Life In 19x19

I've heard many different opinions on these topics, and I hope to hear a few more from personal experiences. Maybe the answers depend on the kind of person you are, or maybe there is a universal "right" answer. Either way, I'm hoping for some input so I can make up my mind more.
The two questions are the following:

Question 1: To make good progress in Go, how essential is reviewing your games?

Option 1: Review heavily!
At the moment, I am reviewing every single (online) game I play, and I usually spend 1-2 hours on a review, that's sometimes a bit longer than the game itself.
Of course, I can't play a game every day doing that (only when I have a holiday, like now )
So let's say that doing it this way, I'd play (& review) maybe 3-4 games on an average week.

Long - Basically every game

Option 2: Review lightly!
Another approach would be to still review each game, but only spend 10-15 minutes on it, immediately after the game's finished. That leads to a lower quality / quantity of a review, but it's less time consuming. Let's say you can play up to 5-6 games a week this way.

Short - Basically every game

Option 3: Selective Reviewing!
Another way would be to only review certain games. Maybe once every three games, or only the games you lose, or ...
I could also pull up my quantity of games to 5-6-7 per week this way, but some would not get reviewed.

Long - Occasionally

Or a hybrid of the above?
There is no option that says "no review" because I do believe it's a very valuable asset. So it all boils down to: how often and how detailed should a review be?

* Note that reviewing games is fun for me. So the (justified) response of: "Go should be fun, just play games" is of no matter for me, since reviewing my games is basically as much fun as playing them, and increasing in strength is even more fun, so I'm really looking for the best way to improve! (to quote Go Seigen: "Becoming one stone stronger is the supreme enjoyment."

Question 2: How important is tsumego actually?
Almost anyone will tell you tsumego is (next to playing) the vital point to improve. The problem is, I don't like tsumego as much. I love to study Go using books, playing games, reviewing games, replaying pro games (quickly or with comments), I like replaying situations from books over and over again until they're lodged in my memory and all that.
But I don't particularly like doing tsumego.

I have these books called Graded Go Problems for Beginners. These books I can handle. I can spend about 20 mins a day doing problems and it's fun. But after half an hour it's been enough.
Other books/bundles I've tried, like Cho Chikun's encyclopedia of life and death, are so tough for me to actually do. The problems are both hard and not optimal for my motivation.

So if I just continue to do GGPB and Level Up (I've just purchased that series, hope I'll like it) and do other problems in books like "get strong at invading", "tesuji" and stuff, will that be enough to keep increasing in strength? Or will I have to make peace with heavy tsumego studying time at some point?


Minor question
If you feel up to it, I also have this small question as to how important that certain element of Go is to kyu-players.

- Endgame
I've just started learning a bit about endgame and -boy- it is complex. I used to be good at math though, so I guess I could do it if I started learning it and spent some time on it. The question is: at what point do you HAVE to know that? It's always great to know it and you'll improve if you do, but my question is really: when should you really pick it up?
Or is a basic approach to endgame enough for any kyu player?


Appreciate any input! Thanks a lot

Ian Butler wrote:Question 2: How important is tsumego actually?
{snip}
Minor question
If you feel up to it, I also have this small question as to how important that certain element of Go is to kyu-players.

- Endgame
I've just started learning a bit about endgame and -boy- it is complex. I used to be good at math though, so I guess I could do it if I started learning it and spent some time on it. The question is: at what point do you HAVE to know that? It's always great to know it and you'll improve if you do, but my question is really: when should you really pick it up?
Or is a basic approach to endgame enough for any kyu player?

A lot of people think that the endgame is about math. As a practical matter, that is not the case. It is true that you can find the best local play by exhaustive search using math. (Large regions are too big to do that. ) However, as a practical matter you find good plays first and then compare them using the math. So at your level endgame study should be about finding good local plays. Note that that could also describe tsumego. In fact, the study of the endgame and tsumego go together well. One of Sakata's books in his Killer of Go series combines the two. A common theme in both tsumego and the endgame is shortage of liberties. OC, that is a major factor in semeai (races to capture). Tsumego, endgame, and semeai all go together. All are concerned with finding the best local play. The endgame is also concerned with the relation between plays in different locales, but the place to start is with finding the best local play. Moi, of the three I think that semeai are more basic, although they can get pretty advanced.

