Life In 19x19

I picked up Go about a decade ago (in fact my old study journal from 2010 is here (https://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewt ... =48&t=2058). I got very into it, got to about 11 kyu in a few months, then life got in the way and I didn't really play again until the last year or two when I found myself bored at a very undemanding part-time job.

Back in November (after watching The Queen's Gambit) I thought it would be nice to take it a little more seriously and after a few months getting back into it, and last week I managed get that SDK on KGS.

The nominal goal for this journal then is to get to one Dan by the end of 2021, a stone per month, with one to spare. In reality, it will be a set of games played and puzzles solved and reviews reviewed. I'm not letting myself get too hung up on the actual time frame here, any improvement is good by me.

If people have any suggestions as to what’s best to study/read/do to improve at this level I’m 80% ears.

Currently, I’m reading through the first six of the Elementary Go Series (just finished the book on openings and skimming through the one about 38 joseki). I think it’s a little out of the recommended order, but those six books seem to cover all the major points from fuseki to yose, so I’m using that as a refresher before setting myself a more serious tsumego based curriculum.

I'd like to note that rank progress in go typically doesn't go linearly with effort invested. Typically, the relation between effort and progress is an exponentially decaying function.

So (for example) when going from 30k to 10k takes you a unit of effort x, adding that same amount of effort may only bring you to 6k. Adding the next unit of effort may only bring you as far as 4k and the next to 3k. So even when your progress is 1 rank per month initially, chances are that you won't be able to keep that same rate of improvement.

In my opinion, setting goals like this for your progress in go is harmful. Most likely, you're setting yourself up to end up being disappointed with yourself. So I would recommend to just invest the amount of effort that you are willing to sustain and not care too much about your rank improvement.

A few suggestions, based on what I haven't always been doing right:

• Study everything: opening, josekis, life-and-death, tesuji, endgame, reductions, invasions, how to attack, to defend, to make good shape, to play with or against a moyo, to use influence, etc.
• Don't play only on KGS but try Asian servers as well (Fox, Tygem) to get a variety of styles.
• Review your games with AI or with a stronger player and try to extract 1-2 useful ideas from the game review.
• Try to incorporate new ideas or new moves into your games. Trust the advice of stronger players or of books, even if they seem counter-intuitive, you need actual game experience to fully understand why they are correct.
• Watch pro games, or games between high-dan players. You won't understand everything but may pick up good shapes, or techniques you wouldn't have thought of by yourself.
• Most importantly: don't care about rank, but care about learning. Enjoyment comes from understanding, seeing things that you used to be blind to.

I agree with not setting goals for a particular rank and you mentionned that any improvement is fine which is good.

There is one good way to not care about rank but still stay competitive.

Having rank anxiety myself (I think this is what it is called) I've tried many things to overcome the problem.

If you play on OGS, there's an option to hide ranks everywhere. You still play competitively but don't see drops or bumps in ranks.
On KGS I use automatch and I accept 2 ranks difference and allow unranked players and free games + fast and normal, no blitz for studying.

After a few games I got used to playing free games (thus not seeing the rank move) and playing free or rated became the same.
Of course I encounter guests, sandbaggers, trolls, escapers but I gather game experience.

I also used to get emotionally attached to an account and once I reached a certain rank I would just stop playing so that it doesn't not go down.

If you have the same problem, you need to create a random account, call it xy14d7 or whatever, set the automatch as above and just press play without thinking whenever you have the time. Get as much game experience as possible make it a habit to just play and not think that maybe you haven't improved, maybe you should watch another video before playing a ranked game...etc.

I've been playing for quite some time and got stuck at the same rank for the reasons above.

I've just started to recently apply the stuff above. I don't think my rank has increased yet, but my attitude toward the game changed dramatically.
Live game anxiety disappeared, fear of losing disappeared and I can focus on studying, learning, enjoying the game again.

Oh and on asian servers, I like to register as high a rank as I am allowed to. This is the only way I found to play against strong players on a regular basis.
Just never, ever sandbag or set your rank a few stone lower so that you at least get a few wins in the beginning. You're wasting study time. Play strong opponents and lose a lot

Aiming at defusing rank anxiety and paralysis, I'd just point out that 1d or shodan is a moving target and, by itself, is not well defined. For example, an American 3k might well be 1d in Japan; an American 1d might be 4k on OGS or 3k in France; an American 1d might be 4d on Tygem. My point is the rank designation is not the important thing about playing go, enjoying playing is what really counts. I knew a man who loved go, played in tournaments regularly for many years, and never got (American) rank higher than 12k, but he really loved to play.

Thanks for the advice guys. I am on a Mac so hitting up the Asian servers is a little harder. I managed to get Tygem and WBaduk working on my phone though, I've set my ranking a bit high and will airbag for a bit until my rank stabilises.

This week's likely a bit busy to do much Go, I have end-of-month deadlines and I've let them stack up a bit. Though I will try and squeeze in a few games here and there. My goal at the moment is to finish skimming "38 Basic Joseki" and try and hit 50 games for Feb (I'm at 35/50 atm).

