Life In 19x19

Thanks Tami

How things are going Tami, have You ascended to 1 dan with your main account?

Gorim wrote:How things are going Tami, have You ascended to 1 dan with your main account?

Hi Gorim! Thanks for asking about me.

I was getting close to promotion, but then I got frustrated over a loss and went on tilt quite badly for several days. That happened two or three weeks ago, and that has pushed my graph down considerably.

But it taught me a valuable lesson: you can't overcome fatigue or frustration with willpower, because they are neurochemical conditions, which need time and relaxation to recover from. So, since realising this, I have made myself take a break after every game, whether I win or lose.

I'm certainly getting stronger, but I have to be careful. And my progress is steady, rather than spectacular. After about six months, I have become about half a stone stronger in general, which doesn't sound like much, but it is solid. If it takes me ten years to reach high dan, then that's fine. It takes as long as it takes.

Also, I`m much clearer in my mind about how to go about improving. With the guitar, I went through a similar thing. It took about a year, even longer perhaps, to gain an idea of what to learn and how to do it. Eventually, though, I found a groove.

For improving at go, I study and I practice, and I try to practice more than I study. Study gives you the knowledge, shapes, principles and patterns that make good play, and practice (i.e., real games) helps you to turn them into things that you can do easily.

There's also the meta-go lessons: things like learning to take breaks (and why it's necessary), taking deep breaths to calm down, learning to silence ego, etc.

It could be that I am already close to my limit. I accept that it is a possibility. For sure I would like to be a really strong player, but if I cannot be, then there are worse fates. Go is a hobby, and my main dream is to succeed with my songwriting. In the end, it's not really about what you achieve so much as the fact that you are trying at all.

I have no doubt that I could reach high dan in time, if I continued studying go apace. However, I am going to reduce my go activities to maintenance levels from now on.

The reason is that you cannot serve two masters.

I love go, but I love music even more, and now that I am 40 I have to focus on my songwriting and performing with all my force if I am to get anywhere with it.

I believe the 10000 hour rule is about right, and with music I am probably hovering about 5000 hours so far. My major shortfall is my limited ability as a practical musician, which I am tackling now (up to here I have studied composition and musicology intensively...in fact, you can call me Dr Jones if you wish!). There simply is not time in the day to chase this, work full-time, and put in sufficient effort to become a high-dan go player. Also, without wishing to denigrate go, I do think possibly music offers greater social, spiritual and monetary rewards across the various layers of possible attainment than does go.

Anyway, I will be here to cheer you all on! And by all means listen to my music when I am ready to release it

I have great respect for your decision. I hope that your experience with go will in some way prove beneficial to your musical endeavors. Tell us about it, and good luck!

Hello journal,
Well, I`m not exactly returning to go hardcore as such but...I have started playing again, for fun and diversion. I cannot help wanting to become stronger, but my efforts are more in hope than expectation, and my musical work absolutely has to take priority. Go is what I do when my fingers are too sore to practice any more.

One thing I realise now is that with go, at any rate, I tend to be my own worst enemy when trying to improve. Maybe other people do the same thing, which is to attempt to learn too many different things at once, with the outcome that they forget everything.

So, here are my easy-to-take-in strategems:

1) Go through the Segoe Tesuji dictionary. Do each problem slowly and carefully, one at a time. This is to let the shapes and processes sink into my brain; if I do several problems one after another I tend to get confused and feel no benefit.

2) Study other people`s commentaries. Pro games are good, but it`s very revealing to hear what players in the strong amateur range think because I can more easily find similar situations in my own games. One thing, sadly negative, is that I am surprised and apalled at how little some people think of their opponents. Okay, I`m probably guilty of occasionally thinking the same way, but to record it and show it to the world is uncool.

3) Study one joseki at a time. Studying joseki is definitely good, but I see that I tended to memorise variations too much, and again crowded things out of my memory by attempting to learn too many joseki in one go. Actually, I find it is much better for me to play the target joseki over and over in practice games, because I tend to find out the crucial variations and the direction of play better from experience than by reading dictionaries.

