Life In 19x19

Question 1:
Have you ever experienced a sudden jump in strength because you learned/understood one particular subject (e.g. efficient positional judgement, understanding when and how to sacrifice stones, how to avoid aji-keshi, when to ignore atari, when to tenuki, etc)?

Question 2:
Is a go player as weak as its weakest part of the game (e.g. L&D, capturing races, endgame, positional judgement, etc) or as strong as its strongest?

1: Sure. The most memorable jump in skill was when I learned about safety extensions like two-space jumps from single stones. All of a sudden I had safe groups, so I started playing (too) aggressively.

2: Somewhere in between, but the weakest part has more weight than the strongest. It's easier to mess up a won game than to win a lost one. So if you're really good at opening, but really bad at midgame, you will lose in midgame more often than you keep your lead.

In response to #1, I usually loses two stones when I learn something new. If I'm lucky, the slow ramp back up doesn't stop at the old plateau.

I had a leap in strength that coincided with making a point to extend from cross-cuts. It may have been coincidental though. Otherwise my jumps in strength have only been attributable to general improvements in reading.

entropi wrote:Question 2:
Is a go player as weak as its weakest part of the game (e.g. L&D, capturing races, endgame, positional judgement, etc) or as strong as its strongest?

IMO, 90% of your go strength is reading power. Many other skills are useful only in that they support your reading

• Feeling for shape helps you discard bad moves earlier, allowing your reading to go deeper
• Standard knowledge allows you to read quicker (e.g. 3 is 3, 4 is 5, 5 is 8, 6 is 12; The monkey jump is worth 8 points)
• Standard L&D knowledge allows you to judge the result of your reading earlier, effectively deepening it (e.g six live, eight die; the L-Group is dead)
• Joseki knowledge allows you to read from resulting positions, trusting the reading of professionals who developed the joseki, thus you read deeper.
• etc, etc, etc...

The remaining 10% is positional judgment, concentration, stamina, etc.

This is why so many teachers stress the importance of doing tsume-go, because it trains your reading. Same thing is true for playing a lot of games.

Answer to Question 1: While I do feel on occasion that my skill has jumped (like right now ... it feels like I've jumped in skill in the last few months, becoming at least two stones stronger very quickly), I find it hard to attribute it to understanding one particular subject. Usually, I only realize it after a few particularly stellar games. When I look back at what changed, it's usually that I'm looking at the game as a whole slightly differently. The catalyst for the jump is lost in a new appreciation for the whole game.

Answer to Question 2: I tend to lean towards a go player being as weak as the weakest part of their game. Usually a player is a little stronger overall than their weakest point, but the biggest influence on their game is that weak point. However, I'm becoming increasingly sure that the understanding of each aspect of the game greatly affects the understanding of most (if not all) other aspects. So, I don't think the weakest point in a go player's game is all that much weaker than the strongest point in that player's game.

1) Not since I was in the mid 20k range. Everything after 15k or so has been a long, slow, steady crawl for me. Your mileage may vary though.

2) I'd say that is on a game by game basis. If you happen to hit all your strong points at the start of the game you can frequently get a resignation, but conversely it only takes getting clobbered through your weak aspects to put you in a spot you can't come back from. So all depends on how an individual game goes. But I would say that by any 'fair' ranking system, you shouldn't be able to get up to the dan levels without 'solid' play in most (if not all) areas. IMO if you blow making trying to make minimal life in the corner even 1/3 of the time (when that is your goal...), you are not dannish enough.

Bruce "Rank(er)" Young

#1 Often when I learn something new, I initially decline in strength, before gaining it back a bit later. The most noticeable jump from learning just one concept for me was an understanding of not leaving weak groups on the board just to try and grab a big point, allowing my opponent to profit all over from attacking. Once I learned that, I became able to punish my opponents who would do that, and I shot from around 5-6k to 3k. I'd also say that when I was around 8k, learning how to invade shot me up a few ranks very quickly.