Ian Butler wrote: Option 2: Review lightly!
Another approach would be to still review each game, but only spend 10-15 minutes on it, immediately after the game's finished. That leads to a lower quality / quantity of a review, but it's less time consuming. Let's say you can play up to 5-6 games a week this way.

American Yunguseng Dojang reviews are 10-15 minutes. I think you are mistaken about the quality of shorter reviews. The truth is that the story behind most of your wins and losses are simple, big picture issues and longer reviews aren't really adding all that much. For minor technical details - tsumego is a better place to spend your time.

Ian Butler wrote: Option 3: Selective Reviewing!
Another way would be to only review certain games. Maybe once every three games, or only the games you lose, or ...
I could also pull up my quantity of games to 5-6-7 per week this way, but some would not get reviewed.

If you're playing lots of games you'll very naturally not bother reviewing them all. I like to review games that seemed interesting win/lose.

Ian Butler wrote: Question 2: How important is tsumego actually?
Almost anyone will tell you tsumego is (next to playing) the vital point to improve. The problem is, I don't like tsumego as much. I love to study Go using books, playing games, reviewing games, replaying pro games (quickly or with comments), I like replaying situations from books over and over again until they're lodged in my memory and all that.
But I don't particularly like doing tsumego.

Easy tsumego is the key. If you can't solve a tsumego perfectly in 30-60 seconds, don't bother. You won't be able to use it in a game. Once you switch to this mindset I find tsumego becomes quite fun and I see the impact immediately in my games. Organized easy tsumego sets are better than random stuff on the Internet. Graded Go Problems, WBaduk, Level Up / Jump Level Up, Essential Life & Death, etc.

Lots of people have differing opinions, but for myself I wish I had understood this years ago. Lots of games, big pictures reviews, easy tsumego (+ teacher if you can afford it). I find that improvement is regular and steady with this approach.

In the end, my feeling is that up to about 1-2 dan level - you should just be focused on playing fewer and fewer mistakes and your study should be oriented and optimized around that.

I tend to review every game lightly. My view is that the biggest benefit you can get out of reviews is looking at why you were unhappy with a result of the opening and or middle game. You can get a lot of mileage out of realizing that taking all the corners in the handicap game only gave you about sixty points. And that since you don't have developmental potential anymore, white has gotten within range to overtake you in the endgame. So instead of spending a lot of brain power figuring out how to have played better after this position, you can just resolve to fight for the sides and center more next time.

I love doing tsumego, they are a validation of the fundamentals of reading. I think the level up series will be good for you. My understanding is that it is organized to teach tactics used in life and death. For example, you can prove to yourself that capturing three stones gives you an eye. But capturing only two means the eye could be falsified.

For endgame, I agree with Bill. For now, just worry about the best local move and if it is sente or gote. Later start thinking about playing a gote move that denies your opponent sente. I've been messing around with the problems in 'Get Strong at Endgame' and 'The Endgame'. My conclusion is I'm going to come back and worry about actually counting the value of different endgame options when I'm at the mid dan level. At aga 4k I think it is more trouble than its worth.

Ian Butler wrote: Question 1: To make good progress in Go, how essential is reviewing your games?

You like reviewing your games, so do it! Also you are getting really great advice in these forums as a result.

I would point out that when you review your games, you are looking at examples of "bad" play; there are your big mistakes that you notice afterwards, but also the board positions that you're learning from are board positions that were created by ~15k players. So self-review is only one part of a balanced breakfast. On the other hand, you need to learn how to beat 15k players before you can beat 1d players, and AlphaGo Zero has shown that it's possible to achieve pro level just from looking at your own games. But I would not obsess
too much about all the situations that come up in your games, because at some point in your progression you'll stop seeing those situations in the first place.

Question 2: How important is tsumego actually?

So if I just continue to do GGPB and Level Up (I've just purchased that series, hope I'll like it) and do other problems in books like "get strong at invading", "tesuji" and stuff, will that be enough to keep increasing in strength? Or will I have to make peace with heavy tsumego studying time at some point?

I'd say that almost everything in GGPB is something that should be part of your pattern-matching vocabulary eventually and is not just brute-force reading practice. For you, probably volume 1 consists of things you don't even have to think about anymore; for me, volume 2 has patterns I expect to be able to "see" in the future as part of a variation that isn't even on the board yet, volume 3 has patterns I expect to be able to work through over the board when they come up, and volume 4 has patterns that I'm not guaranteed to get correctly when they come up in games even if I think hard. As you get stronger you will find the same kind of pattern. I do think that mastering the volume 2 material (I just went through it again the other day!) is really key for hitting SDK.

