No Longer Blindly Reaching

Eizero · Post by **Eizero** » Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:56 pm

okay I'll just give one comment. It is bad to save those two stones at move 29. Those stones are not important.

shapenaji · Post by **shapenaji** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 9:22 am

Move 11, what's the rush to settle in the corner? there's barely any room for you there. Learn to play that stone lightly. Consider tenuki-ing from that initial play or jumping out. It leaves aji there later either way, and you can invade when it won't give him a massive useful wall.

EDIT: H15, for example, would make sense

Marcus · Post by **Marcus** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:47 pm

A few comments to add to the advice given above. Caveat to all this advice, be prepared to fail a lot until things start to make sense. I'm a big fan of jumping in and trying new things, and failing a lot to gain experience.

First, concerning your cut at 31 and, more importantly, the follow up. I think cutting wasn't a big issue, even if it was a mistake. The issue began at move 35, where you activated that stone without a plan.

Advice #1: Don't activate stones without a plan.

You touch on this a few times in this thread, where you talk about moving too quickly. I'd like to see you take this a bit further: Identify less important stones (this is the hard part), and leave them alone. When you move without a plan, you make it easy on your opponent. Instead, make your opponent worry about what that unimportant stone COULD do later in the game (or he could spend a move eliminating the threat, which is probably better for you anyways).

Next, Move 63. This is an opportunity to play a double hane (see here). In this case, you would play M15 instead of M16. Learning when you can do this will give you one more tool in your bat-belt.

Move 75 ... read, then cut at P15. White can't hold you in anymore, and P15 threatens the follow-up cut at Q13. I guess my advice here is, check your safety, double-check, then cut. If you read wrong, so be it. Seems like a lot of the time you play a little too safe.

Along the same lines as above:

Move 133 - read, then cut at H7
Move 139 - read, then play F7 (some interesting lines here to read for practice)

=================================

About go problems ...

I haven't done any, at least not formally or thoroughly. I've played around with some on occasion, but I don't solve them as practice.

For me (and I stress that this is not true of everyone), playing is FAR more effective for learning Tesuji, Life & Death, and Shape.

So Numsgil, why am I KGS 2k? (or 3k, if I'm honest; I'm not consistent enough to really lay claim to the 2k I've been awarded). I don't think problems really are the panacea you seem to claim. Everyone learns differently, and the right balance is personal.

hailthorn011 · Post by **hailthorn011** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 3:25 pm

As I have noted before, this game is another prime example of playing far too fast. You don't see it at the beginning, but towards the end I started playing fast again and I ended up losing a lot of points as a result. And this was a Simultaneous game. I was among five of his opponents. The disappointing facts are that I was the only one who lost. I had 3 stones AND a concentration advantage, and I still lost. Since initially reaching 7k (I've lost it since) I'm 0-4. I reckon 3 of those games were well within range, but I lost them because of the pace at which I play.

This may sound like a dumb question, but what is the best way to remedy playing too fast?

Note: This game was not self-reviewed.

Eizero · Post by **Eizero** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:00 pm

I do not know the remedy of playing too fast because I often play too slow. :p

I`ll just give some comments:

I think c17 for black is a lot better than c16.

*(I think this is the most important) When white plays l2 you should block it, white has to spend an extra move to live with that group while you cut off his weak group.

Also move 54 is almost like passing, black is quite thick there.

I think you`re too concentrated on territory. Most of the time white overplays in handicap games. You should focus on pressuring white as much as possible. You did not really give white a hard time at all.

edit: For example black 64 at m11 is just taking a small point of territory. Instead of that move maybe invade between the two white stones.

schultz · Post by **schultz** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:24 pm

hailthorn011 wrote:This may sound like a dumb question, but what is the best way to remedy playing too fast?

A couple suggestions I've heard:
- (Literally) sit on your hands while you think
- Turn your mouse upside down, takes a second to turn it back over when you want to move
- Put something on top of your mouse (a book, piece of paper, etc.); you'll have to move it which will also slow you down

My biggest suggestion beyond actual physical tricks - keep this thought in mind over your next few games. Go into the game with this as your objective - to play slower. Whenever you're about to make a move, stop and think about other moves (I've heard some people suggest forcing yourself to think about 2-3 more options unless the answer is an obvious atari situation).

I'd play around with some of these different options and see how they work for you. Maybe one will help get you into the habit of slowing down and playing at a pace that is more in-line with what you want to do.

hailthorn011 · Post by **hailthorn011** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 5:53 pm

schultz wrote:
hailthorn011 wrote:This may sound like a dumb question, but what is the best way to remedy playing too fast?

