On "Reading books to improve?"

[Krama]

Robert, do you believe your ability could limit your progress or that, with the correct teaching/knowledge, you could be 9p strength? And if the latter do you think that is true for everyone?

I think you can check the statistics.

If you start to play go at young age 6-12 years old then yes, you could reach a pro rank.

Kids older than 12 years maybe could but that is quite rare.

I started playing when I was 19.5 years old and the highest I could ever get if I took all the time only to study go and if I got pros to teach me would maybe be 4-5d. (EGF ratings)

[RobertJasiek]

Robert, do you believe your ability could limit your progress or that, with the correct teaching/knowledge, you could be 9p strength? And if the latter do you think that is true for everyone?

Currently, my limit of ability (which everybody has) is not significant. Much more relevant are: limited access to knowledge, limited time to study (because of my jobs and the recreation needed in between my work), limited motivation to do necessary nasty study for sake of accelerating my reading speed in advanced L+D and advanced endgame, still too great blunder rate for top playing level.

9p is an insecure description of strength nowadays - let us better speak of "100 tournament-strongest players in the world". I do not know. I think that ability would still not be a principle limit for this. I expect the exponential learning curve to continue, so presumably I would need sponsors to maintain my living and regain my willingness to do 15h go per day in exclusion of everything else in life, and this for several successive years. Life is so rich - I guess I am not prepared to sacrifice everything else just to become a top 100 player. E.g., I would have to sacrifice go research - horrible thought.

Teaching of me I consider almost immaterial because what I would need is a teacher teaching as I do, however, I have yet to see such another teacher. Instead, I would profit from people whose job it would be to retrieve all the knowledge existing somewhere but hidden by obscurity of storage place or limited access by (semi-)privacy, such as contents taught at insei / study schools.

I do not think that everybody has the principle ability to become a top 100 player, even if we presume that there is no greatly increased competition for the same few places. Being a very strong player presumes certain mental abilities that simply not everybody has: a very good, huge memory for knowledge; the ability to do reading, calculation and so on in great volume; complex decision-making. E.g., I know people who have great difficulties to combine two or more abstract decisions within a relatively short time in real life; this would not be different in go. Surely, there must be every degree of player abilities from almost none to seemingly unlimited.

[Cassandra]

Teaching of me I consider almost immaterial because what I would need is a teacher teaching as I do, however, I have yet to see such another teacher. Instead, I would profit from people whose job it would be to retrieve all the knowledge existing somewhere but hidden by obscurity of storage place or limited access by (semi-)privacy, such as contents taught at insei / study schools.

Probably your cat is byting its own tail ?

Let's assume that there was a teacher you are looking for.
If he was "like you", he would have published his insights for sure. Apparently we do not know such publications.

Another exclamation could be that "your kind" of approach does not fit the surrounding conditions of the area, where most very strong Go players come from. Or -- at least -- might not be suitable for the target group there -- young children.

How do you think "retrieving hidden knowledge" could be done ? Do you really assume any Go school would accept having their secrets for success published ?

+ + + + + + + +

This does not imply that there might be no other method suitable for (especially Western) people, who start e.g as a late teenager to play Go. But -- who knows ? -- probably it cannot be caught up what has been lost in the period of time of approximately 10 years before ?

Another limiting factor might be that persons in their twenties usually will have to look after their livelyhood. Schoolboys do not.

[Bill Spight]

How do you think "retrieving hidden knowledge" could be done ? Do you really assume any Go school would accept having their secrets for success published ?

Too late! We live in the era of exoteric knowledge, even in the Orient.

[John Fairbairn]

Too late! We live in the era of exoteric knowledge,

I'm not disagreeing but I do often wonder whether this newly available knowledge is mostly fool's gold.

[RBerenguel]

Too late! We live in the era of exoteric knowledge,

I'm not disagreeing but I do often wonder whether this newly available knowledge is mostly fool's gold.

