Life In 19x19

There are not many Western players who, from picking up the game like we do, curiously diving into it as a teenager or twenty-something, achieve pro level strength. There are even less who document their story. Since Nate Morse, who youtubes as TelegraphGo, has just done that, I thought it be interesting to reflect on it. Such a testemony doesn't provide any kind of proof but it does give a few hints of what might work and not work when trying to become (very) good at Go.

See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74i34axRy2E

First, I should give some body to the claim that Nate has actually achieved near-professional strength: he now holds a rare 9d rank at Fox, regularly holds his own against professionals online, has already participated in the North America pro contest and will again. If not pro strength, we can definitely attribute him very high amateur strength. He did that in 7 years, without any formal tutoring it seems, which is quite a feat I'd say. The following is my written rendition of his spoken story, so I'm not going to repeat "Nate says" or "he thinks" all the time.

Nate started playing weak bots online until he plateau'd at 17k. He found there is no material aimed at that just-passed-beginner-strength. He started watching youtubers like Nick Sibicky and Batt's Go, whom he praises for his content. Despite their efforts, it's hard for mid dan tubers to emulate beginner play. What he did pick up, is that his moves should always "do something" and "not pass". This insight alone boosted him to 11k, where he got stuck again. He quit OGS, signed up on KGS, and through a perhaps lucky win got a 4k? rank which he then desperately wanted to maintain. This rank driven motivation seemed good enough to fulfill itself. Under that self pressure he vowed to "not blunder" and be very careful towards liberty weaknesses. So "no pass" and "no blunder" without any strategy was good enough for KGS 4k.

At 4k he found he would be "tricked" by his opponents all the time. He was so annoyed at his lack of reading skill that he worked hard to improve it, doing tsumego on first goproblems.com then 101weiqi.com. Again the ranking system at goproblems motivated him to be stronger, becoming 1d there. Now, "no pass", "no blunder" and "find the tricks" brought him to 1d, at which rank he signed up on tygem, reaching 3d fast.

That's when he started playing IRL and participated in tournaments, which had much slower time settings than online play. And since he had become a "reading monster", he was able to perform at the AGA 3-4d level by simply reading stuff out, without necessarily understanding "what was going on". At the US Go congress he had lots of fun being part of the community and finally decided that Go would become an essential goal in his life. He created the online identity TelegraphGo to stream on twitch and then share his experiences on Youtube. One of the things he streamed was an attempt to become a 9d on goproblems.com so he was still very much into reading. Gradually he understood a major leap would no longer come from reading but from understanding. Progressing more slowly, he reached fox 8d in 2020, 3 years after he started playing, which is pretty remarkable indeed.

One thing that he considers his "superpower" is that he self reviews really well. Every game he played he reviewed to come out of that with one or a couple of things to do better next time. He also thinks this is a discipline everyone can develop while reading might be more innate (this last part is me stretching what he actually said).

Going from 8d to 9d would take another 4 years. At the 8d rank he had the opportunity to play very strong players, including pros. Playing such strength (and AI) exclusively forced him to play only good moves, no longer moves that might work at the mid dan or high ama dan level.

His advice: "Think about what the biggest difference is between your own game and the level you are aiming at". In his case, this was the 9d ability to play very well in high speed games. For this you need a high consistency of speedy positional judgment. This means understanding very fast which kind of position you are playing and being an expert at any such position. That's a big step forward from mid dan where you are comfortable in certain types of games.

At the end he comes back to reading. "If you can read very well, it's hard not to become 9 dan". A strong statement but what he means - I think - is more like that you can take that ability into the skillset you really need. Myself I would make the opposite statement: strong reading is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one of course.

The closing lines have him coming back to the self review, emphasizing "honesty with yourself. It's much easier said than done to honestly assess your weaknesses. It also requires courage to go after that difference between yourself and superior strength. It might look impossible and you have to convince yourself it is doable. That fine balance between the humility to accept where you are now and the confidence to believe you can go elsewhere, is the holy grail of improvement - these final words are mine.