The Level Up books are very structured and I wouldn't be surprised if you like them a little more than the random sampling in the GGPB books.

I wouldn't worry too much about the more advanced books until you hit single-digit kyu.

I've just started learning a bit about endgame and -boy- it is complex. I used to be good at math though, so I guess I could do it if I started learning it and spent some time on it. The question is: at what point do you HAVE to know that? It's always great to know it and you'll improve if you do, but my question is really: when should you really pick it up?

Learning just a little endgame theory will put you way ahead of your peer group, by which I just mean things like

• Double sente before sente before gote
• Sides are bigger compared to the center than they look
• It's twice as big to take points that either of you could claim as it is to take points that only you could claim
• Look for opportunities created by decreasing liberties

More complicated theory can wait.

But with all of these subjects, if you're excited about it go for it, and if you're not excited don't worry about it too much for now. Your greatest asset right now is your enthusiasm, so the best thing you can do is maximize that.

Well, my Go journey is still pretty young, so take my opinion with a few dozen grains of salt

I try to review all my games played against human opponents, right after the game ended.
I try to find a move/sequence (mine or my opponents) that seems like the deciding factor for a win/loss.

9x9 games are just reviewed really quickly, usually just one minute and at my level that's still enough to spot a move or two that could've been better.
19x19 reviews are also just a few minutes for the most part. I just want to spot the biggest, most glaring mistakes and take that away from the game.

At my level, I feel I'm not really good enough to analyze most situations correctly. If I see an obvious mistake that takes maybe 1 or 2 moves, that's enough for me right now. Anything more complicated or subtle isn't worth it right now. Especially because neither me nor my opponent will be playing moves that are even close to "good", so I feel like spending a lot of time on a slightly unclear sequence in a 20k game is like polishing a turd.

But even if I did spend more time, I wonder if I could spend more than 20 minutes on a review. So I'm very curious to hear how 1-2 hours of review time is actually spent. Maybe I've got the wrong idea about reviewing.



On the other hand, I really love tsumego. Each one is a little puzzle and I could spend hours every day doing them, but rarely find the time, so I just do a few dozen and call it a day.

Right now I think tsumego is more valuable for me than reviewing. Reviewing is good for spotting repeated mistakes I make, but doing tsumego makes me actually able to spot those mistakes in a review and the game. I get to see the correct sequences over and over in tsumego. If I didn't know it from tsumego, I probably won't be able to see it in a review as quickly or at all.

I'm almost finished with Graded Go Problems for Beginners Volume 2. It's pretty tough compared to the first one. Coincidentally I also ordered a bunch of Level Up books recently, they haven't arrived yet.


As for normal books: I'm struggling a bit with those. Haven't looked at any pro games either so far. But I'll probably create a topic about non-problem books in the future if I can't figure out my issue with them.

MysteryFTG wrote: As for normal books: I'm struggling a bit with those. Haven't looked at any pro games either so far. But I'll probably create a topic about non-problem books in the future if I can't figure out my issue with them.

The important thing is to separate books that are about enjoying the game and books that might actually help you improve in an effective manner. My experience is that very, very, very few books fall into the later category, especially prior to SDK. Tsumego books + the Janice Kim series is probably all you should bother with up to 10 kyu - focus on playing games and high-level reviews.

Once you hit SDK, Cho Hun-hyun Lectures on Go Technique and Yilun Yang's Fundamental Principles of Go + the Workshop lectures distill an incredible amount of information with refreshing economy. Everything else I own is for kicks - I like reviewing old games and pro games for ideas and beauty, and very rarely an interesting but simple move I might want to try myself.

swannod wrote:
The important thing is to separate books that are about enjoying the game and books that might actually help you improve in an effective manner. My experience is that very, very, very few books fall into the later category. especially prior to SDK.

Can confirm as the owner of many Go books. There is something to be said for combing through resources that you think can't teach you anything though. I had never formally thought of eyes as being a function of controlled shoulders until I went through Guo Juan's Basic Step by Step lectures at 4k.

