Life In 19x19

daal wrote:The question for me revolves around eliminating mistakes. I've certainly identified a buttload of them, but aside from playing on the first line in the opening, I doubt that there are many that I would never make, so it comes down to what causes me to make them.

...

I dunno, maybe I'm just spouting BS, but then again, it's not through lack of examining my mistakes that I haven't gotten stronger. I just keep making them.

Daal,
Not sure what to say about this, other than, "Stop!" If you truly know what you are doing wrong, stop doing it! Play less instinctively and more thoughtfully. If you are making these mistakes due to time pressure, play slower games.

Obviously this doesn't apply to reading mistakes, but it can relate there too.

For example, I recently played out a bad sequence which I initially misread. "When did you see it was bad, and why did you continue to play it?" asked my strong friend. She then showed me several sequences in which the mistake could prove useful later if left alone. This was a wonderful lesson in aji. Left as-is the stones weren't immediately useful, but could influence outside play later, or even spring back to life. But after playing it out, they could never help me again. After this vivid example, I believe I do this far less often. (Why do kyu players play out bad sequences, anyway? Self-flagellation? Desire to watch the full car-crash?)

Back to the issue at hand. Play more thoughtfully. If you know a move is wrong, just don't play it. Find a new mistake to make instead. Truly, not learning from your mistakes might be the best explanation of the wall.

A "wall" occurs when all your previous deficiencies manifest themselves too often in your current games. If you consider your rank to be an "average" of all your strengths and weaknesses, then if you're weak in a few areas where other people aren't, then you'll consistently lose to them. This is also why sometimes a 6k might be able to beat a 3-4k, but not consistently.

Yes, doing problems and studying joseki help, but they very well might not get to the heart of the matter. If you keep having the wrong concept being super awesome at tsumego really won't solve any of your problems.

The easiest answer is to just get a teacher. That said, it will be hard for you to see benefits immediately. Every game you play is different and if you are deficient in a lot of things, one lesson will not fix everything, nor will that lesson possibly show up for awhile. And that's assuming you learn and completley internalize the lesson afterwards.

It is possible that stronger players can help, but they might not even have the correct answer for you. Even if they do, they might not always explain it well. Teaching is an art after all.

That said, if you're doing it on your own, it will not be easy, but it can be doable. It will just have to be a lot of introspection and self-review to figure it out. It's the whole thing of "we don't know what makes us incompetent, cause if we did we'd fix it".

often wrote:A "wall" occurs when all your previous deficiencies manifest themselves too often in your current games. If you consider your rank to be an "average" of all your strengths and weaknesses, then if you're weak in a few areas where other people aren't, then you'll consistently lose to them. This is also why sometimes a 6k might be able to beat a 3-4k, but not consistently.

Yes, doing problems and studying joseki help, but they very well might not get to the heart of the matter. If you keep having the wrong concept being super awesome at tsumego really won't solve any of your problems.

The easiest answer is to just get a teacher. That said, it will be hard for you to see benefits immediately. Every game you play is different and if you are deficient in a lot of things, one lesson will not fix everything, nor will that lesson possibly show up for awhile. And that's assuming you learn and completley internalize the lesson afterwards.

It is possible that stronger players can help, but they might not even have the correct answer for you. Even if they do, they might not always explain it well. Teaching is an art after all.

That said, if you're doing it on your own, it will not be easy, but it can be doable. It will just have to be a lot of introspection and self-review to figure it out. It's the whole thing of "we don't know what makes us incompetent, cause if we did we'd fix it".

For me I have on occasion debated, is it my weaknesses too weak or my strengths not strong enough. It makes a difference.

SmoothOper wrote:For me I have on occasion debated, is it my weaknesses too weak or my strengths not strong enough. It makes a difference.

The former. You can get to 1d without any particular strength or tesuji cleverness.

No offense meant. The first step is eliminating/reducing mistakes.

wineandgolover wrote:

SmoothOper wrote:For me I have on occasion debated, is it my weaknesses too weak or my strengths not strong enough. It makes a difference.

The former. You can get to 1d without any particular strength or tesuji cleverness.

No offense meant. The first step is eliminating/reducing mistakes.

A weakness isn't a mistake. Weaknesses are difficult situations to handle that arise out of the particular fuseki, that can't be eliminated, but need to be dealt with or compensated in other aspects of the Fuseki. Hoshi points can always be invaded at the san-san, its a weakness, not protecting at the correct time, that is a mistake.