Much food for thought there. I'm interested in the two things he *didn't* say. No mention of studying pro games, and no books.

Yeah, no books is amazing! He had a video recently where he was gushing over a book (The Thirty-six Stratagems Applied to Go), and I think part of the excitement was due to the fact that it was like the second Go book he's ever read.

I don't know about earlier in his journey, but during the last year he's made many videos analyzing pro games, and I think that's been an important component in his progression from Fox 8d to 9d. Sometimes on his Twitch stream between activities he'll check out live online pro games as well.

The single thing I've seen in common between everyone who has gotten really good (this applies to chess as well) as that they just love actually playing and can't get enough of it. A lot of kyu players like me spend far too large a fraction of our Go time studying rather than playing. (Of course there are also the people who have played 10,000 blitz games and haven't gotten any better...)

Thanks for the reactions.

Of course we have to remove any bias from our inferences, if we can make any at all. In abstract

Player X: (became high ama/pro strength in y years) AND (did a, b, c) AND (did not do d, e , f)
doesn't mean
For every player: (doing a, b, c will make you pro strength) AND (d, e, f are irrelevant)

Indeed, Nate has made pro game analysis videos while progressing from 8d to 9d and also hasn't read more than one book leading up to that.

We can make the following inferences:

- is playing games necessary? YES - goes without saying. Perhaps the better question:
- is playing a lot necessary? still YES I'd say
- is reviewing necessary? I would say YES
- is tsumego necessary? maybe not but this piece of evidence suggests it is, if not necessary, then almost sufficient to become very strong, in combination with playing. It is also instructive that tsumego serves as a reading practice and not only to become stronger at recognizing shapes.
- is reading books necessary? probably not
- is replaying pro games necessary? not to become very strong but probably to acquire pro strength. Since Nate says you need to understand what separates your current level from the one you aspire, he most likely needed to review pro games once being close enough to that level to aspire it

Apart from all the HOW stuff, the WHY stands out. He apparently loves Go more than anything else. For me there are quite a few things I love more than Go.

I'm pretty sure this part

Knotwilg wrote:"no pass" and "no blunder" without any strategy was good enough for KGS 4k.

is of primary importance, not just to get to 4k but also to continue improving, in the sense that he probably strives not to overlook variations at each move, or in each tsumego problem. My own attitude is much more sloppy, that's what prevents me from becoming strong, and this is probably the case for many players of similar level.

At the end he comes back to reading. "If you can read very well, it's hard not to become 9 dan"

On the central importance of reading, I'm reminded of Paul Krugman's aphorism on productivity: “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything.”

Books: There are players having become strong with and others without books. It depends on preferred learning styles / media.

Pro games: I think the days of them being essential / important for most players are over. Nowadays, AI study is an alternative or additional source.

Knowledge / skills: Reading is necessary, but is not the only necessary of various fields of knowledge or skills. One can be weaker than competitors in some aspects but compensate that by being stronger in other aspects. However, one must not be so weak in any aspect (such as the opening, judgement, ko fighting or psychology) that one blunders or accumulates large amounts of small losses (such as not knowing any endgame).

Not to be off topic here, and I mentioned this on some other post a ways back.

However he was trained, however many books he read or didn't read. Nate adds something extremely vital to the go community.

In his game review videos, Nate communicates about the game so well, and in such an entertaining and brisk-paced fashion that you cannot help but learn something even with casual listening. I hope he sticks with it and produces a ton of them.

To slightly misquote Go Seigen: He's very weak; he's only a Fox 9-dan

Seriously, though, this has been a good thread and Nate's great achievement intrigued me enough to break my normal rule and watch his YouTube video. With the caveat that I couldn't watch all of it (I have to listen with earphones at maximum volume and, if I do that, I risk losing more of what little hearing I have left), I was both pleased and surprised at how LITTLE I learned. In fact, I learned absolutely nothing about go itself, and I expect people like Robert here would say the same sort of thing.