#2 No, it more depends what that weakness is. A player cannot be much stronger than their reading ability, as reading ability is crucial. However, a weakness in yose (for example) is not nearly as drastic.

Q1: Yes, when I learned as a beginner that getting a stone captured wasn't the end of the world. On a more serious note, appreciating connections helped a lot, though I wouldn't say a "sudden" jump. Simply one of those "Aha!" moments that allowed me to improve gradually as I learned to apply the concept better and better in my games.

Q1) Not really. It was a relatively gradual process for me, but I'm mostly self-taught by playing a lot. Sometimes the learning-curve was steeper than at other times though.

Q2) Reading is very difficult to define.

Some considerer reading to be only when really spending time calculating several variation in a certain position. Does it also include moves you play by instinct or feeling? Or a tesuji you learned? Or moves you remember from other similar positions? And what about deciding on a certain direction of play? Usually I then look at the flow (general area) more than actual moves (specific coordinates)

HermanHiddema wrote:IMO, 90% of your go strength is reading power. Many other skills are useful only in that they support your reading

I disagree . Even though you are stronger and probably read deeper, I still like to respond
I considerer reading to be something like "spending time to calculate the expected result of one or more branches of at least several stones played on specific coordinates"
Examples are solving L&D, and most close combat moves (local fighting). This is of course very important, and it forms a big part of the game.
However, every other move does not really require reading and you will rely more on positional judgement, instincts, knowledge of shapes (empty triangle, bamboo) and paterns (joseki, common openings paterns (chinese, kobayashi), monkeyjump ect.)

I think depending on the style of a person and the like or dislike that person has with respect to reading.
Someone with a peaceful style and dislike of reading might still be strong because of other qualities (including evading complex situations that require reading) and rely for only 30-40% on reading.
Someone with an aggressive style who likes to read could be strong but will also need other general knowledge. he can of course complicate the game and maybe rely for 70% on reading.

I think that around 70% really is the maximum. anything above that will lead to extremely unbalanced games that do not result in good and strong play.

I think That I rely on reading for not more than 40-50% of my moves. the rest is positional judgement, shapes and paterns.

In short:
I think reading is indeed very important. But with only 10% of judgement you can't play a normal game.
you need to know what moves to read in order to get some useful results. For that you need a lot more than 10% of judgement

I think it's more like 50-50. and for a strong reader maybe 75-25

*edit: hmmm that is a lot of "I think", maybe I should do more of that during my games

Q1: yes. even when i was 1Dan level i have learned to defend myself more and avoided confrentation. i felt that i got 1 stone stronger than before.
Q2: if you can kill your opponents in the beginning you dont need endgame skills

HermanHiddema wrote:... 3 is 3, 4 is 5, 5 is 8, 6 is 12...

What is this?

Kirby wrote:

HermanHiddema wrote:... 3 is 3, 4 is 5, 5 is 8, 6 is 12...

What is this?

Liberties for eyes of different sizes.

Redundant wrote:

Kirby wrote:

HermanHiddema wrote:... 3 is 3, 4 is 5, 5 is 8, 6 is 12...

What is this?

Liberties for eyes of different sizes.

Thanks.

freegame wrote:"spending time to calculate the expected result of one or more branches of at least several stones played on specific coordinates"

Freegame, you should consider becoming a patent attorney in your technical field
Joke aside, that's also what I understand from the term "reading".

<EDIT: Sorry the paragraph below is nonsense because it assumes that every move is equally important, which is obviously not the case. I should have thought better before posting it >
Let's say an average game consists of 200 moves. I think it would be reasonable to say that more than 20 moves involve knowledge that cannot be attributed to pure reading. Especially the moves at the beginning, starting an invasion, chosing a direction, etc, there are sooooo many branches that you cannot cope with based on pure reading. </EDIT>

And at the end, what good is reading if your judgement of the result of the sequence is wrong. Many times I deviate from joseki and like the result I achieve during the game. This is pure reading. But when I review the game... the result I liked during the game, pfff mannomannnnn I must have been kidding myself.