A couple suggestions I've heard:
- (Literally) sit on your hands while you think
- Turn your mouse upside down, takes a second to turn it back over when you want to move
- Put something on top of your mouse (a book, piece of paper, etc.); you'll have to move it which will also slow you down

My biggest suggestion beyond actual physical tricks - keep this thought in mind over your next few games. Go into the game with this as your objective - to play slower. Whenever you're about to make a move, stop and think about other moves (I've heard some people suggest forcing yourself to think about 2-3 more options unless the answer is an obvious atari situation).

I'd play around with some of these different options and see how they work for you. Maybe one will help get you into the habit of slowing down and playing at a pace that is more in-line with what you want to do.

Thanks for the advice! I'll definitely have to give these tactics a shot!

hailthorn011 · Post by **hailthorn011** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 6:07 pm

This is a game I played with Marcus, as you can see. He decided to go with the Kobayashi fuseki. This was my first encounter with the opening, so I wasn't really sure how to respond to it and that ended up costing me severely. However, I decided to do a bit of study on it because of that. I checked Sensei's Library and a pattern database.

The pattern database I used gave me this situation:

However, I wasn't sure if this was accurate or not thus far. I'm trying to study this fuseki as I'm sure it's going to start coming up more and more frequently. And if my game with Marcus is any indication, I need to study it as much as possible. Well this and the Chinese fuseki.

So, I decided this week to reserve a decent amount of time studying fuseki and all their variations.

For this one though, what do y'all think? Does it seem good or not. The possible moves for Black are labeled by importance from A onward, A being the supposed best choice, of course. I'm not trying to doubt it, but I'm suspicious.

hailthorn011 · Post by **hailthorn011** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 4:53 pm

I'll begin by saying that yes, I used very little time in this game, and I didn't try and make myself slow down in this game. I played with my traditional instinct style. However, I ended up destroying White in this game. This does go against my newfound goal of playing with patience, but this game really has me wondering if I play better in my traditional style or by playing slow. I don't really know.

However, I'm definitely not going to abandon playing slow altogether. I know there are definitely times when it is best to sit back and really get a good look at the board, but I don't think I should spend more than a minute on every single move. That's just me though. When I played Marcus, I used a lot of time. He ended up giving me more time because I had used a lot of it up, but using that time hadn't really benefited me too much.

Either way, I really need to improve if I'm going to be ready for the Meijin Qualifiers on KGS in 8 days! I can't wait!

schultz · Post by **schultz** » Sat Jan 21, 2012 10:45 am

hailthorn011 wrote:I'll begin by saying that yes, I used very little time in this game, and I didn't try and make myself slow down in this game. I played with my traditional instinct style. However, I ended up destroying White in this game. This does go against my newfound goal of playing with patience, but this game really has me wondering if I play better in my traditional style or by playing slow. I don't really know.

However, I'm definitely not going to abandon playing slow altogether. I know there are definitely times when it is best to sit back and really get a good look at the board, but I don't think I should spend more than a minute on every single move. That's just me though. When I played Marcus, I used a lot of time. He ended up giving me more time because I had used a lot of it up, but using that time hadn't really benefited me too much.

Either way, I really need to improve if I'm going to be ready for the Meijin Qualifiers on KGS in 8 days! I can't wait!

This is always a fine balance - using your time. And that's one of the reasons in my post above that I said to play around with it and find something that you are comfortable with.

One of the big things to realize/learn is when you need to spend time reading, and when you can get away with playing faster. Easier said than done! (And I'm terrible at it, by the way.) In normal games I have a tendency to play way too slowly. This drags games out and I'd probably benefit from getting myself to play a bit faster.

Speaking to playing fast - your opponent in that game was also playing faster than you. So the only real conclusion I can get from that is you are better than him at fast games - not necessarily better in fast games all together. For some semi-related anecdotal evidence: when I play my friends in (face-to-face) blitz games, I normally trounce them (apparently my reading is better at them when we're all blitzing like crazy men). When we play slower games, though, I have really close games with no "guaranteed" winner. So, your mileage may vary.

hailthorn011 · Post by **hailthorn011** » Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:13 pm

So, today I decided to play a blitz game for the first time in awhile. Since I naturally play fast anyway, I'm surprised I don't play more blitz games. Today, however, I learned that it's not a good idea to play a blitz game when you're distracted by football (my prediction of the Pats winning was accurate, but that was a nailbiter!) So the next time I play one of these, I need to make sure I can focus solely on the game.

In the end, I got the favorable result. The person I played was one I was observing in another game, so I suppose that's why he challenged me. Anyway, I played a lot of questionable moves, but I'm not going to review it. I only plan to self-review regularly timed games.