I didn't really learn anything about off-the-board aspects, except as confirmation of what I already know.

The main thing I know about that, and what Nate seemed to confirm, is that you need two things above all: one is the willingness to spend LOTS of time, and the other is to be able to have a highly focused mindset. I know about these things not from my own experience but from what I have observed in or heard about others. I spend lots of time on go, of course, but not as go student. I mostly write books for go FANS. And I switch focus as takes my fancy.

Nate's comment on reading instantly brought to mind something that Michael Redmond said: "Go is easy." Obviously, he was being slightly tongue in cheek, but he was basically making the same comment about getting fast and good results if you just put in the hours and focus on the right things.

I also remember being struck many, many years ago, when reading about Japanese go players, by how many players reached pro level just because it was part of the family business. For example, father ran a go school, so his children had to learn to play go to a very high standard in order to take over the school one day. Or, in the days when females didn't get the opportunity to have a higher education, daughters would be sent to live with another family where they could learn a socially acceptable trade - singing, dancing, acting, flower arrangement - or go (even if the had no interest in go). Obviously, we never hear about the ones who failed, but many did go on to become pro level in the "social" sense. There were no opportunities to play in tournaments, of course.

The point about this kind of go upbringing is that it involved very many hours and intent focus, brought to bear by the strict discipline of the teacher. I drew then the conclusion that go was "easy" in the sense that, if you followed this sort of straightforward path (as Nate has done) you do reach your destination - or at least the suburbs of it. I also drew the conclusion that this was not the life for me!

I have had my observations confirmed many times since, and I have also come to the conclusion that my lack of appetite for the hard work involved is shared by most people. A large chunk of people like us do dream, and we even pretend to aspire. But we never actually do the work.

When I talk about work, I want to stress that I am not just talking about putting in many hours of training. I am also talking about the work you need to do to stay at a high level, and also the work you need to do during a single game. The sort of intense reading that Nate says he does during a game is alien to my nature. That is why I can say that I learned nothing from his lecture. He was talking mostly about strategy or go concepts. I know about those already. I expect most readers here do, too. But what is not apparent from his lecture is how much and deep he reads. I expect he and I are in different universes on that. I also expect that he knows things, especially the psychological aspects of go, that he didn't mention and that I would be stumbling over.

All that said, there are some questions that still intrigue me. One big one is what Nate feels about the effect of the speed of play. I have come across amateurs in Japanese clubs who bear a strong resemblance to Nate's type. These clubs usually have a ladder tournament running and at the top there is always a 9-dan. I remembered the first time I encountered one of these. I went into the game thinking he was like the Hicksville Honinbo and came out feeling as if I'd been swept up by a tornado. This was mainly because of the blitz style of play. I blundered a lot. The 9-dans almost never blundered. On the rare occasions they did, this was cause for a confab of the whole club to gather round the board to study this rare position that had gulled their 9-dan.

Later on, I read about these people in go autobiographies. Real pros would warn each other: "If you go to Hiroshima or Shizuoka or wherever, avoid giving small handicaps to so-and-so" or even "Don't play him at all." Or, a pro (who would typically take a pupil on these club visits) would not play the local 9-dan himself but would tell the pupil to play (and reduce the handicap!).

Nearly all these games were played fast, even if without clocks. It was really just a meat-space version of Fox, KGS, OGS etc. But on the few occasions when a slower game was played, either a smaller handicap would be used or the pro would feel he had to resort to rip-off tricks. Incidentally, lots of times these games were recorded for posterity and would end up in book form, normally as a way of paying homage to the local "9-dan". I have several such books in my collection, mainly because the visiting pros would be top players like Go Seigen.