SmoothOper wrote:A weakness isn't a mistake. Weaknesses are difficult situations to handle that arise out of the particular fuseki, that can't be eliminated, but need to be dealt with or compensated in other aspects of the Fuseki. Hoshi points can always be invaded at the san-san, its a weakness, not protecting at the correct time, that is a mistake.

That's the weakness of a position. A weakness of a player is a propensity to play a certain class of mistakes.

Polama wrote:

SmoothOper wrote:A weakness isn't a mistake. Weaknesses are difficult situations to handle that arise out of the particular fuseki, that can't be eliminated, but need to be dealt with or compensated in other aspects of the Fuseki. Hoshi points can always be invaded at the san-san, its a weakness, not protecting at the correct time, that is a mistake.

That's the weakness of a position. A weakness of a player is a propensity to play a certain class of mistakes.

In my opinion having a weakness(making certain class of mistakes) isn't as bad as just making arbitrary unrelated mistakes, this is a criticism of many players is that they don't develop a style.

don't worry too much about style
worry about playing the correct move

wineandgolover wrote:

SmoothOper wrote:For me I have on occasion debated, is it my weaknesses too weak or my strengths not strong enough. It makes a difference.

The former. You can get to 1d without any particular strength or tesuji cleverness.

No offense meant. The first step is eliminating/reducing mistakes.

And 1d is still not very strong player so there vast number of ways reaching that level. So reducing mistakes on one or two areas might make it.

I think one thing that causes stops in progress is that we tend to be "one trick horses". One can exceptionally good (compared on players of comparable strength that is) for example in invading. And by exploiting this one can get better his/her particular set of tricks up to a point when further progress on those will not yield gains unless one start improve on other areas.

And I think the plateaus are not on any fixed places but highly dependent on individual

petri wrote:

wineandgolover wrote:

SmoothOper wrote:For me I have on occasion debated, is it my weaknesses too weak or my strengths not strong enough. It makes a difference.

The former. You can get to 1d without any particular strength or tesuji cleverness.

No offense meant. The first step is eliminating/reducing mistakes.

And 1d is still not very strong player so there vast number of ways reaching that level. So reducing mistakes on one or two areas might make it.

I think one thing that causes stops in progress is that we tend to be "one trick horses". One can exceptionally good (compared on players of comparable strength that is) for example in invading. And by exploiting this one can get better his/her particular set of tricks up to a point when further progress on those will not yield gains unless one start improve on other areas.

And I think the plateaus are not on any fixed places but highly dependent on individual

I agree with this. Do I need to make more "tricks" stronger, or do I need to do something else. Something that I fear may hamper my development is the desire to have techniques that work in any situation, but not taking into account the situation may lead to sub-optimal results. I think there are certain points where subtle placement of the direction of 3-4 could leave an opportunity that playing my favorite fuseki won't take advantage, though there isn't anything to prevent me from playing that way.

petri wrote: I think one thing that causes stops in progress is that we tend to be "one trick horses". One can exceptionally good (compared on players of comparable strength that is) for example in invading. And by exploiting this one can get better his/her particular set of tricks up to a point when further progress on those will not yield gains unless one start improve on other areas.

This seems possible. (Although I continue to think that in the overwhelming majority of cases the plateau is an illusion.) But it's probably not the decreasing returns in the "one trick" area that is painful so much as the difficulty of learning tricks two, three, and four at a delayed pace. A beginner understanding of counting, or shape, or sente is a very powerful weapon in a game between two beginners. So the beginner who counts, or who knows sente from gote, gets to use his skills, win, feel proud, and go on to use them again. In a game between two average amateurs, the one who has beginner-level skills isn't going to going to get any benefit from them, because the well-rounded player will primarily be using his skills to wrack up points in advanced contexts where the one-trick pony has no idea what's going on. By the time the pony figures out what the score is, or which play is whose sente, his pony has already initiated the risky fight, taken all the double sente, and so on and so forth. So the one-trick pony has very little incentive to use those skills in the game, and it is much harder for him to climb up the beginner - mediocre - intermediate ladder.

