Life In 19x19

Right then.

I've been playing sporadically for about six months, and know enough to realise two things:

1) I'm in for the duration. This is not going to go away.
2) I'm have hit a wall. Evenly-rated games on OGS are starting to go against me, sometimes pretty crushingly. And my rating has stabilised.

This second thing is annoying. The initial acceleration based on just playing games randomly and learning on the fly has petered out, and I was enjoying that.

So some kind of systematic approach is required.

Time is an issue for me... as is concentration span, apparently. I have a small collection of books that are so far mostly unread, partly because I am still trying to figure out the best way to benefit from them. I have a board, but nobody to play on it with, though it certainly makes it easier to play things out from books - I am terrible at reading kifu, even shortish ones.

Actually, a list of things I'm terrible at is a good place to start (other than "everything" which, while technically the case, is not good for generating next steps):

1. Reading ahead. By far the weakest thing.
2. Shape. Also pretty bad.

The first two lead to being bad at

3. Fighting.

I am also terrible at reading Go books. The kifu thing is gradually getting better but I have a big problem with reading books making me want to play immediately. Since with OGS there are always turns waiting, I suddenly find myself online and playing every page or so. This leads to a lot of re-reading, or abandoning the book altogether

I suspect that I am also leaning much too hard on OGS's Analyze Game feature, leading to atrophy of my reading skill.

I feel pretty confident with fuseki (ootakamoku currently rates me about 7-8k despite my terrible tsumego, vastly stronger than my general play for sure). Even the immediately following parts seem to go pretty well.

The short term plan is to try and do a lot of tsumego to help with the reading. I have GoGrinder and Magic Baduk for Android, both of whose beginner grade problems I find challenging enough at the moment. The challenge of reading books I will have to overcome... perhaps banning myself from OGS until I've read through a chapter and played through the diagrams on the board, then playing some moves, then going back to reading. In fact banning myself from OGS for a little while might be a good idea in general, since it lends itself too well to my ADD study habit

Other than that I feel like I should play realtime games, but am unsure how I want to do that. There's a club in central London on Thursdays that could work, and KGS also seems promising.

Books I have sitting around:

Bozulich, The Second Book of Go (I am halfway through this and it has been super helpful, but have become bogged down in the Counting Liberties section)
Otake, Opening Theory Made Easy
Jasiek, First Fundamentals
Kageyama, Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go

I've just discovered dwyrin and Nick Sibicky on YouTube... they are really enjoyable (and much more digestible) but again, not sure if they're quite what I am after. I feel like I am lacking the most basic of skills and need to sort that out.

Wish me luck.

Good luck!

Remembering a few simple joseki and invasions is fun, and replaying pro games from your favorite player for the first 100 moves until you can do it by heart (one game at a time) is also fun and gives me the feeling I learnt something. However, most people seem to advice to just play a ton of games until you reach 5 kyu or so.

joellercoaster wrote:I suspect that I am also leaning much too hard on OGS's Analyze Game feature, leading to atrophy of my reading skill.

Try other servers for a bit and mix it up.

joellercoaster wrote:[..]

I suspect that I am also leaning much too hard on OGS's Analyze Game feature, leading to atrophy of my reading skill.

[..]

This is funny … I have the feeling that using this feature strengthens my reading (I play lots of correspondence games there) … sometimes I spend an hour just for the next move, and I think it broadens my imagination of possible moves sequences.

I feel pretty confident with fuseki (ootakamoku currently rates me about 7-8k despite my terrible tsumego, vastly stronger than my general play for sure). Even the immediately following parts seem to go pretty well.

While I also love ootakamoku, it (like other similar sites) constantly estimates my playing strength about 10 stones stronger than my actual rank <shrug> so it might be a good idea not to be too flattered by such estimations.

Greetings, Tom

Bonobo wrote:While I also love ootakamoku, it (like other similar sites) constantly estimates my playing strength about 10 stones stronger than my actual rank <shrug> so it might be a good idea not to be too flattered by such estimations.

Indeed! And I don't feel much stronger in the opening than other people of about my strength... ranking systems may be internally consistent, but oota-to-OGS is definitely apples-to-oranges.

Nearly waded out of the Counting Liberties chapter now. I feel like I might come back to that one once I've seen all the six types of fight and needed to be able to read them out - the key for now is understanding that they exist, and that there are practical differences.

[edit: A first run through GoGrinder's beginner 150-problem set gives me a 54% first-time success rate. On one hand... that's terrible. On the other hand... improvement cannot possibly be far away!]

Week one: still not much better at tsumego, perhaps some hard limits have to be set. 50 problems between being allowed to make moves online.

It's not many, but a big problem at the moment is doing tsumego makes me want to play, so I log on and lose a couple of hours Carrot and stick, carrot and stick...