I'd suspect, therefore, that Nate might play even better if he played more slower games. Or, is he already confident that he is avoiding the blunders fast players make? And that question can also be applied to other habitually fast players here. T Mark Hall was renowned as a fast player but I happen to know that he sometimes worked like a conjurer who relies on speed of hand in the hope that the viewer is distracted. And Mark himself liked to tell the story of playing Iwamoto at high speed and disconcerting him by his apparent success. So Iwamoto had to switch to rip-off mode. After which he decimated Mark. Does Nate have a rip-off mode? Or is that the next stage up?

Going off at a bit of tangent but also back the stories above, I have long felt - with no real evidence - that it is much easier for someone basically uninterested in go to learn to play go to a high standard as a trade (much as people with no interest in balance sheets go to university and learn accountancy because that's what their parents demanded of them) than it is for chess. There seems to me to be something in go that renders it "easier" in that sense. Any views?

John Fairbairn wrote:To slightly misquote Go Seigen: He's very weak; he's only a Fox 9-dan

Seriously, though, this has been a good thread and Nate's great achievement intrigued me enough to break my normal rule and watch his YouTube video. With the caveat that I couldn't watch all of it (I have to listen with earphones at maximum volume and, if I do that, I risk losing more of what little hearing I have left), I was both pleased and surprised at how LITTLE I learned. In fact, I learned absolutely nothing about go itself, and I expect people like Robert here would say the same sort of thing.

I didn't really learn anything about off-the-board aspects, except as confirmation of what I already know.

The main thing I know about that, and what Nate seemed to confirm, is that you need two things above all: one is the willingness to spend LOTS of time, and the other is to be able to have a highly focused mindset. I know about these things not from my own experience but from what I have observed in or heard about others. I spend lots of time on go, of course, but not as go student. I mostly write books for go FANS. And I switch focus as takes my fancy.

Nate's comment on reading instantly brought to mind something that Michael Redmond said: "Go is easy." Obviously, he was being slightly tongue in cheek, but he was basically making the same comment about getting fast and good results if you just put in the hours and focus on the right things.

I also remember being struck many, many years ago, when reading about Japanese go players, by how many players reached pro level just because it was part of the family business. For example, father ran a go school, so his children had to learn to play go to a very high standard in order to take over the school one day. Or, in the days when females didn't get the opportunity to have a higher education, daughters would be sent to live with another family where they could learn a socially acceptable trade - singing, dancing, acting, flower arrangement - or go (even if the had no interest in go). Obviously, we never hear about the ones who failed, but many did go on to become pro level in the "social" sense. There were no opportunities to play in tournaments, of course.

The point about this kind of go upbringing is that it involved very many hours and intent focus, brought to bear by the strict discipline of the teacher. I drew then the conclusion that go was "easy" in the sense that, if you followed this sort of straightforward path (as Nate has done) you do reach your destination - or at least the suburbs of it. I also drew the conclusion that this was not the life for me!

I have had my observations confirmed many times since, and I have also come to the conclusion that my lack of appetite for the hard work involved is shared by most people. A large chunk of people like us do dream, and we even pretend to aspire. But we never actually do the work.

When I talk about work, I want to stress that I am not just talking about putting in many hours of training. I am also talking about the work you need to do to stay at a high level, and also the work you need to do during a single game. The sort of intense reading that Nate says he does during a game is alien to my nature. That is why I can say that I learned nothing from his lecture. He was talking mostly about strategy or go concepts. I know about those already. I expect most readers here do, too. But what is not apparent from his lecture is how much and deep he reads. I expect he and I are in different universes on that. I also expect that he knows things, especially the psychological aspects of go, that he didn't mention and that I would be stumbling over.

All that said, there are some questions that still intrigue me. One big one is what Nate feels about the effect of the speed of play. I have come across amateurs in Japanese clubs who bear a strong resemblance to Nate's type. These clubs usually have a ladder tournament running and at the top there is always a 9-dan. I remembered the first time I encountered one of these. I went into the game thinking he was like the Hicksville Honinbo and came out feeling as if I'd been swept up by a tornado. This was mainly because of the blitz style of play. I blundered a lot. The 9-dans almost never blundered. On the rare occasions they did, this was cause for a confab of the whole club to gather round the board to study this rare position that had gulled their 9-dan.

