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Study Techniques
Path: Study   · Prev: StudyingProfessionalGames   · Next: TeachingPaths
   

Tristan Jones Here are some methods that I find effective for studying go. Please feel free to add to them, as I'm sure that I'll want to try them myself :-) Please note, though, that I'm most concerned with means of study per se rather than study paths. That is, a study technique is how you study, while a study path refers to what, specifically, you study (e.g., professional games, life and death problems, tesujis).

1) Flashcards I like making cards showing a particular technique, for instance a joseki or a killing shape. On the back of the card I will make notes on how this technique is best to be used (for instance, it's often good to choose a pincer when there's a hoshi stone in the adjacent corner to support the pincer stone). Not only do flashcards make it easy to learn and revise ideas, but the act of making them helps to get the material into one's head.

2) Computer Libraries I use my Palm Pilot far less for recording my games than for keeping notes on any new ideas or tactics that interest me. It's easy to make notes and to adapt them or add to them. It's also easy to revise them. I use my desktop computer for the same purpose.

3) Interactive Reading Do you regard books as holy relics that must be handled with care and the greatest respect? Then you're probably not getting the most out of them. I scribble notes in mine, highlight important text, fold pages, correct errors and make additions. My books don't look pretty, but I tend to remember what they say because I get very involved with them!

4) Lists Sometimes I get to the point where I think that I need to emphasise certain issues to get my game going in the right direction. To this end I sometimes prepare lists and keep them nearby while I'm playing. For example, at present I'm very keen to get into the habit of making positional judgements, to play more lightly, and to keep a closer eye on aji. So, I have a list saying "1. Light 2. Positional judgement 3. Watch aji" close to hand.

5) Random Testing Do you think you know the Large Avalanche joseki well enough to play it in an important game? Then why not test yourself before it comes to the crunch. My way of making sure things are staying in my head is to see periodically whether I can still remember the critical lines of such and such a joseki or tesuji line, choosing it at random. It can be sobering to get halfway through playing out a sharp variation only to find one is not certain whether the next move is at A, B or where?! If you test yourself regularly, you'll probably identify those ideas and lines that you really have most trouble with, and will be able to put things right quickly.

6) Use a Ready Reckoner to learn the values of common moves and formations.


7) Practise Reading Lines of Play One way to develop reading skills is to set up a situation on a goban or one of the Go Editing Programs such as CGoban2 that supports variations. Work out as many branches as you like. Restore the situation and then read out the variations in your mind. -- Hu of KGS

Tristan: May I add that a good one to start with here is to lay out a ladder and apparent ladder breaker and to see if you can work out whether or not the ladder works? This would be Kageyama-style study!


8) Dieter: A way of playing. Each time there is a new decision to make, evaluate the position, look for exactly 3 moves that serve the objective, read out about 5 moves deep, considering only the most natural sequences that follow it and evaluate each sequence as soon as it dies out locally. Choose the move with the best resulting sequence. This looks like what we all do always. I know it is not.

9) Another way of playing. Repeat the previous and speak out loud your analysis before playing the move. I found out this greatly helped simply doing 8). An opponent with whom I tried this out, continuously forgot to think and just played. Then I would ask him what his analysis was and he'd say "Huh ? What analysis. Oh yeah, I keep forgetting about that."


10) A simple idea which I forgot to mention! Repetition If you want to learn something, go over it over and again. Revise it again and again. Eventually you will reach the point where the very notion of forgetting the material seems absurd. Tristan


11) Write a Book

Not as daft an idea as it may sound: one of the projects I'm doing at the moment is to play through professional games and then to make notes in an MS Word file of various techniques that interest me. Gradually, I'm building up my own small dictionary of suji that won't be found elsewhere in English literature. Another way to use this technique is simply to write about aspects of the game, trying to explain them clearly. You will find that you naturally do research to back up your ideas and that your thoughts acquire greater clarity through being shaped into coherent prose.

12) Teach

When you teach another player, you are not only doing him a favour: you are teaching yourself too. By explaining the basic concepts to your friend you are also revising the foundations of your own understanding. Also, as with writing, having to frame your thoughts as comprehensible sentences for the benefit of your friend helps you to get a better grip on those thoughts.

13) Force Feeding

Basically, choose something to study, such as Life and Death problems, then do a lot of it and repeatedly. (And I mean a lot and repeatedly, like until your brain hurts.) The idea is that the sheer intensity of the learning experience will make the material stick.

    • Force feeding, in the sense of extended repetition, might be useful if there's a particular habit that you need to pick up or change. Apparently it takes repetition over 21 days to change a mental habit (or, I assume, to create a new one). For instance, suppose I want to break the habit of answering my opponent's every move: I could pin a note by my computer saying "look for tenuki opportunities" and make myself look at that while playing on the Internet. If this idea is correct, then after 21 days, my brain should have become programmed to search for chances to tenuki, and my bad old habit of responding all the time should be history.

14) Chewing Gum

I am not kidding. "How on earth?" I hear you asking. Apparently, the act of chewing (it doesn't have to be gum - peanuts will do just as well) causes the body to behave as though one is about to take a meal. The heartbeat increases, and with it the supply of insulin and oxygen to the brain. These effects assist reasoning and memory.

Tristan


15) Change Counting

Here's one I'm experimenting with. If you keep a bucket of pocket change, grab a handful of change, dump it on a table, spread it out so you can see all the coins, then count the total without touching it.


16) Supermarket counting

Go on! Say I'm crazy. But what I do to improve my counting is I keep track of the accurate total cost of what I'm buying at the supermarket. And when I get to the cashier, I can check if my calculations were correct, and if I don't get screwed BTW. In France, we have two advantages for this technique:

  • We suffered from a currency conversion back in 2002 from francs to euros, so the prices have become quite random with regards to the amount of cents (almost no round numbers),
  • The tax is included in the displayed price so there's nothing to add at the end.

More, if you can remember what the price of each product was, you can even check on the cash receipt. Pretty interesting exercise.

MrKoala


Richard: developing the lists (7) idea in the Playing Check List page.

Tristan: I have experimented with checklists, but I think they have their limitations. Go is too big a game to reduce to a handful of maxims. On the other hand, if there are certain bad habits you want to eradicate or indeed good habits you wish to acquire, then check lists can be a useful aid. For example, if you feel that you play the "obvious", "impulsive" move too often, then you might add an item to a list requiring you to find another plausible move once you have identified the one you are likely to play.




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This is a copy of the living page "Study Techniques" at Sensei's Library.
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