In other news, first rumblings of discontent at all the Go from my marital associate. Must try and not create a Go Widow.

joellercoaster wrote:The short term plan is to try and do a lot of tsumego to help with the reading. I have GoGrinder and Magic Baduk for Android, both of whose beginner grade problems I find challenging enough at the moment. The challenge of reading books I will have to overcome... perhaps banning myself from OGS until I've read through a chapter and played through the diagrams on the board, then playing some moves, then going back to reading. In fact banning myself from OGS for a little while might be a good idea in general, since it lends itself too well to my ADD study habit

I would give printed problems a try - it helped me a lot at one point - with problem apps and online problems I was clicking on something too fast just to see if it works, whereas with paper it is easier to force myself to read more thoroughly before cheking the answer. Really reading instead of trying things out by instinct is really important when doing tsumego... Naturally your mileage may vary.

Playing Go is just too much darn fun.

Still unable to sit through more than a few tsumego at a time without rushing off to the Internet. But the dwyrin lectures (and I've only watched two so far!) are making me noticeably stronger - and since all of my games are presently correspondence, this is happening dramatically in mid-game. A couple that started out with me getting herded around are now looking like reasonably comfortable wins... so thanks dwyrin (and also some things from the sample of Robert Jasiek's First Fundamentals, which I subsequently bought).

There are a couple of games I am losing comfortably as well, and I'll post those when they're done for advice.

@TIM82: The paper tsumego idea seems sound. Do people think it's worth getting GGPFB #1? Or start with #2?

joellercoaster wrote:Playing Go is just too much darn fun.

Still unable to sit through more than a few tsumego at a time without rushing off to the Internet. But the dwyrin lectures (and I've only watched two so far!) are making me noticeably stronger - and since all of my games are presently correspondence, this is happening dramatically in mid-game. A couple that started out with me getting herded around are now looking like reasonably comfortable wins... so thanks dwyrin (and also some things from the sample of Robert Jasiek's First Fundamentals, which I subsequently bought).

There are a couple of games I am losing comfortably as well, and I'll post those when they're done for advice.

@TIM82: The paper tsumego idea seems sound. Do people think it's worth getting GGPFB #1? Or start with #2?

Nothing wrong with continuing to play, and it will help you ingrain shape knowledge and other fundamentals into your framework so that you don't have to think about it consciously. You will know that X is the shape move, and can read from there to make sure it works.

Regarding Graded Go Problems for Beginners #1, the concepts in it are very basic. Capture a stone. Pull out of atari. Create a ladder. The vital point of the farmers hat or bulky five. How to make a corner enclosure. If you're solidly in the DDK ranks, you may find it too easy.

joellercoaster wrote:@TIM82: The paper tsumego idea seems sound. Do people think it's worth getting GGPFB #1? Or start with #2?

I have no experience with any of the GGPFB series, so can't help you there Checking http://senseis.xmp.net/?GradedGoProblemsForBeginners for some reviews and example problems.

Perhaps you could also try the first pdf at http://tsumego.tasuki.org/ - these don't have answers and will at some point become too hard probably, but just to get the feel on whether the paper format has anything to give to you?

I appear to have developed a fear of losing.

This is, frankly, ridiculous.

Just play.

joellercoaster wrote:I appear to have developed a fear of losing.

This is, frankly, ridiculous.

Just play.

Ridiculous? Perhaps. Common? Most definitely.

I have a fear of losing when I play on the KGS because that is where I derive my rank. The same would likely be true if I had an AGA rank and regularly played in AGA tournaments.

But you should not fear losing. Losing is a part of go as much as winning is. And whenever you let fear control you, you avoid playing the most enjoyable of all games.

So do not fear losing, joeller. Instead, fear the unplayed game.

joellercoaster wrote:I appear to have developed a fear of losing.
This is, frankly, ridiculous.
Just play.

You can also thank our ancestors. Without this instinct, our species might've been extinct a long time ago.

(There is a somewhat recent clinical case of a woman who has literally no fear -- a very rare condition. )

Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage has to do with action in spite of fear.

You're right -- continue to play.

A second pass through GoGrinder's 150 basic tsumego has revealed that... I learned nothing (I gained about half a percent - even though lurching trains and fat fingers led to a few false negatives, that's still not awesome).

Going to go back and have a think, but first I'm going to have a look on Sensei's and try and burn the live-and-dead shapes into my brain.

Also, I spend a lot of time on OGS still. And I feel like the criticisms in this thread are valid. I am learning things, no doubt, but I'm not learning them very fast or consistently, and the feedback loop is very long.

I need to negotiate with my incipient Go Widow about devoting the time to play whole games on KGS at night without becoming too antisocial

joellercoaster wrote:and the feedback loop is very long.

Yes, it is very long because the amount of materials you have to digest is immense,
and you need tons and tons of actual experience, hundreds and thousands of shapes and situations,
plus continuous reviews and feedback -- for similar reasons, medical school takes an additional 4 to 10 years after the undergrad program.