Improve newbie's reading

alejo · Post by **alejo** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 7:49 am

During the last few months I've been teaching Go to someone who started from zero knowledge about go other than having watched Hikaru no Go. He's improved but somehow got stuck at 16k-17k level.

We played blitz games during a couple of weeks since none of use had enough time to play serious games, so his instinct improved a lot. Thus, he rapidly rose from 22-23k to 17k.
Could you give me some piece of advice rather than solving tsumegos? I've already recommended it but, though he is able to solve them, he doesn't apply his reading ability during real games. Since reading is something I learnt by myself while my groups died one after another, I wonder if any of you have any suggestion to shorten it.
Should I make more teaching games? The sort of games where you stop and say:"Come on, read the sequence mentally, check what happens" every few moves...

Bill Spight · Post by **Bill Spight** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:29 am

alejo wrote:During the last few months I've been teaching Go to someone who started from zero knowledge about go other than having watched Hikaru no Go. He's improved but somehow got stuck at 16k-17k level.

We played blitz games during a couple of weeks since none of use had enough time to play serious games, so his instinct improved a lot. Thus, he rapidly rose from 22-23k to 17k.
Could you give me some piece of advice rather than solving tsumegos? I've already recommended it but, though he is able to solve them, he doesn't apply his reading ability during real games. Since reading is something I learnt by myself while my groups died one after another, I wonder if any of you have any suggestion to shorten it.
Should I make more teaching games? The sort of games where you stop and say:"Come on, read the sequence mentally, check what happens" every few moves...

"he doesn't apply his reading ability during real games."

If that is the problem, . . .

"We played blitz games"

Maybe that has something to do with it.

(Not that there is anything wrong with blitz games, but they are not conducive to methodical reading.)

We really do not have enough information to say what to do. How about an example?

alejo · Post by **alejo** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:03 am

I know blitz is not the best way to improve reading, but we didn't play more than 3 games like that.

Here's a sample game against a 14 kyu. Though he's supposed to be 16k, it was as complete slaughter... and it could have been worse.

I agree this game is crazy... with way too many mistakes to comment them all, but I hope you get the idea. It's like he is playing by mere instinct rather than actually reading what's going on.

xed_over · Post by **xed_over** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:19 am

I haven't looked at his game, but some general advice... pick two or three of his worst/most common mistakes and concentrate your efforts on him improving those. When you play teaching games, setup those situations in the game repeatedly until he learns to deal with them properly. Then move on to his next most common mistakes.

Remember, in teaching games, its not your goal to win, but to teach (by example). Learn to setup common shapes and positions for the student to learn from (without making obvious bad moves). If he does win, give him less handicap next time -- you want him to learn to stretch and grow.

Bill Spight · Post by **Bill Spight** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:23 am

Thanks.

I did not see anything that struck me as particularly unusual for a DDK game. Shortage of liberties was a recurrent problem.

If I had to give one piece of advice, it would be to watch out for that.

The tactical problems are more general than tsumego. Bruce Wilcox's EZ-Go or contact fight material might be good. Or tesuji problems.

Post by **Joaz Banbeck** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 11:21 am

He might learn more on a 9x9 board. Most of the simple tactical issues arise on a 9x9 just as often as a 19x19, and he could play more of them on the smaller board in faster games.

tchan001 · Post by **tchan001** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 12:03 pm

I'd recommend playing lots of 9x9 games against igowin. After playing many games, you start getting used to common patterns and then you can start reading them in the games

jts · Post by **jts** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 12:49 pm

The game you posted has reading mistakes at the level of not seeing atari. Maybe playing more slowly would help, but since the time data is stripped out I can't say for sure. Just have him keep doing tsumego and playing games and eventually he'll get over it. "Why is the 16k making reading mistakes" is one of those questions that answers themselves. As he gets more reading practice, he will stop making the simplest of those mistakes.

As for why he's "stalled" at 16k-17k (presumably for days or at most a few weeks, since he's only been playing for a few months), it's probably not worth worrying about too much. The lowest ranks are very uncertain, so it would have been easy for him to get slightly underranked and then "improve" as real-life improvement got superimposed over the correction of the underranking; then, after a lucky streak a few weeks ago, perhaps his playing strength needed time to catch up to his nominal rank. Or maybe you've taught him a lot, and he's at the point where he needs to spend some time digesting it. Or maybe he has started to play for fun, and is experimenting with new ideas instead of anxiously trying to improve. Lots of possibilities, probably not worth worrying about.

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