Strategy vs. Theory of Strategy

[ez4u]

1) in common opinion of strong players 90% of go is reading.

This is not a common opinion. For me, reading consumes up to about 90% of the thinking time (but can at times consume as little as almost 0%), but reading (including positional judgement reading) makes up for only up to 50% of the decision making. The more relevant part is strategic decision making and its choice of what to read at all.

To make your argument valid you must first:

1.
Demonstrate that you are indeed a strong player. In the context of your club or country, you might be. In the context of the world, you are very far from it. So - it is not clear that you are part of the 'strong players' group in the context of this thread.

2.
Demonstrate that even if you ARE a strong player in the context of this thread, you are also a TYPICAL one. I.e. not an outlier. This is important, I think. Judging by what/how you communicate, which gives some clues into what/how you might actually think - I am not sure you are a typical ANYTHING. No offense intended.

Just my 2c.

This puzzles me. As far as I can see: Lobotommy was responding to smoothoper's unsupported claims, RJ was responding to L's unsupported response, and now you want to smack RJ for not supporting what he said. But it's nothing personal?

[lobotommy]

How many tsumego have you done in last week? I have done about 2000. I'm currently 2 dan on tygem/wbaduk/kgs.
How do you think which approach works better? Your or mine?

Peace. Work hard. Burn strategy books.

This is about as ignorant as the opposite view, as you would expect from people advocating book burning.

P.S, I find it mildly disturbing that name calling gets likes in this thread.

Have you noticed that "burning strategy books" was a metaphor? Reading not strategy is more important to learn at his level. Good strategy will come later, with experience. Around 5 dan I think. All earlier attempts to be a strategy master are laughable. It turns to be nothing when you can't properly read a sequence of moves.

I know my reading is not good enough so I practice every day and I see results. When I was trying to be great at theory/strategy it always turned out to be a disaster for my playing abilities. You can't make a good strategy decisions after fuseki if you can't read! You can memorize some pro fuseki patterns, and even if you can explain them (which is of course great and proves you are not just a xerox-monkey) then what next? What about fighting? Chuban? Yose? Tesuji stuff? Strategy studies are good if you are close to dan level (real one not those laughable internet ranks where 3kyu player like me has 2dan or even 3dan). Yes, I like to read Invincible, or some other books with detailed explanation of important strategic moves. But then what great value has a knowledge about RedEaring move? Does it makes me stronger? Am I able now to turn my every bad game into a won game like Shusaku did? This is a one thing.

And a second thing is total ignorance of Smoothoper how to ask a correct questions. "Is efficiency sente"?!? My god, there is no meme in the whole internet to show how stupid is that question, or how stupid is claiming that in strategy books there should be clear indication "with sente you can take territory" - it shows only that the author of this topic has no idea what he is talking about. He needs a good teacher. He needs to get stronger. And he needs to get rid of thinking about strategy books as a doorways to increasing his go strength. It looks like all his theory lectures turned to make an absolute mess in his mind. He knows just a bunch of terms but no how to use them correctly, how to think of them.

So... My initial responce to Smoothoper is still valid.
Bury (ok, not burn;) ) your go books about strategy. Do a lot of tesuji, tsumego, and other reading practices. And forget about terms, just play a lot of games.

P.s. I'm not a native english speaker so please feel free to let me know about my grammar mistakes, wrong word order or other language stuff I need to correct.

[SmoothOper]

How many tsumego have you done in last week? I have done about 2000. I'm currently 2 dan on tygem/wbaduk/kgs.
How do you think which approach works better? Your or mine?

Peace. Work hard. Burn strategy books.

You seem to subscribe to the school of thought that strategy is gloating. IE after you have won/lost the game you point to the moyo/dead dragon and say moyo strategy or capturing race. Any way, maybe if you had a little bit of strategy you wouldn't have to do so many tsumego. 2000 tsumego per week 2dan kgs, there must be something wrong with you. I mean I bet you don't even know a good strategy to take advantage of tsumego, or even a professional known for his tsumego strength to imitate, or when to let a group die that isn't worth saving. I know you know strategy, you just aren't comfortable discussing strategy, because someone might figure out the weaknesses to that one strategy you know, well to many people that is part of the fun, and not just defining the Japanese terms in English.

[tapir]

I am not a native speaker as well. You're welcome. Still this is the only thread I remember were half a dozen posts can attack the OP as troll. Even if this were true, postings like "he is a troll, hehehe" are no better than trolling itself and shouldn't be encouraged and for good measure bantari snipes at Robert, who as he well knows, is currently banned and can't even react. I reacted strongly to smoothoper in another thread (is sente efficiency?), but personal attacks are personal attacks even if you believe that the original poster asked a pointless question.

I actually agree that many players should read less books but read more while playing, but you easily find players several stones stronger than you that didn't solve 2000 tsumego in their lifetime let alone in the last week. And some people tend to talk, when they should listen. I know, I know.

You say, you are 3 kyu (Polish) GoR = 2 dan KGS and online ranks are ridiculous. Now tell me, do you believe a Polish 2 dan can give you 4 stones handicap and how many handicap games do you play? And did you ask Polish 2 dans for their KGS ranks, how many of them are actually 6 dan on KGS? I just happen to know that Marek Kaminsky has a 5 dan account on KGS and 4 dan GoR. And Gerard Szymborski has 3 dan KGS and 2 dan GoR. So the ridiculous online rating seems to be pretty close to GoR in those cases. And aren't you overstating your case when you forget to mention the ? next to your rank and the minor fact that KGS rating is highly volatile when the number of games is low and you can't seriously take your peak rating after long absence as evidence for either your place in the system or the solidity of the system?

