Is there a way to become good without playing?

[tchan001]

I suppose if you really must become good in secret, you could try the following:

1. Buy all the problem books you can get your hands on and study them until you can solve them at least 95% correctly without looking at the answer. This should help you build up your knowledge of life and death, and tesuji so they become second natural to you. Thus you will have a strong tactical base to nurture your strategic thoughts.

2. Buy some theory books to understand the strategic ideas of go that have worked well over time. Theory may change over time but you want to understand why they were thought to be good and why they change. Perhaps in your studies, you'll eventually get to a point where you'll revolutionize go theory with marvelous insights.

3. Buy a lot of books on professional games with commentary and study those until you really understand what the strategic considerations of the pros are for their moves.

4. Buy a professional games database program like GoGod and go through each move of each game you study and try to think through why the moves were played. With your strong tactical base from step 1, you should be able to see quite a few variations that were thought about but pruned from the tree of possible moves as they were found lacking. Perhaps you might even find some moves which the pro missed and should have played.

5. Memorize pro games so the interesting plays and sequences are able to be recalled when needed.

If you have time to do the above, you should get pretty close to your goal. And then you might have the mindset to prove to the world how wonderful your understanding of go is by finding someone to play against.

[hailthorn011]

Maybe if you're a prodigy. And even then, most prodigies still work very hard. It's like if you become very good at something without putting in effort- a genius, if you will.

[RobertJasiek]

Perhaps in your studies, you'll eventually get to a point where you'll revolutionize go theory with marvelous insights.

By experience, about 50% of such can come from merely studying go theory meticulously for at least a few thousand hours, provided one has an open mind for new general insights. Another 50% can come from methodical (essentially scientific) research experience of many (probably dozens of) thousands of hours. Afterwards, every directed effort can generate new important insights.

But... you let it sound as if everybody could create marvelous revolutions. IMO, there are rather few players or go theory researchers with that achievement. Among the players, I would say there have been only two: Dosaku (efficiency + tewari) and Go Seigen (new fuseki). There have been (a few) more game theory, go theory or computer go theory researchers with revolutionary impact, regardless of whether players have (not) already broadly adopted their insights.

[tchan001]

If he only studies and doesn't play, that probably qualifies him as a researcher more than a player. And my "perhaps" is low odds indeed in either case. But low odds doesn't mean zero odds.

[SoDesuNe]

I recently read a chess book by a german grandmaster ("Das Schachspiel" - Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch), who explicitly writes in his introduction that the aspiring chess novice should refrain from actually playing chess until he or she worked through his complete book and is sure to understand everything (it's an intermediate beginner book, I'd say, dealing with everything from endgame, a huge middle game part and even openings). He even goes that far as to express that playing while being a beginner is a sure way to get a lousy game ("Das Partiespielen im Anfängerstadium ist der sichere Weg zur Stümperschaft.").

Book was written in 1931, so maybe some things changed by now? ; )

[Boidhre]

I recently read a chess book by a german grandmaster ("Das Schachspiel" - Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch), who explicitly writes in his introduction that the aspiring chess novice should refrain from actually playing chess until he or she worked through his complete book and is sure to understand everything (it's an intermediate beginner book, I'd say, dealing with everything from endgame, a huge middle game part and even openings). He even goes that far as to express that playing while being a beginner is a sure way to get a lousy game ("Das Partiespielen im Anfängerstadium ist der sichere Weg zur Stümperschaft.").

Book was written in 1931, so maybe some things changed by now? ; )

I'm deeply sceptical of the value of beginners playing other beginners. There's a part in "How not to play Go" by Yuan Zhou where he comments that an 8k player made a bad move but his 8k opponent didn't answer it correctly so the first player came out well ahead and that until the first player realises this, and other moves like it, are bad moves they'll continue to be an 8k player. I found this observation to hold a lot of truth for me, I got away with extremely passive play in the 20k ranks because I played bigger moves so I still won a lot. I then started hitting a wall around 15k KGS/20k DGS/OGS where my opponents were just as good as I was at playing bigger moves but weren't as passive so I started losing a lot until I got a good deal more aggressive but the only thing stopping me from becoming way over-aggressive is playing sdks like oren and Celebrir who smack me down for overplay.

Bill Spight gave me some advice to only play strong players, sdk and dan level, when I was a fresh beginner. I wish I'd followed his advice now.