At the same time, certain kinds of one-sidedness seem to make perfect sense to me. It seems that with joseki and fuseki in particular, a lot of beginners agonize over learning things by rote which they would have been able to pick up very quickly if they had waited until they could read adequately.

jts wrote:

petri wrote: I think one thing that causes stops in progress is that we tend to be "one trick horses". One can exceptionally good (compared on players of comparable strength that is) for example in invading. And by exploiting this one can get better his/her particular set of tricks up to a point when further progress on those will not yield gains unless one start improve on other areas.

This seems possible. (Although I continue to think that in the overwhelming majority of cases the plateau is an illusion.) But it's probably not the decreasing returns in the "one trick" area that is painful so much as the difficulty of learning tricks two, three, and four at a delayed pace. A beginner understanding of counting, or shape, or sente is a very powerful weapon in a game between two beginners. So the beginner who counts, or who knows sente from gote, gets to use his skills, win, feel proud, and go on to use them again. In a game between two average amateurs, the one who has beginner-level skills isn't going to going to get any benefit from them, because the well-rounded player will primarily be using his skills to wrack up points in advanced contexts where the one-trick pony has no idea what's going on. By the time the pony figures out what the score is, or which play is whose sente, his pony has already initiated the risky fight, taken all the double sente, and so on and so forth. So the one-trick pony has very little incentive to use those skills in the game, and it is much harder for him to climb up the beginner - mediocre - intermediate ladder.

At the same time, certain kinds of one-sidedness seem to make perfect sense to me. It seems that with joseki and fuseki in particular, a lot of beginners agonize over learning things by rote which they would have been able to pick up very quickly if they had waited until they could read adequately.

For me there is also the problem that by the time I figure out how to punish some of the one trick mistakes like gote capturing and aggressive approach moves, is about the time players stop making them.

SmoothOper wrote:
For me there is also the problem that by the time I figure out how to punish some of the one trick mistakes like gote capturing and aggressive approach moves, is about the time players stop making them.

The fact that you punish those moves now means you've gotten stronger.

If your opponents stop doing gote captures start thinking of sacrifice cross cuts forcing them to capture in gote.
Or alternatively find what other moves they are making that you can treat as gote.

If they stop making aggressive approach moves maybe play a bit looser to entice them to make aggressive approach moves.

If you're good at punishing something get in positions where your opponent will make that mistake.

There are 3 factors that I see most often in people that I try to teach.

1) Not enough understanding of good vs bad shapes
2) Wrong direction of play
3) GREED!

It's not easy to spot these errors in your own play. But for someone stronger than yourself they can be painstakingly obvious. I have had to overcome each of these 3 points, and each time I overcame one, my rank jumped by 2 or 3 within 2 days.

1) Study known shapes and their "shape point". Understand why they are good shapes. Understand which shapes can be cut and which shapes make eyes. Once you have learned a bit more about good and bad shapes, you can start applying them in your live studies. Either look for them in games between high dan players or try to find bad shapes in your own previously played games. When you find a bad shape in your own game, try to think of how you could have made a better shape and what the result would have been. Studying life & death problems starting at 30kyu problems and going up very very slowly, reading the entire problem (at 30k 1 or 2 moves and at 10k 4 - 10 moves) will give you a solid understanding of which shapes give life and which result in death.

2) A lot of kyu players tunnelvision a lot when playing. They blindly respond to their opponents moves unless it's obviously gote to them. You can tenuki way more than you think! The amount of times I see people responding to an end game move in the opening is really painful. To overcome this problem, it's a good exercise to think to yourself "what will happen if I ignore this move and play somewhere else?" and "Where could I play that's much bigger than my opponent's followup?". Try to avoid getting enclosed and being forced to live with only 2 or 3 points. Think to yourself "can I run?" before you think "can I live?".

3) Start trying to make points without killing big groups! Look at the big points on the board without leaving any weaknesses in your groups (make good shapes that are hard to attack). Your opponent will have a really hard time finding good moves to play against you and will fall behind on points slowly and by a small margin. He will then try to reduce/invade, and that's where you can start attacking for profit.

foeZ wrote:3) GREED!

I don't think you have the same sense of greed as I do.

foeZ wrote:
3) Start trying to make points without killing big groups! Look at the big points on the board without leaving any weaknesses in your groups (make good shapes that are hard to attack). Your opponent will have a really hard time finding good moves to play against you and will fall behind on points slowly and by a small margin. He will then try to reduce/invade, and that's where you can start attacking for profit.

Taking big points as you described is greedy, attacking groups trying to kill is aggressive, two different concepts really.