Personally, I recognized the importance of reading while reading a strategy book. I suddenly realized that I have to read out these sequences BEFORE I play them to be able to make any planning at all. Anyone seriously interested in strategy (as opposed to wishful thinking) comes to the point to recognize the importance of reading pretty fast. If you start with "strategy doesn't matter I can kill everything" I wonder how you can reach the point where you suddenly start to care about strategy.

[lovelove]

How many tsumego have you done in last week? I have done about 2000. I'm currently 2 dan on tygem/wbaduk/kgs.
How do you think which approach works better? Your or mine?

Peace. Work hard. Burn strategy books.

You seem to subscribe to the school of thought that strategy is gloating. IE after you have won/lost the game you point to the moyo/dead dragon and say moyo strategy or capturing race. Any way, maybe if you had a little bit of strategy you wouldn't have to do so many tsumego. 2000 tsumego per week 2dan kgs, there must be something wrong with you. I mean I bet you don't even know a good strategy to take advantage of tsumego, or even a professional known for his tsumego strength to imitate, or when to let a group die that isn't worth saving. I know you know strategy, you just aren't comfortable discussing strategy, because someone might figure out the weaknesses to that one strategy you know, well to many people that is part of the fun, and not just defining the Japanese terms in English.

Maybe lobotommy did 2000 beginner tsumegos, I don't know, but I mostly agree with him.
Fancy strategy doesn't help you at all if you don't have enough reading to support it. Every opponent can always try to make your strategy into trash. You need the ability to fight out these situations, which is reading.

If you have highly stronger reading, and endgame, than your opponent, you can just win with nothing. Think about nine stone handicap games, you have no place to develop your strategy, but you can still win, for better reading and endgame.

Spending time to develop reading is the best way to improve go, especially more for beginners, including IGS 8kyu.

[lobotommy]

@SmoothOper
Oh yes, definitely there must be something wrong with me - 2000 tsumego and only 2dan on Tygem/KGS... Well, give me little more time and 3dan on those servers will come sooner than you think . I just started. I have more than 26000 tsumego to solve (waiting for me in my books and apps). If you want to kick my ass some day you better start your reading training.

@tapir : Yes, I tend to agree to the most of your thoughts. My kgs rank is with "?" indeed, but tygem/wbaduk are places where I play regularly, I use kgs just for chat, but I have no doubts that I'm 2dan on kgs too (which means nothing more than huge inflation of rankings in kyu and low dan area). Strange thing - in 3 dan section on kgs there are real 1,2 and 3 dan players, where kgs 2d and 1d are basicly a real/egf kyu players.
About this question on 2 dan giving me a 4 handi. It would be too much, just two should works fine for me. But I also take 2stones against 4 dan player and it seems to be suficient - I just know how to play on handi. Am I stronger than 3k egf? I have no idea - I just know that I need to train more, and play more in real tournaments. I highly doubt that I am more than 3kyu. My recent tournament games are here so you can judge for yourself (but all comments there are in Polish only):
http://cadrach.blogspot.com/2012/12/goi ... p.html?m=0


@Lovelove
Yes, there were problems for beginners, but only a third part of them. In my tsumego session I have done 600 beginer problems, 600 6-10 kyu, and 600 for low kyu. Of course 600 for beginners took only an hour. 600 for intermediate was more than that but certainly doable in two days with along with regular day chores. Next 600 took me more than 2 days, because I'm still a weak player after all. Next 300 was a mix from cho chikun l&d for intermediate and different go apps on my smartphone. So not a dan level stuff yet, rather 4-5 kyu I think.

[tapir]

In my experience there are enough dan level players who play as 2 dan or even 1 dan on KGS as well, but they might be less inclined to advertise the fact. Play 50 games there, and you don't have to guess your rank. I have seen too many people ridicule KGS rating system based on peak ratings of rare players instead of using average ratings of regular players. In my opinion KGS ratings are far more reliable than those of most other servers where serious rating only starts at 6-7 dan and the kyu range is completely messed up.

Given the amount of tsumego you do, are you sure you don't memorize tsumego instead of solving them?

[lobotommy]

I have no such good memory to memorize all the problems I do. But I realized that doing such a mass of tsumego in a short period of time greatly improved mu intuition of kyusho, miai, shape intuition and other such things in corner/ L&D situations.

I remember an anecdote about one of top Korean player and playing 300 games in a week. "It's only a 50 games per day and you have free Sunday!".
I think 100 tsumego every day is definitely doable for kyu player like me.

[billywoods]

defining the Japanese terms in English

If this seems to be all the books are doing, you should seriously consider whether you have misunderstood them. If you are strong enough to be certain that you have not misunderstood them, then they are probably badly written. Badly written books exist. Throw them away.

90% of tesuji, l&d, and joseki are irrelevant

Then I can only infer that you're proposing to (somehow) isolate the 10% you need and study those? Fine. Do that. *shrugs*

[Bantari]

This puzzles me. As far as I can see: Lobotommy was responding to smoothoper's unsupported claims, RJ was responding to L's unsupported response, and now you want to smack RJ for not supporting what he said. But it's nothing personal?

Confusing...
Not trying to smack anybody.
Just taking exception to him saying that because HE does something, it means that STRONG PLAYERS do that. Regardless of what was said before or after, I think this is a false argument (even if his conclusion is right - not trying to judge that, have no clue how strong players think.)

Sorry for not making that clear.

PS>
In future, if you have questions about what I say or cannot understand my post, do not hesitate to contact me in private. No point into involving all others in discussions and explanations of things which are probably quite obvious to them already.