SamT's Study Journal - A Beginner's Journey

[Bill Spight]

Suppose that your opponent is 5 kyu, and is stronger than you. If you try to gain all his knowledge and study more to beat him, is that enough to catch up? Is there a better way to beat this 5 kyu player?

The answer is simple.

Set your goal to become 3 kyu instead. Then you will be closer 3 kyu than 5 kyu.

I disagree. There was an experiment back in the twentieth century with farm workers manually harvesting fields. The control group simply harvested fields as usual. The experimental group harvested fields in which poles had been set up in a straight line down the fields, spaced at even intervals (10 feet, IIRC). The group with poles in the fields worked more quickly. Each pole acted as a new goal to be met.

So if your goal is to become 5 kyu, setting your goal to become 3 kyu is like removing the pole at the 5 kyu mark. Really, it is counterproductive.

So... There it is. Right now I am trying to be 7 kyu, and then I will try to be 5 kyu, then 3. . . .

That's more like it.

[Elom]

Suppose that your opponent is 5 kyu, and is stronger than you. If you try to gain all his knowledge and study more to beat him, is that enough to catch up? Is there a better way to beat this 5 kyu player?

The answer is simple.

Set your goal to become 3 kyu instead. Then you will be closer 3 kyu than 5 kyu.

I disagree. There was an experiment back in the twentieth century with farm workers manually harvesting fields. The control group simply harvested fields as usual. The experimental group harvested fields in which poles had been set up in a straight line down the fields, spaced at even intervals (10 feet, IIRC). The group with poles in the fields worked more quickly. Each pole acted as a new goal to be met.

So if your goal is to become 5 kyu, setting your goal to become 3 kyu is like removing the pole at the 5 kyu mark. Really, it is counterproductive.

So... There it is. Right now I am trying to be 7 kyu, and then I will try to be 5 kyu, then 3. . . .

That's more like it.

Hmm-- I feel that it's a lot more complicated.I'm definately someone who compares himself with top proffesionals a lot! I'm working towards the level of the very best of the very best it's a good counter to negativity, stopped me nearly completely from worrying about ranks, convincing yourself "yes it can be done" no matter how stupid it sounds, is a good motivation. After recently adopting this "aim for the stars" appraoch it has certainly produced some good results however, I then went to the other extreme, for example, getting angry at myself every time I felt a move i made wasn't at pro level (the actual result of the game didn't matter so much)-- which is pretty much all of my moves. Now, having high standards is all nice an well, but...

Anyway, this is where Bill "Opening Master" Spight's analogy comes in. I'm supposed to be running 5k every week to maintain some thing which I don't really have, fitness (which in turn improves my readimg ability, but shh, that's a secret ) but I've been slacking up these days (running a 5k in a snails pace time of ~28m isn't exatly the time to be slacking up, heh ) however one thing that's well known withing the long-distance communnity (5k is long for my lazy legs) is to split the race into separate parts of acheivement, rather than run jusy trying to to the whole thng at once in your mind. Otherwise, you may give up or lose confidence sooner or later by the mere enourmity of the task-- as in memorising pro games, split the game into managable slices.

But what does this have to do with goal setting? What do we conclude?

Part 2 coming up, I'm using my android sorry for invading your journal with such a long post

[Elom]

I remember when a new teacher was told that three of her students in her class where geniuses, star pupils. And it was no lie-- A's were coming out of their ears and nose and fingers. Except, nobody knew they were these geniuses-- until the new teacher for that class had come in. Turns out that these children were some of the worst peforming kids of the class, lower quater. This was actualy an experiment to see wht would happen if a teacher believes that certain students were very capable from the onset. Apart from being shocking at first, what does this extreme example tell us? Many, many things I'm sure, but a few are quite obvious. I'm going to open up a new topic for this.

Ps: Mr SamT, is it possible to adopt a more passive way pf studying-- for example, instead of spending hours studying pro games in the day very slowy (western method) try going over large amounts of pro games over and over again as fast as you possubly can just before goung to bed (korean yuengsoon/insei), forcing your brain to speed up while storing vital sjape knowledge in your brain.
Do the same with tsumego-- lots of easy problems as fast as you possibly can before retiring, and because your trying to train reading speed, and not necessarily depth, and because you're trying to memorise basic shapes, DO look at the answers, getting them right isn't so important. With harder tsumego, it's the complete opposite-- do them them in the day, and avoid looking at the solution as long as you can.

