Player looking to improve - Help?

[DJLLAP]

If you have a smartphone or tablet, the Wbaduk app has thousands of free problems, many of them at your level and probably quite a few that are easy for you. The user interface can be annoying, since there is no way to give up and see the answer. You just have to keep guessing until you find the right sequence or skip the problem.

Focus on tsumego. At 20k, there's not much point in trying anything else. The returns for time spent are going to be much lower for anything else.

Knowing how to kill something, or how to survive, is going to give you more wins than anything else.

There's tasuki's go problem sets (probably a little much unless you want a real challenge) and goproblems.com as well as gochild.

I don't think is true. I myself made it from total beginner to 9k without hardly ever have solved tsumego, and definitely not in an attempt at serious study. I am sure there are may of us who did our initial growing in other ways. I have a kind of obsessive personality, so when I find something to be excited about I do little else until my enthusiasm wavers. By playing many games a day, and browsing the Beginners Pages at Sensei's Library I made it to 9k in a matter of 4 or 5 months.

I find tsumego quite boring, and not at all useful for learning the game.

While, as an intermediate level kyu player, I do indeed realize their importance in becoming a stronger player, they are still boring and I believe still not helpful to actually learn the game.

I disagree with this quite soundly (or else misunderstand what you are saying). I have found that tsumego are great for improving your real game, especially of you have hit your natural "wall" (the level that you can reach without any special effort or study). My natural wall was about 5k. About a year and a half after starting go, and being at 5k for nearly a year without any improvement, I decided to buckle down and study to try and force my way to shodan. I did this mostly by playing regular serious games and reviewing them, doing lots of tsumego (especially tesuji), and reading more theory books. I only kept up a the regimen for two months, but I gained a stone of strength each month, bringing me to my current rank of 3k. I stayed at 3k again for over a year, and eventually stopped playing for 6 months. Then I watched Hikaru no Go again, and it fired me up. I jumped back in, and I am studying regularly with tsumego and lots of games and reviews. I recently regained the rank of 3k (I had dropped to 4k after my break) and I feel ready to shoot up to 2k, but we will see.

I hope that you find some benefit to the story of my progress this far. Certainly everyone will progress differently. Everyone will have different things that excites them, or bores them. Some things simply may not work for you. There are no wrong ways of getting stronger. Try out all of the suggestions we have given you and find out what works for you. One more suggestion that I don't think I have seen on this thread yet - Have you tried the Advanced Study League? It is a KGS league where you can get in many serious games, and pretty much everyone should be willing to give you a review afterwards. Good luck!

[xed_over]

I find tsumego quite boring, and not at all useful for learning the game.

While, as an intermediate level kyu player, I do indeed realize their importance in becoming a stronger player, they are still boring and I believe still not helpful to actually learn the game.

I disagree with this quite soundly (or else misunderstand what you are saying). I have found that tsumego are great for improving your real game,

yes, they help you "improve" -- but they don't help first-time beginners learn the basic rules of the game.

perhaps my original comment was misplaced.

[tekesta]

yes, they help you "improve" -- but they don't help first-time beginners learn the basic rules of the game.

perhaps my original comment was misplaced.

There may indeed have been a misunderstanding. For a novice, playing lots of games is essential to begin internalizing basic skills learned through solving exercises and, in the case where the beginner anticipates games on 19x19 grid board, replaying of pro games. This reminds me of the beauty of capture Go for beginners; a beginner can play lots of games without having to know more than the rule of liberties and capture. If something else is preferred, one can play plenty of games on 5x5 and 7x7 boards. Just play regular game, with no passing. Simply play on until one side runs out of liberties and loses the game. This is a good way to internalize the importance of accumulating liberties, whether through the surrounding of empty points or of stones, and the instinct for when to stop playing.