Ian Butler wrote:I've heard many different opinions on these topics, and I hope to hear a few more from personal experiences. Maybe the answers depend on the kind of person you are...
Note that reviewing games is fun for me. So the (justified) response of: "Go should be fun, just play games" is of no matter for me, since reviewing my games is basically as much fun as playing them, and increasing in strength is even more fun, so I'm really looking for the best way to improve! (to quote Go Seigen: "Becoming one stone stronger is the supreme enjoyment."
...
Almost anyone will tell you tsumego is (next to playing) the vital point to improve. The problem is, I don't like tsumego as much. I love to study Go using books, playing games, reviewing games, replaying pro games (quickly or with comments), I like replaying situations from books over and over again until they're lodged in my memory and all that.
But I don't particularly like doing tsumego.

I have these books called Graded Go Problems for Beginners. These books I can handle. I can spend about 20 mins a day doing problems and it's fun. But after half an hour it's been enough.
Other books/bundles I've tried, like Cho Chikun's encyclopedia of life and death, are so tough for me to actually do. The problems are both hard and not optimal for my motivation.

So if I just continue to do GGPB and Level Up (I've just purchased that series, hope I'll like it) and do other problems in books like "get strong at invading", "tesuji" and stuff, will that be enough to keep increasing in strength? Or will I have to make peace with heavy tsumego studying time at some point?
...

I think that you cannot overestimate the question of having fun. No matter who you are and what kind of talents you possess, you can only get stronger if you continue with the game and your studies. So the primary answer to all your questions is to study in ways that make you happy and energized to continue with our beloved game.

That said, there are other issues to address in each of the areas that you mentioned. Reviewing your own games may or may not be fruitful depending on your personality and your level. In my case, I have never gotten much out of reviewing my own games since I quickly descend into day dreaming variations where my opponent plays all the easy answers and I win hands down! I have learned more from reviewing other peoples' games or reviewing my games with other people who are at least my level or stronger. I am perhaps lucky to have access to many such people as I live in Japan. The additional point that comes out of reviewing with stronger players is that I do not see the problems with my plays if I review on my own. These days we can get around that using software to some extent but I do not actually enjoy doing that - so I don't do it often.

Studying tsumego (and endgame, and life & death, and tesuji ...) are necessary if you want to become really strong IMHO. I am like you and do not enjoy solving tsumego problems. So I have never been able to sustain an effort to study these in earnest. At this point in time (forty+ years into Go), I accept that I will never approach within shouting distance the top amateurs that I meet here in Tokyo. I think that the question would be whether there is a way to take the subject and create an approach that you can enjoy and sustain. If you don't like doing tsumego books, the answer will not be... doing tsumego books! I have no advice on what it would be since I have never done it. I do know that my bookshelves are full of books on the topics that I have never read past the first chapter. Any number of these were acquired during one of those times when I decided, "NOW I am finally going to get serious about studying!" Such resolutions made the booksellers happy every few years but have never resulted in any actual gains.

By the way, I disagree with Go Seigen. Go is like hiking up a mountainside. We cannot stand atop a peak without noticing that there is another, higher one waiting just along the next ridge. It is the journey that brings us joy, not the breather that we take at this or that scenic viewpoint along the way. It is nice to see that you enjoy Go so much. Concentrate on preserving and expanding that enjoyment and the improvements are bound to come naturally.

If you really really want, you can read all about my improvement and my thoughts about improvement on the subpages of my Sensei's Library homepage: https://senseis.xmp.net/?Dieter

On your questions:

1) Myself I made my greatest tangible improvement, from 2k to 2d, when I played live games, without time limit, against players of my own strength and then took about 2 hours reviewing those games, scrutinizing my mistakes and finding out why I made them. This is a diet that not everybody can sustain and not at any given frame in their lifetime. Today, resources are available on a different scale than 20 years ago: you can play dozens of games a day and you can easily reach out to volunteer teachers like us, which is what you do. It seems the balance has shifted to playing many games and doing short occasional reviews. As said so often, do what works best for you.

2) On tsumego I found myself frantically nodding in agreement with swannod, so I won't repeat what he said about it. I also agreed with him on books: there are (many) inspirational books and (very few) books that actually teach you something. In the latter category I would mention Life & Death by James Davies: it really makes a difference for the depth and the width of your analysis tree if you know the status of the L-group, door group, comb group ...