Anyway, I think you may end up seeming to to be spending less timen on Go, but improving faster than you do now! Whwn you find yourself stuck at a rank, a new change-- be it mindset or training-- might be in ordr

[SamT]

So I have "Study Go" on my HabitRPG. My wife looked over my shoulder as I clicked it today, and said: "Why do you even get credit for that? Do you get credit for breathing too?"

---

Books

My Speed Baduk books came in, everything but #4 and #9. Sadly, I am supposed to be on #4. I have done some problems in 5, 6, and even 7, but 7 is very challenging. I got a whole page of problems wrong -- the third page in!!! Also, 5 and 6 leave me un-confident as well. I am constantly afraid I'm coming up with the wrong solution. Despite my hesitancy to peek at the answer book on problems I should be able to solve, I will just have to break down and check because otherwise I will never know and just reinforce my wrong knowledge, and that is the exact opposite of what I'm after.

One thing I love is that there are lots of capturing race and liberty counting exercises in the books, and the series as a whole focuses on very granular skills -- using atari to connect or save stones, use a throw in to win a capturing race, etc. This means if you drill the series consistently, it really fits into the "deliberate practice" paradigm.

My major concern is that by its very format, the series doesn't have a lot of room to EXPLAIN some of the concepts -- thus me flubbing a whole page of problems in book #7. Of course, this hasn't happened to me very often before, and once I got antsy enough to look up the answers I understood exactly what the problems were looking for: good style.

All in all, it's been a good experience.

Baduk TV English:
I am working through Becoming 5 kyu Episode 3. There is one 30-move long joseki variation in particular that is giving me fits trying to memorize, but I will get it done. Otherwise, I have the show down pat.

I watched another pro game yesterday. A best game of the day exhibition match between Gu Li and Lee Sedol, just before their Jubango. It was pretty entertaining right up until the announcer said, "This fight is so complicated, it is beyond words". I watched a little farther, but after that point, I learned very little -- because they couldn't explain it. Not very useful!

I also watched some sort of double game tournament last night on Baduk TV live. It was pretty entertaining, but very disturbing to see how young these kids really are. Unfortunately it was in Korean, so I don't know who the players were. I think there were at least two of the four named Lee -- based on the two letters of Korean I can read.

I kept waiting for another show to come on after the tournament, but after about 15-20 minutes of the same 3 commercials, I gave up.

Other Studies

I stayed up overnight doing another Disaster Recovery test. During the downtime, when server replication was catching up, I went through 20+ pro games relatively quickly on SmartGo Kifu, mostly Xie He, Ch'oe Ch'oel-han, or Shi Yue. I slept soon after, but I don't feel miraculously stronger today, sorry Elom . Still, just SEEING thousands of Pro games is certain to give you a small edge on someone who has seen very few.

I did stumble into an interesting escape tesuji that Ch'oe used. He played a one-point jump to get ahead of the group chasing him but then it followed and peeped the one point jump. Instead of connecting directly, he played Kosumi forward from the one point jump. If his opponent had tried to cut, it would have failed, and Ch'oe would have stayed two moves ahead. Very clever.

I'm sorry if my verbal description is unclear, but I haven't yet learned how to make a simple diagram.

Games
Due to all the overnights for work, and the overnights due to my daughter having a fever, I have not played any games -- I am not awake enough to play well, and I do not wish to frustrate myself. Assuming I gain any semblance of control over my own sleeping schedule again, I am looking forward to trying out my new Capture Race skills and Shape skills from "Speed Baduk"

Questions
Are there any more series out there like Speed Baduk, which are focused on drills for specific skills?

I would like a book that would break down and go through and train all the common tesuji, with a bare minimum of theory (I feel like Speed Baduk is a little too light of theory, but, I prefer it to the one Tesuji book I looked at (Tesuji and Anti-Suji, I think), which seemed way too verbose. I am not interested in Theory Go, rather I am after Practical/Applied Go.

Go needs more of this, IMHO:
Here is a skill, here is how it works, here are 10, 20, 100 practice problems.

[SamT]

Life
We are settling into the house well. The builder still needs to fix the roof, but most everything else is perfect. We are buying furniture. Everything is much nicer than before the fire, which makes me feel strangely guilty somehow, like I have profited from my own misfortune.

My daughter went on her first field trip yesterday and came back covered in a rash. it seems she is allergic to hay!

Training
I focused on ploughing through half of Becoming 5 Kyu, doing what I call "pre-watching". Basically I'm just watching it, not playing along, so I can see what the concepts are I will be learning and see where the series is heading. Once I have watched them all, I will go back through episode by episode and try to memorize everything.