In addition to this, I plan to read Yoda`s book on how professionals think. I`m waiting for my copy to arrive from Amazon. This is killing two birds with one stone, because it will improve my Japanese too. It will be particularly fascinating to compare Yoda`s way of thinking with the patterns of Amateur players.

It's a funny old game, isn`t it? Once you`re into go, you just cannot stop. I really hope I can one day have a firm dan ranking. I`d like to do it on kegs, just to show that I can do it in despite of the lake of molasses that separates one grade from another there, but I will settle for it on Kaya, which will undoubtedly become the dominant server among Westerners in due course.

And, I like the Kaya countdown voice English accents speaking English forcibly apply footwear to buttocks!

Hello my dear! Welcome back. This devil's a bloody seductive one innit?

I have received my copy of Yoda`s プロ棋士の思考術 (Thinking Techniques of Professional Players). This does indeed look fascinating: Yoda lists many intriguing sub-categories in the preface, such as "読みとはイメージを広げること" ("Reading is about expanding your mental images") and "アンフエアについて" ("Concerning the unfair"). It promises to be about the inner mental workings of a top player, rather than the usual example-and-brief-explanation method of teaching used in most Japanese go books. As far as I can tell from a cursory inspection of the book, it seems Yoda uses his 2000 Meijin match with Cho as his main reference point.

Whether or not I will be able to learn anything useful for applying in my own go I don't know yet, but recently I have been greatly enjoying any kind of book in which somebody explains how he or she thinks. I just love getting inside somebody`s mind like that!

I`m also amazed at Amazon. I ordered my second-hand copy online, and paid for it on Friday evening at my local Lawson`s. It arrived on Sunday afternoon. It was only 250 yen and came in almost perfect new condition. If I ever succumb to Book-Buying Syndrome again, now I know I can keep the expense down by using Amazon.

Thank you for sharing your first impression on Yoda's book! I would be interested to learn more, especially since I can't read it.

Tesuji learning: Your aim is too modest, well subject to your rank. I am not sure exactly what is KGS 1k. If it is anything close to European 1k, then you'd better aim for doing 1500 tesuji / tsumego / life+death problems. You might like All About Life and Death.

Joseki learning: You describe the hardness of learning variations, but you do not say yet why it is hard for you. Do you also study understanding, meaning, strategy related to joseki? That makes learning much easier.

I have not read the whole thread. Just in case: Playing through 1500 pro games also helps at European 1k level.

If you don't do it yet: start making positional judgements.

250 yen? Oh my god! Yoda's book is only worth a bento?

RobertJasiek wrote:Tesuji learning: Your aim is too modest, well subject to your rank. I am not sure exactly what is KGS 1k. If it is anything close to European 1k, then you'd better aim for doing 1500 tesuji / tsumego / life+death problems. You might like All About Life and Death.Joseki learning: You describe the hardness of learning variations, but you do not say yet why it is hard for you. Do you also study understanding, meaning, strategy related to joseki? That makes learning much easier.

Yes, this confirms a nagging feeling that I have been having, namely that perhaps I was spending a lot of time reading books aimed at players slightly weaker than myself, so not learning as much new material as I need to in order to progress. There are quite a few problems in Segoe, though, in its three volumes, and when I've done with that I also have his Book to Increase Your Fighting Strength, which is more of the same. I agree that you need to know a lot about a lot, but given the way my brain works I think it`s going to be better to do little amounts and often than trying to do my 1500 problems in a short time frame.

I think the same thing applies to joseki, too. As I said, I tended to study several joseki and their variations in one sitting, but I found I kept forgetting what I learned. For me, I remember better if I do one thing at a time, leave it, and then do something different. During the off-periods I can feel the new data swirling around the back of my mind.

