making the videos want to teach a lesson that their viewers can understand. They know that their viewers won't be able to follow long discursions about reading. To me, this indicates that they recognize the problem.

I agree there are probably multiple explanations. It's not about admittance, although that could be an outcome. It's more about the awareness ( Dunning-Kruger effect, again ). There's likely some kind of distribution curve for the various factors here: the level of the presenters, their teaching skills and communication skills; their understanding of their own Go level, and their target audience's.

One extreme, contrived scenario could be they are all fantastic presenters. And their videos represent the very best possible for Go lessons, and their target audience, after viewing the videos, will all suddenly become high-dan amateurs. This seems highly unlikely to me.

At the other end, another extreme, contrived case is they are all quite "bad", and after watching their videos, not only will the audience not improve, but they actually drop 6 stones overnight. I also find this unlikely.

The reality is somewhere in between. A multi-dimensional space of inter-connected factors.

For example, here are some possible or even plausible factors:

• Some of the presenters don't realize, or at least underestimate, the importance of teaching fighting skills to some kyu people. This could also explain why some of them rarely explore a sequence and its myriad variations in great detail.
• Some of them realize the importance of fighting skills, but either they think the target audience is not interested, or, the presenters would rather discuss other topics, such as the opening, etc.
• Some of them realize the importance of fighting skills, but they are not sure of their own reading -- especially for kyu-level or low- to mid-dan level presenters who have had some experience with a good teacher and they have an idea of the limits of their own fighting skills, so they are hesitant to give out wrong info to the audience, so they avoid it. ( Whereas for things like the opening, direction, etc., as long as there are no very messy contact fights, they're seemingly easier to discuss. )

Most likely, there are also other scenarios.

[EdLee]

How many amateur high dans (with strong reading skills)
in Korea, China and Japan have had a professional teacher for a "non-trivial" amount of time ?

Interesting question. What is your gut feeling on this ?
If most of them have had a pro or near-pro level teacher for some period of time, what do you think of it ?
If not, what do you think of it ? I'm curious about your feelings on this.