My daughter watched several episodes of "Becoming 5 Kyu" with me, and I did not translate anything, and she cannot read the translations (and she doesn't speak Korean). She just watched a friendly man put stones on a board, I guess. She did seem very interested, though.

I went through about 60 pages of Speed Baduk 5 and the entire capturing race section of Speed Baduk 6. Only last night did SB4 finally come in. I will start working through it as well. At an estimated average of 4 problems per page, I did only about 240 problems over the last few days, a little slower than normal. I think that's to be expected, considering the problems are getting harder!

Just for giggles, I have been using Elom's idea of stepping through 20 or so pro games every night VERY VERY quickly just before bed. It's an interesting idea, targeted on increasing your subconscious pattern recognition, but I am not really sure if it helps. Sounds like your typical "learn with no effort" mumbo jumbo. Still, I love watching the pros fight it out.

Games
I went to Dallas Go Club last night and played Mark Smith, the resident 8 kyu, again.

As you may remember, he was the very first person I ever played a game with at the club, and 4 months ago he gave me 9 stones and still beat me. We've had 3 other games since then, at even handicap, but with me getting black:
Game 1 - he won by 40+ points
Game 2 - he won by 20+ points.
Game 3 (last night) - I won by 18.5 points (I think*)

This is my first win against an 8 kyu, and I am very excited about it. But, honestly, this has been one of my major goals -- to beat the guy that beat me in my first game -- and now I need a new goal.

http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=5281

As always, I've put my own thoughts in, but I am not very skilled. Comments/corrections welcome (actually: more than welcome, sought-after!)

Goals:

My goal in this game was to try out the "Becoming 5 kyu" openings I had studied. That went off the rails pretty quickly as my opponent did several things I did not expect. However, I did find the knowledge from the show valuable at several points. I wanted to see if I could build a large moyo, and he let me do that, but I was also trying to figure out how to play peaceably and avoid fighting (I like to fight, I'm just not very good at it yet). I think I accomplished most of my goals.

-----
* At the club we stopped counting after finding a 20 pt difference and never subtracted his Komi, either. For this score, I am relying on the GNUGo score estimator, and I don't really trust it -- it actually says I won by 18.7 points. That's right, point-seven. So obviously something is a little shady.

[Charles Matthews]

http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=5281

After , C7 becomes the key point of shape round here. there would be OK; there is a sense that White's play is just about sente, because White at C7 pushed Black right down. But White never plays there at all.

is obviously big, and Black has no clear advantage.

OK, this kind of plan is worth trying.

Dropping back to O15, a light play that is terrorial after White plays heavily, seems better than pushing on from behind.

Don't like. R7 can go for a bamboo joint, but in fact just connecting may be best.

is quite nice as an idea, but now Q11 looks right.

I'd play one point lower.

Seems to be wrong direction. Think about O4.

Well, we are not now going to have a dynamic middlegame, it seems. Black at C4 is now urgent to restrict White.

Should be decisive.

[SamT]

http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=5281

After , C7 becomes the key point of shape round here. there would be OK; there is a sense that White's play is just about sente, because White at C7 pushed Black right down. But White never plays there at all.

is obviously big, and Black has no clear advantage.

OK, this kind of plan is worth trying.

Dropping back to O15, a light play that is terrorial after White plays heavily, seems better than pushing on from behind.

Don't like. R7 can go for a bamboo joint, but in fact just connecting may be best.

is quite nice as an idea, but now Q11 looks right.

I'd play one point lower.

Seems to be wrong direction. Think about O4.

Well, we are not now going to have a dynamic middlegame, it seems. Black at C4 is now urgent to restrict White.

Should be decisive.

Thanks, Charles!

Wonderful feedback, as always!

At :W20:, the series I have been watching on Baduk TV seems to say this move is much smaller than approaching at R14. I thus interpreted his move as a mistake, or at least sub-optimal. I admit that I may be mis-interpreting what I learned, as this precise board position is never actually discussed.

Anyway, even though I thought it was a mistake, I was unsure how to punish it. I did the two one-point jumps in an attempt to, leading directly to this strange game. Likely I should have just finished my double-wing formation and then done a one-point jump if he had not invaded by then.

[Bill Spight]

is obviously big, and Black has no clear advantage.

At , the series I have been watching on Baduk TV seems to say this move is much smaller than approaching at R14. I thus interpreted his move as a mistake, or at least sub-optimal. I admit that I may be mis-interpreting what I learned, as this precise board position is never actually discussed.