As for positional judgements, I did notice that my winning streaks tend to come when I make the conscious effort to evaluate exchanges on a whole-board basis, playing it like a financial market game: "I give you this, and take something more valuable in exchange". My losing streaks come when I become focussed on purely local issues. In relation to this, I liked your way of thinking described elsewhere, where you assessed the value of a move in terms of its shape, endgame potential and other factors. It was concrete and understandable. I`ll try to incorporate that sort of thinking as best I can.

OtakuViking wrote:250 yen? Oh my god! Yoda's book is only worth a bento?

It`s not even worth that! A good bento starts at about 400 yen At least go books can be had second hand, but I don`t fancy second-hand bento very much.

Anyway, if I get time, I`ll try to keep you posted on the Yoda book. It`s very dense text-wise. He really does cover a great many topics. I read some of the opening chapter in the restaurant just now, and he described his early days when he played through the games of Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru, and was thrilled by the way they would save stones he thought would be cast off, and would throw away stones he thought would be saved. To be able to play like this, he recommends laying out pro games repeatedly, saying that your ability to emulate their moves will increase without your being aware of it.

Sorry if that`s not particularly novel or earth-shattering, but it`s early days yet, and I`ve got a lot of music to practice...not to mention my job

Tami wrote:1500 problems in a short time frame.

Schedule 9 months and choose easy enough problems that teach you new stuff. Study other things in between; only problems is not fun.

tended to study several joseki and their variations in one sitting, but I found I kept forgetting what I learned.

You need motivation for remembering something (say, half of the variations you learn), such as getting to know a set representative basic josekis. Understanding the background of joseki theory can also be source of motivation. To start with, you must understand the functions of the groups once a joseki is settled and why it is a fair exchange.

he recommends laying out pro games repeatedly, saying that your ability to emulate their moves will increase without your being aware of it.

I prefer to be aware:)

I am grinding my way through Segoe`s Tesuji dictionary, one problem at a time. In the past, I went in too much for quantity over quality, but now I am making my best effort to read each problem out completely.

Two things I have noticed:

* The need to broaden and deepen my reading. I must strive to notice all the characteristics and flaws in the surrounding position (broadening), and I have to attempt to see further than before. Often what looks like a solution is thwarted by some aji in an adjacent area, and what looks like a failure turns out to be the right move to exploit such aji.

* The need to push past my "horizon". This is basically the same as above, but it`s about me rather than the position. In chess programming, the "horizon effect" means the limit to which a computer can look ahead, and I seem to be suffering the same issue. Fairly often my head begins to swim before I can read far enough to find the solution. It`s driving me crazy to be honest. Somebody please tell me that with practice I can push that horizon farther back!

One thing that gives me a little hope is my experience with music. When you`re learning to sight read a score, you tend to concentrate on individual notes and chords, but with experience you learn to "chunk". That is, with music at least I can read and remember long pieces because I can imagine them as chunks of information rather than single items. Maybe with effort the same thing will happen with go reading.

As I have said at length, I can`t afford to spend hours every day studying go, but I am trying to do small things frequently in spare moments. While I am frustrated with my limited reading ability, I do at least feel I am retaining things better than before, and I do feel it`s better to have several short bursts of trying hard to get better than one sustained session in which I`m struggling to keep going. Ironically, I think the desire to get stronger sometimes makes it hard to become stronger, because one tends to try too hard instead of trying smart.

Tami wrote:One thing that gives me a little hope is my experience with music. When you`re learning to sight read a score, you tend to concentrate on individual notes and chords, but with experience you learn to "chunk". That is, with music at least I can read and remember long pieces because I can imagine them as chunks of information rather than single items. Maybe with effort the same thing will happen with go reading.

Yes, chunking happens with go.

Good luck!

Tami, I find your posts very interesting and enjoy your openness in expressing how you are doing with your go studies. I found the insight about 'chunking' very interesting and it is encouraging to hear Bill confirm your thoughts on it. I hope you keep posting