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Referenced by MaedaNobuaki108Di... DnerrasIdeasOnImp... Improvement
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Dieter's ideas on improvement
Introduction
When it comes to improvement, there are four categories of players:[1]
- Those who are satisfied with their level [2], are not prepared to do what's necessary to improve and play for fun.
- Those who are not satisfied with their level, but are not prepared either to do what's necessary to improve.
- Those who are not satisfied with their level, who ARE prepared to do what's necessary to improve but do not know what that is.
- Those who improve because they both know what should be done and do it.
Most players are in the second category, whether they know what it takes to improve or not. They just don't want to do that and by that very token should be satisfied with their current level.
The second largest category is number three. I am writing this article so that people of category 2 and 3 should know what it takes to improve and then can decide whether they want to become happy players of their current level (cat 1), or people who improve (cat 4).
I am not a great Go player so what I write is aimed at lower kyu players. It is quite probable that to become a higher dan, something else is needed than what's below. What I do know, is that I would have become 2d much faster if I had applied it.
The five aspects of improvement
When you want to improve in the game of Go, and this I have distilled out of many other teachers' pages, there are five things you have to do. I'll list them, then elaborate more on them, because I feel there are quite a few misconceptions about those very items.
- Do tsumego.
- Replay professional games?.
- Get a source of new ideas (books, Sensei's Library, a teacher)
- Play games, fast and slow.
- Review your games.
Now there are many people who do at least part of this list and still not improve. That is, because they do it the wrong way. Here's more on each item.
- There are two reasons to exercise tsumego. Firstly, they will enhance your intuition for vital points of groups, for possible actions against groups, for status of groups. This kind of intuition is developed by doing many easy tsumego. Secondly and equally (or even more) important, they will develop reading skills. Tsumego go one step further than ladders. In ladders, you read very deeply (say 30 moves) but do not branch at all. In tsumego, depending on the level, you read 3/5/10/20 moves deep and you branch into a few variations at each move. In whole board fighting, the branching is much broader and there is usually not one single solution. So, when tsumego exercises are done, one has to apply the acquired skill to the game. This is where many people Go wrong: they become excellent problem solvers, but fail to extend their ability to the game. This is a matter of discipline. "I'm going to read this like I would read a tsumego".
- Replaying professional games enhances your intuition. Locally good shape, the strength of groups, the direction of play. So one should replay the pro game at a relatively fast pace, not trying to understand too much what is going on. The mistake: spend hours trying to understand the pro game, which is well beyond reach for players below 5d. It doesn't harm your game, but it is time consuming and little efficient.
- Of course, if you want to improve, you need to acquire knowledge. The best thing I think is a teacher?, because he or she will know best what your game is lacking and how much new stuff you can handle. The teacher should give you a few new ideas and insist that you exercise them in your game; Two mistakes here: people without a teacher usually read too many books. Secondly, and consequently, they fail to consciously aplly the new ideas in their games.
- Even more obvious is the fact that you should play to improve. I know many players who just played an enormous amount of games and improved very fast. But this is also time consuming and out of reach for many people, particularly those with a working schedule. In order to make effective use of the time invested in playing, one should do two things: play fast games to test your intuition and play some slow games to test your reading ability and comprehension of the game. The mistake: many people play games, applying the same attitude?, the same old ideas, without any intention to correct their mistakes. Which takes me to:
- Review?s. In my opinion, this is the activity with the heaviest impact on one's improvement. With your teacher or someone else or alone, review the fast games and try to find which of your intuitively played moves gave a disadvantage. You can do some tactical analysis, even if you didn't in the game, but not too much: the purpose is to find flaws in the intuition. At the same rate, review your slow games and dive into tactics. Where did you read badly ? Where did you NOT read !? Which principles, ideas or concepts did you apply ? Where did you forget to apply which principle ? Where did you misjudge a position you anticipated in the game ? Identify your mistakes and try to consciously avoid them in your next (slow) game. Here too one can go wrong Unfortunately there are many teachers who point out mistakes but forget to urge their pupil not making the same mistakes again and do not verify the next time if the error is still around.
The allocated time
Here's a schedule I propose for an ideal student. The only thing you have to do when you have not the necessary amount of time, is take ratios.
- Play one fast game a day. 30 minutes per day. 3 hours a week.
- Play two slow games a week. 3 hours per week.
- Analyse 2 or 3 fast games during half an hour. Analyse the slow game during one more hour. 1,5 hours per week.
- Do a couple of very easy (3 moves deep) tsumego a day. 10 min a day, 1 hour a week. Do 2 or 3 difficult tsumego a week, should take half an hour in total.
- Replay three pro games per week. Should take 1 hour maximum.
- Have an interview with your teacher, read some articles in a book, on the web etc. Not more than 1 hour a week and 2 or 3 new ideas.
This gives a total amount of 10 hours. If you have 20 hours to spend, make it double. If you have 5 hours to spend, cut every aspect in half.
To make a comparison, imagine you spend 10 hours the following way:
- Once a week, you spend 4 hours playing two long games.
- Every evening you spend one hour reading some Go book.
You may even try to maximize the effort and apply the ideas in the book to your two games, but:
- You don't analyse, so you won't know whether you did, let alone correctly.
- You don't analyse, so you keep making the same old mistakes.
- You don't do tsumego, so your new ideas will get lost in failure to read and bad technique.
[2]
An important note about level
When speaking of level, I deliberately do not speak of rank. While rank is an indicator of level, preoccupation with rank too often distracts of the proper goal: improve. People who care about their rank will try everything to win or not to lose (which is the same thing but quite another approach) and tend to ignore the value of lost games, namely the analysis.
I will review this page later. Please comment on the ideas.
Dieter
See also dnerra's ideas on improvement.
yoyoma: Dieter which of the 4 categories do you place yourself in? Since I'm asking I'll mention I put myself in #4.
Dieter: Yoyoma, I have been in all. I have been in n° 3 for most of my career - although I gradually improved - until I started reviewing my own games, at which point I experienced a spectacuar breakthrough (I was already doing all the other things, but rather purposeless). Since I have started practicing the guitar and devote the rest of my spare time to my band, and occasionally an article on SL #:-7, I try to be in category 1.
[1]
Bill: And then there are players who just hope and pray not to go downhill. <grin, I think>
This is a copy of the living page
"Dieter's ideas on improvement" at
Sensei's Library.
2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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