I agree that is suboptimal, but I think that Baduk TV is exaggerating for effect. Perhaps Black has a clear advantage at the pro level, and a slight edge at the dan level, but this is a kyu level game. One advantage of is that it is easy for White to handle.

Anyway, even though I thought it was a mistake, I was unsure how to punish it. I did the two one-point jumps in an attempt to, leading directly to this strange game. Likely I should have just finished my double-wing formation and then done a one-point jump if he had not invaded by then.

If is suboptimal, it is self-punishing. A simple small knight's response is probably best. A double wing is also possible, but allows White to complicate things with a double approach. If you are ahead, generally it is good to solidify and simplify.

[Uberdude]

Btw move 39

My only answer to the 1 kyu was that I'd read it out and they weren't dead. But that's not a good enough answer. I could have made a lot more points just sacrificing them. This way I have to give white the side.

You read wrongly, white 40 at r7 then s10.

At , the series I have been watching on Baduk TV seems to say this move is much smaller than approaching at R14. I thus interpreted his move as a mistake, or at least sub-optimal. I admit that I may be mis-interpreting what I learned, as this precise board position is never actually discussed.

What? His approach is huge as it uses his influence in the bottom left to make a big moyo on lower side. What actual position was there on Baduk TV? I really don't like giving up the lower right corner for such an open moyo as it not only loses in the corner but also means it's harder to invade the lower side if o3 is strong and q4 is dead, there's no chance for counterattacks. But if you do want to tenuki the apporach how about 5-5 when he double approaches and then knight's press on the right side when he 3-3s?

[SamT]

Btw move 39

My only answer to the 1 kyu was that I'd read it out and they weren't dead. But that's not a good enough answer. I could have made a lot more points just sacrificing them. This way I have to give white the side.

You read wrongly, white 40 at r7 then s10.

I am not surprised I read wrongly all the time! At least my reading is slightly better than my opponent's in this game. There were several instances where I noticed he misread by a few moves, where I did not. I am lucky that he didn't find this solution. His reading is not always so far off base!

At , the series I have been watching on Baduk TV seems to say this move is much smaller than approaching at R14. I thus interpreted his move as a mistake, or at least sub-optimal. I admit that I may be mis-interpreting what I learned, as this precise board position is never actually discussed.

What? His approach is huge as it uses his influence in the bottom left to make a big moyo on lower side. What actual position was there on Baduk TV?

Here is a pared-down summary of the series, without going into details and rendering the videos superfluous:

http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/download/file.php?id=5286

The board position at above seems to occur in my game along the top at move 19. I am sure the context changes the import of the situation, but this board position is what I was judging from.

I really don't like giving up the lower right corner for such an open moyo as it not only loses in the corner but also means it's harder to invade the lower side if o3 is strong and q4 is dead, there's no chance for counterattacks. But if you do want to tenuki the apporach how about 5-5 when he double approaches and then knight's press on the right side when he 3-3s?

To be perfectly clear: Baduk TV did not tell me to do that, not at all. I was under the impression that that white preventing the double-wing and splitting up the black Moyo was very important. I was trying in my inexpert, clumsy way to exploit what I perceived to be a tiny advantage. But perhaps the timing of the board position changes the reality.

(Edit additions:)
Please note that I didn't exploit the advantage well, if there was an advantage, because I didn't quite know what to do. This resulted in 1) failure to respond to an approach out of greed to make a perceived/unreal profit elsewhere, 2) sacrificing a corner stone that probably didn't have to be sacrificed, 3) saving stones that should not have been saved, resulting in giving away a side I didn't have to give away!

I, too, was afraid of the openness of the moyo. I was very shocked he didn't jump into the middle of it and try to live early on. I am sure he probably could have torn it to pieces had he tried, but he did not.

[Bill Spight]

The Baduk TV position is rather different. The main difference being that in your game the White approach makes a large framework on the bottom side.

Edit: Furthemore, the White approach in your game is sente or almost so, while in the Baduk TV game White wants to play again on the top side after Black makes a simple response.

[SamT]

I think I see now -- it makes points while putting pressure on my stone. Cool Well, I am lucky that my misunderstanding didn't lead to a flaming crash. But kyu games can be very forgiving, it seems.

[SamT]

Bit of a slow two weeks, Go-wise.

I finished memorizing the first six episodes of Becoming 5 Kyu, but I have not attempted to memorize the next set of episodes. I don't know why; I just can't seem to get my head into it. For the first time, it's not fun!