Or snake oil

[RobertJasiek]

How do you think "retrieving hidden knowledge" could be done ?

By more strong players sharing information in English.

Do you really assume any Go school would accept having their secrets for success published ?

My dream is scientific sharing of information instead of Edo-like celebreation of school secrets. However, actually I do not expect it to the full extent. Even I, who I like shared go theory, need to delay publication of some of my rediscoveries.

probably it cannot be caught up what has been lost in the period of time of approximately 10 years before ?

There have been counter-examples. (I do not recall them in detail.)

[Uberdude]

How do you think "retrieving hidden knowledge" could be done ?

By more strong players sharing information in English.

Such as Inseong Hwang...

[John Fairbairn]

My dream is scientific sharing of information instead of Edo-like celebreation of school secrets

For the umpteenth time, there was no such thing - neither celebration nor secrets.

The Honinbo school and others had hundreds of pupils, who spread across the entire country and who mostly made their living by teaching. Stop and think instead of "researching" for a moment - there were no tournaments.

Books were rare because they were expensive, and go diagrams in particular required new technologies.

The "Four Schools" were not the only ones. Others flourished.

The main schools had state sponsorship but still craved status and acquired this over the board in public, sometimes in games on which exile was staked. We still have most of these games - some secret!

That status enabled them to recruit the best pupils. End of conspiracy.

[often]

i look at books as putting a huge block of wood on a fire
it might help in the long term, but it takes awhile for it to feed the fire
i've yet to see anybody attribute any major or useful breakthroughs to books

[Bill Spight]

i look at books as putting a huge block of wood on a fire
it might help in the long term, but it takes awhile for it to feed the fire
i've yet to see anybody attribute any major or useful breakthroughs to books

Except for Korshelt and Lasker, the first go books I got were when I was 4 kyu. They were real eye-openers. From Takagawa I learned about attacking on a large scale. From Sakata I learned about efficiency. A book on shape changed my play quite a bit. It may have been by Maeda, I don't recall. Later on, from Lin Haifeng I learned about the relationship between variability and lightness.

[RobertJasiek]

i've yet to see anybody attribute any major or useful breakthroughs to books

Eh? Is my example of 11 ranks in 17 months mainly due to books not good enough?

[John Fairbairn]

Old Italian proverb: 'Carta canta e villan dorme' - Paper sings while the peasant sleeps."

[often]

i've yet to see anybody attribute any major or useful breakthroughs to books

Eh? Is my example of 11 ranks in 17 months mainly due to books not good enough?

let's see a rank graph with a consistent number of games being played during that time period. include a breakdown of what you did and how it helped.

not trying to be difficult, but claims require evidence

[RobertJasiek]

Rank graphs are boring. Study my tournament results (and rank declarations) during that time. Although I was early in promoting myself 1/3 of a rank to get more interesting tournament games instead of playing 5:0 all the time and collecting the really interesting prizes because of promoting myself with a delay of 1/3 of a rank, my tournament results were well on average during that period. Examples:

I registered for the Berliner Championship as 8k, was 7k when the tournament started, almost beat a 5k, beat a 5k, beat two 2k, won my promotion to the 1d group, moved from 7k to 5k after 20 minutes of hesitation on recommendation of the last 2k I had just beaten, could hold my 5k in the club then, as a 5k beat one of the 1d players in the 1d group. Context: Until 9k, I had read only one book. From 9k to 5k, I read a few books. From 5k on, I read many books.

As soon as I was 3d (shortly after the end of the 17 months of 11 ranks fast improvement due to books), I could participate in the German Championship preliminaries (only 3d+ were allowed, except that I had been eligible as the exceptional 2d due to a special tournament result, but that was immaterial because I became 3d anyway) and scored 3:3. Context: I had read many more books until then.

Which books? I could only read those available at that time, and the selection was poor on average, with a few exceptions. I compensated that by reading some of those books very seriously.