I'm also convinced that a 30k player could just sit down and put several hours into life and death, tesuji and fuseki tsumego every day for a month before they started playing and basically skip the 30-20k ranks if not further. This would be rather boring for most people though.

[konfuzed]

I can relate to the anxiety mentioned and made it to weak SDK ranks from mostly study. Reading malkovich games and evaluating positions in them helps. You can become more comfortable with the game through study, but this doesn't make it any easier to play. Your opponents improve at the same rate, so you still make sloppy moves and lose half the time. If your goal is to get so strong that you play freely without mental difficulties, I do not believe that is possible. If your goal is to get stronger but it's hard to play due to your state of mind, it is possible to achieve that if you push yourself to play an occasional game and make up the difference through study.

A better solution may be to use go as a way to reinforce changes to the way you think. You can change the way your brain works with enough effort. Every time you notice a thought that hurts you, you can consciously insert a positive thought. You may not believe them at first, but do it anyway and it can change the way you think.

"Learning more about go" is a great goal if you can shift to it. If your goal is to win, have a beautiful game, not screw up, or whatever, you will encounter disappointment because it is not something you can control. But nothing can take away from your goal of learning more about go. Every time you realize that you screwed up, you're winning! Point out each mistake you find and enjoy it. It's a great way to approach things.

[Boidhre]

Every time you notice a thought that hurts you, you can consciously insert a positive thought. You may not believe them at first, but do it anyway and it can change the way you think.

I'm very sympathetic to the ACT Therapy view on this that the above does not work and the key is to learn to live with the negative thoughts, accept them and work around them.

[konfuzed]

I'm very sympathetic to the ACT Therapy view on this that the above does not work and the key is to learn to live with the negative thoughts, accept them and work around them.

Hmm.. I will look into ACT therapy, I may learn something and change my mind. My only knowledge comes secondhand from a relative who was a psychology researcher and has dealt with similar issues. But to some extent we may be doing similar things in our heads but expressing it in different ways. I wonder if the "work around them" you refer to may be similar to what I view as "insert positive thoughts". I do not believe that negative thoughts can, or even should be eliminated or drowned out by positivity, but I think that there is such a thing as too much negativity, and if you recognize patterns of thought that consistently have a negative effect on your life it is possible to address them and figure out a healthier way to view things.

I suppose on reflection I do not do this by replacing thoughts in the moment like I may have suggested, but rather in times of introspection, when I read something that resonates with me, or when I talk things through with someone. My start point was one of extreme negativity, and finding positive goals and focusing on how to achieve them has helped a lot. You have made me question and mentally refine my view, though - it is interesting to think about the differences between what I have been told and what I have personally put into practice effectively. Thanks.

[Boidhre]

I'm very sympathetic to the ACT Therapy view on this that the above does not work and the key is to learn to live with the negative thoughts, accept them and work around them.

Hmm.. I will look into ACT therapy, I may learn something and change my mind. My only knowledge comes secondhand from a relative who was a psychology researcher and has dealt with similar issues. But to some extent we may be doing similar things in our heads but expressing it in different ways. I wonder if the "work around them" you refer to may be similar to what I view as "insert positive thoughts". I do not believe that negative thoughts can, or even should be eliminated or drowned out by positivity, but I think that there is such a thing as too much negativity, and if you recognize patterns of thought that consistently have a negative effect on your life it is possible to address them and figure out a healthier way to view things.

I suppose on reflection I do not do this by replacing thoughts in the moment like I may have suggested, but rather in times of introspection, when I read something that resonates with me, or when I talk things through with someone. My start point was one of extreme negativity, and finding positive goals and focusing on how to achieve them has helped a lot. You have made me question and mentally refine my view, though - it is interesting to think about the differences between what I have been told and what I have personally put into practice effectively. Thanks.

Hmm, ACT is more about mindfulness (it basically robs a lot from Buddhism). Instead of trying to insert positive thoughts one learns to examine the negative thoughts in a non-judgmental fashion. It's ok to feel really bad about yourself, the mistake comes after that when we start acting as if this was absolute truth. And so on. Yes, definitely, some thinking is irrational and needs to be challenged but the key idea is that we can't be in good form all the time and we need to learn ways of accepting when we're in bad form and not letting it take over and ruin our life.