I'll have slightly more ambitious goals for March I think, I'll think about what's practical and desirable before the first.

I'll also try and figure out teaching ladders and posting games for review to these forums.

Thanks for the good advice. I've got a crazy number of writing deadlines for the end of the month. So my goals for Feb are just to finish "38 Basic Joseki" and get to 50 games (am at 42 for the month so far) played on a mix of servers.

I'll also put in some thought about what my SMART goals are gonna be for next month and do some refamiliarising myself with some of the tools on the L19 forums.

In the interest of trying a bunch of things out and keeping it varied I’m setting myself a 10 week plan.

Reading a book a week is very possible, but a week isn’t very long if I need to sit with given ideas and things so I’m gonna work through ten books concurrently. The focus is on reading practice but I’ve tried to ensure there’s a little bit of everything in there. The different kinds of books require slightly different goals.

I want a mix of reading text, reading out problems, and spaced repetition of key tesuji and l&d shapes.

GAMES

1. Play min of 10 slow games/week (min 20 min on the main clock). At least one each on KGS, OGS, WBaduk & Tygem.

2. Post at least 2 lost games to L19/week.

3. Comment on at least one DDK game/week

READING

1. 38 Basic Joseki - (38 chapters). 4 Joseki a week, flashcards for the main joseki, just read the variations.

2. Tesuji (Davies) - (63 sections) 7 sections/week. Flashcard the problems.

3. L&D (Davies) (36 chapters) - (63 sections) 4 chapters/week. Flashcard the problems.

4. Attack & Defense (10 chapters) - Read 1 chapter/week

5. Endgame (5 chapters) - Read 0.5 chapter/week

6. Relentless - (8 main games) Play through the 8 main games, reading only the main commentary, dipping into variations as needed. (this feels like a book I’m gonna come back to a bunch of times). I’ll possibly also speed through the other games collected in here as kifu reading practice.

7. Get Strong at Tesuji (534 problems) - 54 problems/week. Mostly treated as reading practice.

8. GGP4B3 (77pp) - 8 pages/week. Mostly treated as reading practice.

9. Shape Up! (20 chapters) - Read 2 chapters a week.

10. Openings (501 problems) - do 50 problems a week. Fairly quick, just trying to cement basis opening stuff.

KGS RANK AT THE START OF WEEK 1 OF 10: mid-9 kyu

This is a very detailed plan, and much more ambitions than I have ever done.
Do not stress if you do less, and watch out for burnout. Learning go is not a sprint.

My suggestion is to add quick games and 9x9 games (x serious games on a kind of serious account, x or more fast games and 2x or more quick 9x9 games on some fun account). And of course, reviewing. In case you can get to play stronger players for some games, that would also help.
You can also tame down reading a bit to incorporate these additions (better to get more reading practice in 9x9 games).

Good luck and have fun

marvin wrote:This is a very detailed plan, and much more ambitions than I have ever done.
Do not stress if you do less, and watch out for burnout. Learning go is not a sprint.

That is my reaction as well. I think that every beginner I have seen write out a plan for progress with that kind of enthusiasm has burnt out. You can find lots of examples on these very forums.

Enthusiasm is great, but it is best manifested in the form of playing lots of games and not in making detailed study plans.

That said, I will be very happy if it turns out to work for you! And you do have the advantage that you've already played for a while so you know what the game is like.

marvin wrote: Do not stress if you do less, and watch out for burnout. Learning go is not a sprint.

I am very game, should I get less stuff done in week one, to switch it to a twenty week or ten month plan as needed.

I find I run in short intense bursts of interest. So I am trying to take advantage of my current burst as much as possible. In ten weeks time I might find myself playing 2-3 games a week and be really obsessed with learning Homeric Greek or macrame

I recommend, if possible, to form a long term habit of doing *some* study rather than gorging heavily for a few weeks and then dropping it again. Purely for retention and the reality that similar to weight training you want to maintain reasonable effort in order to see results rather than a feast or famine approach. You can also make study more interesting this way by changing book/topic/whatever regularly to keep things fresh.

Also, be careful with the "extravert paradox" where publishing your goals already feels like a partial accomplishment.

Knotwilg wrote:Also, be careful with the "extravert paradox" where publishing your goals already feels like a partial accomplishment.

No comprendo, señor. I have never heard of the extravert paradox, and you seem to suggest that there is some problem with with publishing one's goals. What's the problem?

Thanks.

Bill Spight wrote:

Knotwilg wrote:Also, be careful with the "extravert paradox" where publishing your goals already feels like a partial accomplishment.

No comprendo, señor. I have never heard of the extravert paradox, and you seem to suggest that there is some problem with with publishing one's goals. What's the problem?

Thanks.

I've come across this and been told this in the context of psychiatric and psychological treatment I've received over the years. The idea is that publicly announcing goals appears to make it less likely that people achieve them. So the recommendations we get on using goals to aid in recovery and maintenance is to not announce them or talk about about the end goal but to talk about what we have been doing instead.

The original paper that started this is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... Intentions

There's been a lot of work done on this since, I haven't read/seen much of it though.