Life In 19x19

I here from a lot of players at club that you usually hit a wall around 5k. How do you get over said wall, and have you guys experienced this?

To get over the wall use a ladder.

Hades12 wrote:I here from a lot of players at club that you usually hit a wall around 5k. How do you get over said wall, and have you guys experienced this?

The only wall is in your mind.

I've experienced it several times. 14k, 10k, and now 6k. I get to 5k and then lose it. Get back to it, almost reach 4k, then somehow end up back at 6k. <<

Often, the wall phenomenon is a time when you cannot develop your current go knowledge quickly, because some of it is wrong. Then you have to unlearn it. To do so, it helps to get a teacher, guide, or coach who can spot your incorrect ways of thinking.

As for a wall at this or that kyu or dan, there is no such thing. A wall, if you run into one, is all your own, at whatever strength you experience it. But you do not have to have a wall, until your final one.

Hades12, what Bill said.

Don't play for a couple months on KGS and yr rank will drift up past the wall. lol

At some point we should pool our estimates of how many games each of us played to get to a certain rank (15k, 14k, 13k, 12k). I suspect that the phenomenon of a "wall" or a "plateau" has something to do with passing from a rank where each game marks perceptible improvement, to a rank where per-game improvement is imperceptible, and at any rate swamped by day-to-day or month-to-month fluctuations in mood and mental agility.

tchan001 wrote:Don't play for a couple months on KGS and yr rank will drift up past the wall. lol

I was wondering how you got to 3k

Yup, I'm at that plateau right now. (http://senseis.xmp.net/?BottleneckTheories discusses whether there are preordained ranks that hold everybody up.)

Play lots of games. Do Tsumego. Review your games to see what went wrong. That seems to be the basic script for improving.

Experiment: you won't find better moves if you always play the same ones. If you're constantly playing thickly, try to play games lightly until you're comfortable with that. You want to master all the tools of Go, so you can invade or reduce, kill or chase, depending on the situation.

My favorite trick to improving is to constantly ask yourself what a stronger player would do. I found that's helping me cut some slow moves out of my play. What moves would a stronger player look at (oh, right, I didn't consider a sacrifice...), would a stronger player leave this group without reading out its path to life (I guess not...alright, I'll take another look at that...)

daal wrote:

tchan001 wrote:Don't play for a couple months on KGS and yr rank will drift up past the wall. lol

I was wondering how you got to 3k

Well daal, I've been playing and staying at 3k for some reason. It's not like it's dropped back to 5k rapidly.

tchan001 wrote:

daal wrote:

tchan001 wrote:Don't play for a couple months on KGS and yr rank will drift up past the wall. lol

I was wondering how you got to 3k

Well daal, I've been playing and staying at 3k for some reason. It's not like it's dropped back to 5k rapidly.

I was joking. Tell us how you got past the 5k "wall."

What wall?
A skill wall seems like it is a mental block to me. If you don't improve for a while you start to think that you won't ever improve. And while I've had a few periods where my rank didn't go up very much since I started playing it never felt like I was stuck. I'd say do a lot of tsumego, if you hit the wall hard enough you should break through like the kool-aid man. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

Steps that have worked for me:

1) Keep doing trumego, reviewing games, etc.
1a) I also randomly look up stuff I have questions about on senseis. I tend to think about Go quite a bit...

2) Read a Go book, then actually apply what you've learned, and only focus on that one aspect, in a few games (yes, you will lose)

Still in the spirit of limited information:

3) Play a few games while ignoring a part of your Go knowledge.

This is counter-intuitive. I don't suggest applying these steps on your main account (if you play online) if you're worried about your rank. The idea here is simple: try new things. But you can't really play differently if you keep following the same old map. If you simply erase an area, you get excited about exploring, and you have the space necessary to do so.

As an example, I was stuck around 7k-8k for a while, until I read that the understanding of thickness is vital to Go progress. So I thought 'okay', and played my next games while completely ignoring the need for territory. I took the influence result of played joseki, played slow, thick moves to build up power, etc. Jumped to 4k practically overnight.

This example is a bit extreme, and as I again integrate "territory" into my game I thought to balance things out and next obsess over precision in counting and factoring this into my decisions, I carry over my experience and newfound understanding of thickness.

As a result of all this, while I experience setbacks like everyone else, I'm also consistently moving forward.

P.S.: We always ignore a portion of our Go repertoire during games, and sometimes picking one to 'sit out' makes us realize how much we've been neglecting it, and revising these oversights helps keep our Go strength stable as well.

Just some ideas.

Phoenix wrote:Steps that have worked for me:

{snip}

3) Play a few games while ignoring a part of your Go knowledge.

This is counter-intuitive. I don't suggest applying these steps on your main account (if you play online) if you're worried about your rank. The idea here is simple: try new things. But you can't really play differently if you keep following the same old map. If you simply erase an area, you get excited about exploring, and you have the space necessary to do so.

As an example, I was stuck around 7k-8k for a while, until I read that the understanding of thickness is vital to Go progress. So I thought 'okay', and played my next games while completely ignoring the need for territory. I took the influence result of played joseki, played slow, thick moves to build up power, etc. Jumped to 4k practically overnight.

Excellent!

I once advised a 1 kyu who had been stuck there for some time, and who always invaded, never reduced, to take a month and only play reductions, never invasions. (I don't think he took my advice, though.)