Later on, I read about these people in go autobiographies. Real pros would warn each other: "If you go to Hiroshima or Shizuoka or wherever, avoid giving small handicaps to so-and-so" or even "Don't play him at all." Or, a pro (who would typically take a pupil on these club visits) would not play the local 9-dan himself but would tell the pupil to play (and reduce the handicap!).

Nearly all these games were played fast, even if without clocks. It was really just a meat-space version of Fox, KGS, OGS etc. But on the few occasions when a slower game was played, either a smaller handicap would be used or the pro would feel he had to resort to rip-off tricks. Incidentally, lots of times these games were recorded for posterity and would end up in book form, normally as a way of paying homage to the local "9-dan". I have several such books in my collection, mainly because the visiting pros would be top players like Go Seigen.

I'd suspect, therefore, that Nate might play even better if he played more slower games. Or, is he already confident that he is avoiding the blunders fast players make? And that question can also be applied to other habitually fast players here. T Mark Hall was renowned as a fast player but I happen to know that he sometimes worked like a conjurer who relies on speed of hand in the hope that the viewer is distracted. And Mark himself liked to tell the story of playing Iwamoto at high speed and disconcerting him by his apparent success. So Iwamoto had to switch to rip-off mode. After which he decimated Mark. Does Nate have a rip-off mode? Or is that the next stage up?

Going off at a bit of tangent but also back the stories above, I have long felt - with no real evidence - that it is much easier for someone basically uninterested in go to learn to play go to a high standard as a trade (much as people with no interest in balance sheets go to university and learn accountancy because that's what their parents demanded of them) than it is for chess. There seems to me to be something in go that renders it "easier" in that sense. Any views?

There's lot packed into this post, but I think I have the same questions and areas of interest:

- How 'translatable' is being a Fox 9D? Does it mean professional level play in face to face slower tournaments, or is it an impressive but niche skill related to the specific conditions of the Fox server (fast play)?

- Is it sustainable to have an intense focus of trying to read everything? I have a particular interest in this question, as I often feel somewhat exhausted after just one game - and often wonder if I have the right level of focus. Bill had some advice from playing hours of back to back Bridge matches about the need to keep a 'relaxed alertness' that I aspire to.

- Is Go more a craft that can be taught to ordinary mortals rather than something requiring innate superhuman abilities ? With its history of apprentices, and children following their parents into the Go family business, it does seem so to me. The historical system does seem somewhat reminiscent of the old English tradition of "first son into the law, second into the military and third into the church" - irrespective of their particular inclinations or abilities. One thing I am certain of though is that Go isn't easy: I recall seeing a comment to the effect that being an insei is a hard path - both for the inset and the teacher.

John Fairbairn wrote:To slightly misquote Go Seigen: He's very weak; he's only a Fox 9-dan

Quite . Not Ke Jie strength but I reckon there are established pros who'd get a run for their money.

John Fairbairn wrote: Seriously, though, this has been a good thread and Nate's great achievement intrigued me enough to break my normal rule and watch his YouTube video.

Thanks. It's good to see this kind of positively minded but still critical attitude.

The main thing I know about that, and what Nate seemed to confirm, is that you need two things above all: one is the willingness to spend LOTS of time, and the other is to be able to have a highly focused mindset.

Yes, this is probably even more relevant than what exactly you do on your study path.

I have also come to the conclusion that my lack of appetite for the hard work involved is shared by most people. A large chunk of people like us do dream, and we even pretend to aspire. But we never actually do the work.

The story of my Go life ...

But what is not apparent from his lecture is how much and deep he reads. I expect he and I are in different universes on that. I also expect that he knows things, especially the psychological aspects of go, that he didn't mention and that I would be stumbling over.

Indeed. These are interesting questions.