Knotwilg · Post by **Knotwilg** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:05 am

I'm not rank obsessed but if a AGA 6d takes the trouble to post on a forum what made him strong, I'd ignore all other comments and go for imitating his behavior. Moreover, what shapenaji advises is neither far fetched nor discouraging. It's the plain old cycle of brain training by feedback.

Adults have a tendency to overestimate theory and analysis. Children's way of learning is play. There's a lot of unconscious learning provided by feedback.

New idea - play - unconscious feedback - adjust - play ... occasional review - adjust - play ...

Adults also tend to seek comfort. They want a sure fire strategy. Children experiment all the time and accept failure as another kind of feedback.

Sure, we are not children anymore, so let's be lopsided a bit on the review and comfort. But playing very few games or hardly experiment are recipes for stagnation.

shapenaji · Post by **shapenaji** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:46 am

Knotwilg wrote:I'm not rank obsessed but if a AGA 6d takes the trouble to post on a forum what made him strong, I'd ignore all other comments and go for imitating his behavior.

Well, don't give me too much credit, it's hardly "trouble" to post about a game that you're obsessed with. And 6d AGA does not give me status to say that other people's methods are wrong. I can really only say what worked for me.

However, I do notice an emphasis that a lot of players put on in-depth study of all their games, where exactly they went wrong, etc... They play in serious tournament-style games as a way to get better or abuse blitz as "fostering bad habits".

On the one hand, it makes a certain kind of sense, it's a study plan that insei, professionals and stronger players use, so why not you?

IMO, the number one asset for getting better is a source of ideas and a playground to test them out.

You can get those ideas from just about anywhere, from Tsumego, Tesuji problems, playing a stronger player and seeing their tactics, looking at a pro game, or just purely through your own innovation during a game (I even credit Sun Tzu's the Art of War as being responsible for a few of my ideas).

The playground is obviously games.

The reason why pro's and insei have THEIR study plans is that, at their level, new ideas are harder to come by. To just get to dan though, you can come it from many directions, (Which direction you come at it from probably defines your "style")

You'll probably only get to try out a few new ideas per game, so get through your games as quickly as you can. If you're unable to try out an idea because of the speed of the clock, then you're playing too fast. If you spend a long time agonizing over what decision to make, then you're playing too slow.

hailthorn011 · Post by **hailthorn011** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 8:14 pm

Well, my personal opinion is you all have valuable information, and anything you say to help me improve is greatly appreciated. I can't say it always sinks in, but I'm the type of person who learns greatly by trial and error. If I see something enough times, eventually I'll memorize it. Some things I can remember on the spot, but Go information takes awhile for me to process. Especially certain corner joseki.

But that's for another time. I have intentionally been taking this week easy. I want to be well rested for the 28th since I'm going to have to be up at....3AM! It's a good thing I'm a happy morning person! The reason for the "taking it easy" bit is because I don't want to get burnt out before the big tournament. I really think I've bettered my clock management skills over the past week or so, too. I can't say it's perfect, but it's definitely better.

So I'll be playing maybe 1 game a day until the 28th. The following week, I plan to spend more time playing games. My new schedule will be:

Monday-Thursday:
1. Games. Games. And More Games. No Set Number.
2. Tsumego.
3. Observe Stronger Players.

Friday:
1. Blitz Day. (Basically, I try to play as many fast games as possible for fun, and to just enjoy the game.)

Saturday:
1. Self-Review Day.
2. Post 1 Game Here For Review.
3. Study A Certain Aspect Of The Game (Fuseki, middle game, yose, ect.)

Sunday:
(Day Off)

So, this may look weird, but I actually have a reason for making all my reviews on a day where I don't actually play any games. It forces me to look at older games and figure out what I was thinking in games that I won, and games that I lost. Monday through Thursday will be about improving my game by playing and solving tsumego. Friday is my TGIF day to just relax and forget worrying about improving. This will be my day to not care about results.

Saturday will be my study day. That's all I plan to do. Simple. I think a nice day of reviewing all the mistakes I've made in a week, and getting opinions from stronger players on a game will be greatly beneficial. And of course, studying a certain aspect of the game will also be huge. As I've said, for now, I'll probably focus mainly on familiarizing myself with every single fuseki known to the Go World.

As for Sunday. That is my relax day. I will do NOTHING Go related at all. I believe this will be my hardest challenge for the entire week! Either way, this is my new and improved Study Journal. As several have pointed out, if I'm serious about reaching 1 Dan this year I've really got to work harder. Of course this will all be done as time permits! But I'm going to do my best to stick to this.

What do you all think of this strategy?

speedchase · Post by **speedchase** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 9:07 pm

IMO the best time to review is right after you play the game, and playing and reviewing should be seen as the same activity, but if you have another strategy that may by fine also.

Life In 19x19

No Longer Blindly Reaching

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