I've primarily been focusing on learning different Posok/Fuseki variations from commented pro games either from An Younggil or from Baduk TV. Why? Simply because I find it fun.

One problem, though: when I learn something interesting, I keep tending to play it out. I sometimes only get a few minutes into a video, and spend the rest of my study time playing out different variations that I see. Considering how low I am in skill, this may be quite a waste of time. Or maybe not.

I did have quite a heart-rending loss to myself last night. White exploited a mistake by black and got to an early lead, but got complacent. Black managed to come back and take the win by 4.5 points. Ha! I was simultaneously devastated and elated

My daughter has started doing go problems. She asks me to photocopy them from Speed Baduk 2. She's really good at simple connections and cuts, but ladders, nets, and even bamboo joints are beyond her right now. But she will learn, I'm sure. She tends to do between 30 and 70 problems in a sitting before she gets bored.

Myself, I've been jumping around between the different Speed Baduk books. I cracked open #10 last night, and I could actually do the first page of problems, for instance. I want to say I primarily focus on the Capture Race and fighting problems, but that's not really all I do. I jump around a lot, and it really does make me feel like I'm learning something, getting more skilled. I really should buckle down and punch one book out after the other, and make sure my fundamentals are rock-solid, but, as I mentioned before, I am having problems focusing.

Other notes:

I find moves in pro games seem to make more sense. I can't guarantee that my "sense" of them is correct, and I /can/ guarantee that I do /not/ fully understand them (as that would require pro-level reading), but I can get the general gist of a game usually, and that was not always the case before.

Other hobbies are encroaching into my life again. This may be a sign that my standard 4-6 month obsessive period for a new hobby is coming to an end and I am floating away from the game, or it may just be that I have too much to do to maintain focus. Alternately, and more likely, these may be symptoms of burnout.

Biggest challenges right now:
-Making reading stronger
-Counting points
-Maintaining focus

Offtopic:
One of the things encroaching into my life is going through the audio recordings of ancient Doctor Who interviews, which arrived back in my life around Nov 7. My mother did Doctor Who journalism back in the 80's, but her tapes were left in a shed for 20 years in the boiling heat and freezing cold. They were recently restored by the Doctor Who Restoration Team to see if there was anything interesting enough to include in their on-DVD-documentaries. So I'm listening to hours and hours of muddy-sounding audio, documenting it all, and often times laughing my bottom off, other times bored hearing the same funny story for a third time.

I realize I am peculiar about this, that I should probably just walk away, or dial it back. But I feel weighted-down by it, as if it is a duty to both my mother's memory and to Doctor Who, one of my favorite shows, and I wish I could say it is always fun, but it isn't.

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all this Go and Doctor Who stuff, I also need to write a novel.

[SamT]

So... What have I learned from Baduk TV live? Nothing much, other than how to read the Korean alphabet

Oh, and the correct pronunciation of "Lee Sedol" is closer to:
Yee Seh-Dole
-with the Y almost silent
-the L can also be pronounced R, depending on your show host, and in fact the letter for L and R are the same (so maybe the sound is halfway between the two, like Japanese?)
-I am unable to identify a stressed syllable, which is in keeping with my understanding of languages in this family (equal stress for most syllables).

At least one Korean host says it almost precisely like the English name "Isadore". The others are not far off that mark.

Using correct pronunciation has had the following unfortunate effect: to at least one of my friends, the Jubango against Gu Li sounded like a battle between a fairy princess and a ghouly goblin.

Aside: It has begun to drive me batguano crazy when I hear people say "Lee SAY-doll" these days. At least if you say "Lee Seh-DOLL," like most English speakers seem to do, you've got one syllable correct. The SAY-doll faction has none of them right!

... But I digress.

Other things I've learned:
1) Go/Weiqi/Baduk is fun to watch live.
2) Pros seem read out about 20 moves in a fast game... but they do it in 4-5 different locations at once, and figure out how all those positions interact.
3) Pros also seem to have many standard sequences of late middlegame attack (beyond just invasion joseki) memorized. Often the commentator will play out a pattern, and as he is laying it out, the players will start following along precisely.
4) Half of Korean commercials seem to be 30 minute long infomercials. Almost all Korean commercials are crreeeeeeepy weird to me.

[EdLee]

Korean commercials are crreeeeeeepy weird to me.

Hi Sam, YouTube has some channel, JPCMHD, with Japanese TV ads, grouped by the week.

Example: 2014 Weeks 42 & 43