Life In 19x19

Kinda just wondering whether there is something that goes click.

3k

daal wrote:Kinda just wondering whether there is something that goes click.

If you find something out, let me know!

I currently sit (somewhere) in the 7-9k range, and for me ranking up hasn't had any of the eureka! moments that result in specific stone level increases. I just seem to be stronger over time (mostly).

Have you had them previosly, daal?

daal, it's a continuum:

I noticed that more and more of my opponents moves began to feel like a pass.
Like they just naturally expected me to respond.

IMHO, somewhere in there, the game becomes less about territories and more about strength and weakness.

Seriously, my thinking changed 180 degrees, somewhere in that range.

daal wrote:Kinda just wondering whether there is something that goes click.

Maybe two clicks.

Why not start a new account as a 3 kyu? It may be a challenge at first, but see if you can hold on to that rank.

Oren got that answer in before I did .

It is really different for different people. Until about 6k-ish, I felt as though I was improving. Around 3k-ish, I feel more as though my opponents are slowly getting weaker. Until then, it was also easier to get epiphanies that quickly improved my rank from time to time. Maybe that will happen again, maybe not. But either way, I don't want to paint a bleak picture--I enjoy playing and improving now as much as I always have (although, as with everything, my interest goes up and down over time).

In general it's surprising to me how little goes click as you improve, but...

I specifically remember playing a game with Topazg (where is topazg?) when I was 5k. He told me that the low approach to the 3-4 didn't seem good and I should try the high approach. I replied - I kid you not - that I couldn't play the high approach because I didn't know any joseki for it. It's difficult for me to believe now that I would ever say or think something so obstinately silly. I'm pretty sure that attitude was long gone by the time I was 2k (about a year later). It speaks to a DDK attitude towards strategy - there are right moves and wrong moves, which some people know and other people don't. Now I improvise.

Up to 5k improvement was fairly quick and I figured out that if I, oh I don't know, played game after game into the middle of the night after going out drinking I could seriously delay my "improvement" (i.e., the rate at which my rank caught up to my win-rate). Seriously, in this case, meant "by one or two weeks". Past 5k improvement was much more of a slog, but I never really got rid of the prejudice that I had to be "at my best" when I played, even though it didn't matter at all any more. (That is to say, if I lost a bunch of games at 4k and dropped back to 5k, well, it wouldn't have mattered much, because I wasn't going to be 3k that month in any event.)

Looking at the handicap games I play with people around 5k/4k, the two things that make it hardest to believe I played that way once are (i) how uncompromising they are when they're ahead by 50ish points, and (ii) how they tend to worry much more about random misreads than bad style. I'm not sure if that means anything, though.

Unusedname wrote:I noticed that more and more of my opponents moves began to feel like a pass.
Like they just naturally expected me to respond.

In all my time playing go this is the most obvious way that I've noticed a change in my playing strength. When I was just starting I would almost never tenuki and every move my opponent played was one I had to answer. The same was true to my opponents, so we basically just traded sente when a part of the board had finished yose. Now I start to read each move more deeply and evaluate if I can tenuki safely because I value sente more.

I still need to value sente more.

As for the specific ranks, I haven't reached either. My current goal is 5 kyu so I can let you know if I feel different when I go from 8k to 5k. Maybe there's a difference in those ranks.

Hi Daal,

I am 4kyu, edging slowly towards 3kyu, so I guess I am near the middle of the 2k-5k range you asked
about, and also personally interested in the question. Always assuming one can ignore differences in grade strengths
between our two countries.

It seems to me that at the 5-kyu level, there is room for many different weaknesses in one's play. And each of us will
have his idiosyncratic collection of them. The important thing is to find out what the worst of your weaknesses are, and
then work on fixing them. That's why I post my tournament games in these forums for review, and indeed I am often
chided for different faults each time.

More positively, I have also noticed the same thing as others in this thread. When playing a particular opponent for
a second time in six months, during which time he or she has not kept pace with my (glacial) rate of improvement,
I do tend to see more mistakes in his or her moves. But that's non-specific, and probably doesn't help you.

In short: find, bribe or adopt a good teacher if you want to break out of your current level.

A 5k has heard about strategic concepts, fighting aspects, counting territories and blunder rate, but does not understand them. A 2k starts understanding them.

Different people at the same rank may have different weaknesses. Nevertheless, I can share what shot me quickly through the 5-2k range. I started watching a bunch of shygost's lectures on YouTube. While I find him too dogmatic about some things, he really emphasized to me the importance of taking care of your weak groups and targeting your opponent's weak groups. Suddenly all through that level I started seeing people leave weak groups everywhere and for a time it seemed every game I played ended with me killing something.

Unusedname wrote:I noticed that more and more of my opponents moves began to feel like a pass.
Like they just naturally expected me to respond.

Completely agree:)

For me the only "click" between 10k~4k has been that I see where eyes will be possible, or not, much sooner.

I'm also much more afraid when loosely surrounded and much more confident when loosely surrounding.