All that said, there are some questions that still intrigue me. One big one is what Nate feels about the effect of the speed of play. I have come across amateurs in Japanese clubs who bear a strong resemblance to Nate's type. These clubs usually have a ladder tournament running and at the top there is always a 9-dan. I remembered the first time I encountered one of these. I went into the game thinking he was like the Hicksville Honinbo and came out feeling as if I'd been swept up by a tornado. This was mainly because of the blitz style of play. I blundered a lot. The 9-dans almost never blundered. On the rare occasions they did, this was cause for a confab of the whole club to gather round the board to study this rare position that had gulled their 9-dan.

Later on, I read about these people in go autobiographies. Real pros would warn each other: "If you go to Hiroshima or Shizuoka or wherever, avoid giving small handicaps to so-and-so" or even "Don't play him at all." Or, a pro (who would typically take a pupil on these club visits) would not play the local 9-dan himself but would tell the pupil to play (and reduce the handicap!).

Nearly all these games were played fast, even if without clocks. It was really just a meat-space version of Fox, KGS, OGS etc. But on the few occasions when a slower game was played, either a smaller handicap would be used or the pro would feel he had to resort to rip-off tricks. Incidentally, lots of times these games were recorded for posterity and would end up in book form, normally as a way of paying homage to the local "9-dan". I have several such books in my collection, mainly because the visiting pros would be top players like Go Seigen.

I'd suspect, therefore, that Nate might play even better if he played more slower games. Or, is he already confident that he is avoiding the blunders fast players make? And that question can also be applied to other habitually fast players here.

What I understood from his video was that he's relatively stronger in slow games because he has the habit and ability to read things out. But he couldn't fathom how the really good players (the 9dans) could do this so fast.

Going off at a bit of tangent but also back the stories above, I have long felt - with no real evidence - that it is much easier for someone basically uninterested in go to learn to play go to a high standard as a trade (much as people with no interest in balance sheets go to university and learn accountancy because that's what their parents demanded of them) than it is for chess. There seems to me to be something in go that renders it "easier" in that sense. Any views?

I think Go is more forgiving than Chess. You make a mistake, there's still plenty of opportunity to catch up. Likewise, you get an advantage, then by no means the game is over. Chess has a much narrower path to victory and a tense build-up where you have to find an opening without crumbling yourself. I think that aspires - worldwide - to a narrower spectrum of people. In the Western world this is trumped by the cultural bias towards Chess but in order to get a decent level, you need to read moves ahead. Go can be played at a more physical/emotional/visual level.

I haven't articulated this well but will leave it here. Thanks John!

John Fairbairn wrote:Seriously, though, this has been a good thread and Nate's great achievement intrigued me enough to break my normal rule and watch his YouTube video. With the caveat that I couldn't watch all of it (I have to listen with earphones at maximum volume and, if I do that, I risk losing more of what little hearing I have left)

The captions are quite manageable with a few obvious errors you can probably mentally correct. So no real need for volume.

The captions are quite manageable with a few obvious errors you can probably mentally correct. So no real need for volume.

Thanks, but I only watch YouTube on my tv, where YouTube captions (like Like and Subscribe) are not available - unless you know a trick I don't. I do use subtitles for everything else.

I wonder whether it is relevant to consider whether online ratings are inherently different from in-real-life ratings? There seem to be cases of people with in-person, tournament determined ratings that are several steps lower than online ratings. Without any systematic study, I've noticed in-person tournament ratings 5 levels weaker than Fox ratings, for example, and OGS ratings three or four ranks higher than in-person tournament ratings.

gowan wrote:I wonder whether it is relevant to consider whether online ratings are inherently different from in-real-life ratings? There seem to be cases of people with in-person, tournament determined ratings that are several steps lower than online ratings. Without any systematic study, I've noticed in-person tournament ratings 5 levels weaker than Fox ratings, for example, and OGS ratings three or four ranks higher than in-person tournament ratings.

Such surveys and tables exist: https://senseis.xmp.net/?RankWorldwideComparison