Life In 19x19

ParadoxGo wrote:What do you suggest I do? I read Sensei's Library quite often and practice on Go Problems all the time. But I continue to mess up basics like the ones in my game.

What do you read on Sensei's Library and what problems do you solve?

Regulary posting lost games, which are difficult for you to understand can help as well as replaying professional games to get a feeling for good shape and the flow of the stones : )

Loons wrote:I'm not a fan of saying the first [five] moves don't matter much.

The fuseki seems like playing an extension before a shimari, which is conventionally a mistake.

Of course, more detail is probably in order.

I think the extension (q10) is just a moyo building move, and your two corner stones don't want a moyo yet. The bottom right is free for the taking (no points there) and the top right can be flattened. You say you can make the other shimari, but white has already spent moves spoiling/limiting a moyo on the right, so then spending more moves building a moyo on the right is less good.

I think sanrensei and Chinese are better. What are some reasons for that? I think it's to do with white's options for 6.

I think I understand actually. I've stopped using this fuseki, and what you say makes sense. I really prefer an enclosure shimari, giving myself moyo in the corner.

SoDesuNe wrote:

ParadoxGo wrote:What do you suggest I do? I read Sensei's Library quite often and practice on Go Problems all the time. But I continue to mess up basics like the ones in my game.

What do you read on Sensei's Library and what problems do you solve?

Regulary posting lost games, which are difficult for you to understand can help as well as replaying professional games to get a feeling for good shape and the flow of the stones : )

I just go to random pages on SL, look at good shapes, common terms, stuff like that. For Go Problems it's similar; I just do random problems. So Life and Death, Tesuji, etc.

But I'll start doing those bottom two suggestions! Thanks, that's a good idea.

ParadoxGo wrote:I just go to random pages on SL, look at good shapes, common terms, stuff like that. For Go Problems it's similar; I just do random problems. So Life and Death, Tesuji, etc.

Another thing that might help is to focus your approach a bit. Visiting random pages and reading some bits here and there seems not very beneficial to me.

If you are misreading fights, I can recommend Tesuji problems because they often deal with shape and exploiting weaknesses in such. I also can recommend Attack and Defense for a more theory heavy approach.
Furthermore there are Get Strong at Attacking and Invading but I don't own them so I can't say whether they are really useful.

For the opening in general, I can recommend Get Strong at the Opening and 501 Opening Problems. Both books favour a teaching by example approach and don't explain in depth why the correct move is the best one, the books show some variations though. My experience is that you intuitively grasp the concept behind it and when you repeatedly solve those books you become faster and better with every try.

Have you done an actual tsumego set? For example, tsumego.tasuki.org has three sets, each of ~900 problems. Try those, see how it goes.

Loons wrote:I'm not a fan of saying the first [five] moves don't matter much.

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "don't matter." I am assuming your responding to comments like those EdLee has made (and I have elsewhere).

I don't think we'd suggest that someone should just throw the first 5 moves or so on the board without thinking about them. Or that someone could just pass for the first 5 moves and it wouldn't affect the outcome. In that sense, I completely agree--I wouldn't say the first 5 moves "don't matter."

But, as EdLee said, aside from playing something like the 1-1, amateur players aren't going to lose because they played an unconventional opening. Of course, the same thing applies to pros--just ask Go Seigen, Takemiya, or O Meien. In addition, a lot can be learned by playing "strange" openings. I'm still confident that games are not won or lost in the first few moves, especially at our level.

I also suspect that some people (not necessarily you) are not comfortable with that statement because they believe it suggests that all the time they've spent studying opening theory isn't useful. But that's not what it suggests. In fact, I think that proper study of the opening would, if anything, give you an advantage in games with an unconventional opening--whether it is you or the other player who is on the "weird" side.

What my statement does suggest, however, is that simply memorizing different branches/sequences of the Chinese Opening/Shusaku Opening/Orthodox, etc., while not a waste of time, can be can be rendered less useful quite easily. In fact, one reason I sometimes open with points like the 5-3 or 6-4 is to get my opponent out of his/her comfort zone, or to prevent a "favorite" opening (mostly to perhaps avoid a trick move I don't know, get a slight psychological advantage, and just for fun). Of course, when we talk about branches/sequences of an opening, we're no longer talking about the first 5 moves, either...


Just for fun, here are the first five moves of one of O Meien's games.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B O Meien (b) Cho Chikun (w)
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . 1 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 2 . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

(Just an interesting side note, white resigned after 75 moves.)

SoDesuNe wrote:

ParadoxGo wrote:I just go to random pages on SL, look at good shapes, common terms, stuff like that. For Go Problems it's similar; I just do random problems. So Life and Death, Tesuji, etc.

Another thing that might help is to focus your approach a bit. Visiting random pages and reading some bits here and there seems not very beneficial to me.

If you are misreading fights, I can recommend Tesuji problems because they often deal with shape and exploiting weaknesses in such. I also can recommend Attack and Defense for a more theory heavy approach.
Furthermore there are Get Strong at Attacking and Invading but I don't own them so I can't say whether they are really useful.

For the opening in general, I can recommend Get Strong at the Opening and 501 Opening Problems. Both books favour a teaching by example approach and don't explain in depth why the correct move is the best one, the books show some variations though. My experience is that you intuitively grasp the concept behind it and when you repeatedly solve those books you become faster and better with every try.

I think right now I need to learn how to attack and defend better. So I'll look into Attack and Defense, because I think I really need to work on those skills.

jts wrote:Have you done an actual tsumego set? For example, tsumego.tasuki.org has three sets, each of ~900 problems. Try those, see how it goes.

I have done a lot. I also have SmartGo Kifu on my phone. But I'll go to that website too!

judicata wrote:

Loons wrote:I'm not a fan of saying the first [five] moves don't matter much.

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "don't matter." I am assuming your responding to comments like those EdLee has made (and I have elsewhere).

It means Ed Lee isn't comfortable discussing relative merits of the opening, and really doesn't like playing non main stream openings, so he is going to denigrate them by trying to render them irrelevant, contrary to volumes of text on the subject.

SmoothOper wrote:

judicata wrote:

Loons wrote:I'm not a fan of saying the first [five] moves don't matter much.

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "don't matter." I am assuming your responding to comments like those EdLee has made (and I have elsewhere).

It means Ed Lee isn't comfortable discussing relative merits of the opening, and really doesn't like playing non main stream openings, so he is going to denigrate them by trying to render them irrelevant, contrary to volumes of text on the subject.

Where on Earth do you get this stuff from? Ed Lee has been supportive of experimenting with this opening in this thread. He just rightly points out that the wins or losses ParadoxGo experienced in the games he tried with this opening were probably caused far more by later mistakes than by any deficiency in the first three moves.

Frankly, your post comes across as rather rude, and I don't appreciate that towards one of the most helpful and polite contributors to this site. You can express disagreement with him without the snark you expressed above.