3) About the endgame: like Bill says, it's less about math than it is about technique. Here I recommend Bozulich' Get Strong at the Endgame: the book is very smartly structured so as to make you learn stuff. Apart from acquiring a toolkit of endgame techniques, you will rapidly get a sense of sizes of moves and you won't need to do the actual math in a game.

Last but not least, engaging in discussions like these is a lot of fun, but myself I gradually had to accept I was becoming a very good go talker but not a great go player. We all have our destiny.

Thanks everyone for your helpful comments. I will continue with GGPB 1,2 and 3 and start the Level Up series soon. I will also try to do at least 3 chapters of Davies' Life and Death a week, to know the basic formations.

About reviewing, I think I'll definitely keep reviewing my games, but maybe not all of them in so much detail anymore.

I see the point about the endgame. Helps a lot!

Cheers everyone!

@knotwilg
You have many interesting threads on sensei library, I've already read a few of them. Very helpful!

ez4u wrote: I think that you cannot overestimate the question of having fun. No matter who you are and what kind of talents you possess, you can only get stronger if you continue with the game and your studies. So the primary answer to all your questions is to study in ways that make you happy and energized to continue with our beloved game.

Hrm. Good thought to contemplate...

ez4u wrote: By the way, I disagree with Go Seigen. Go is like hiking up a mountainside. We cannot stand atop a peak without noticing that there is another, higher one waiting just along the next ridge. It is the journey that brings us joy, not the breather that we take at this or that scenic viewpoint along the way. It is nice to see that you enjoy Go so much. Concentrate on preserving and expanding that enjoyment and the improvements are bound to come naturally.

I go back and forth on this kind of idea. Mountains are cool and all, but if I hike a mountain, there is generally some purpose (e.g. getting up the mountain). Maybe it's about the journey, but then why a mountain? A mountain is tough to climb, so I wonder what the point is - the physical act of exercise? I hear the zen-like idea of enjoying the journey and stuff, but I can't say I really understand it - I like to think it's logical to do things for a purpose. What's the purpose of a journey without an objective? I guess the answer is that the objective is the journey, but for that to make any sense, I guess it means the purpose is meaningful if you like taking the journey... But why do you like it if there is no other meaning?

It seems to me that it has to be something about the process of the journey that provides meaning - like the scenery or something - or maybe the exercise. Does it come down to some sort of dopamine going to your brain when you are hiking up a mountain that makes you feel good? Some chemical response? Then what is it about mountain climbing that makes it a good way to get this sort of chemical response? What makes go good in that regard for that matter?

I feel that winning games and/or reaching the peak of the mountain must contribute to this enjoyment in some way, as these are aspects of the experience... But that doesn't seem that zen-like, does it?

Kirby wrote:
I go back and forth on this kind of idea. Mountains are cool and all, but if I hike a mountain, there is generally some purpose (e.g. getting up the mountain).

Meta comment: metaphors are often bollocks.
Tongue in cheek comment: I don't know how Go Seigen phrased it, but the English translation is stated in the present continuous tense.
Genuine comment: I find better comparison in learning a language, or a musical instrument or math. Right now I'm learning Polish. The richness of the Polish culture is still unknown territory. I can have VERY basic conversations and feel like a moron. In Portuguese I can have a decent conversation and read any article. A whole culture has opened up for me. In English I can even be funny - the hardest thing in any language. Understanding Gödel's theorem or Galois theory have been profound epiphanies with an existential flavor.

In go it's definitely more fun being a 2d when it comes to reading pro game commentaries. I can imagine that seeing AlphaGo at work has a more profound impact when you're >5d than on me, to whom it's just another display of infathomable pro play.

Sure, the rank increase makes for a temporary boost of the ego but it's all about the better understanding, a lasting effect (unlike being on top of a mountain, where the view will probably bore you out before the end of the day and it's damn cold up there).

Knotwilg wrote: Meta comment: metaphors are often bollocks.
Tongue in cheek comment: I don't know how Go Seigen phrased it, but the English translation is stated in the present continuous tense.

What's the Go Seigen's quote?

Go Seigen wrote:Go is like falling off a log.

No, really, it is a gap in my go knowledge. I do not know the quote. Or is it like one of those Albert Einstein quotes?

As I recall, Go Seigen did say this:

Go Seigen wrote:Go is harmony.

The quote is in the original post.

"Becoming one stone stronger is the supreme enjoyment."

I like yours better though. "Go is like falling off a log."
Next time I'm in the Go club, I'm quoting you