DieterVerhofstadt/History of approaches to the game

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Table of contents

1. In the beginning

In 1995, there was Stefan Verstraeten, who read about Go in Shibumi and found an obvious opponent in me. I was happy to be reintroduced, after my uncle had given me an old Ravensburger set when I was 11 years old and I couldn't make much of the rules, abandoning it soon and deplorably enough. This time we worked ourselves through the rules and fought many a double digit kyu game. In our private little rivalry I mostly got the edge, which no doubt was essential for me to pursue more. Stefan had more noble motives for progress, I muster, though he didn't fail to beat me in official competitions later. We decided a club would be the best way to improve at this chokingly interesting game. Our senseis at the time were self taught amateurs of 6k strength but they still served as the best of benchmarks. I don't remember what they have been teaching us. Judging by what I currently perceive as 6k level strength, we must have learnt some pretty bad habits - sorry sempai!

2. Joseki and fuseki

Stefan and I started acquiring and reading many books. I believe his library is still bigger than mine, though giving away everything I had (but Invincible and a Gokyo Shumyo copy which I cherish) to the library of the club will have helped. We worked our way through quite a few inspiring books, participated in interclub and tournaments. There was the earliest of Internet efforts, gobase and the quirky IGS to which I've never been really drawn for some reason. There was the tiresome rec.games.go with lots of flaming and rare educational material.

In these times I approached the game from an opening perspective (see /fuseki experiments), as do many amateurs because they know the opening makes a difference for pros, the opening is where you can apply intuition most and because some authors, like Kajiwara, urged us to emphasize the opening. I was also drawn towards the concept of shape (see a static treatise on shape), as do many amateurs, because shape is a seemingly nifty way to get rid of the nuisance of reading. Also, I used to replay a lot of pro games, to get an instinctive feeling for the game. In short, I definitely used to substitute reading by set sequences and shapes. I am still unsure about the very nature of human learning. Is it biased towards imitation or towards logical reasoning?

3. Killer of Go

A major change came when I read Killer of Go by Sakata Eio. It's a smashing book, making you eager to go and kill your opponent's groups. Suddenly, I didn't think the opening was so all deciding anymore: if you could read better than your opponent, there are always possibilities to kill groups. Also, it dawned upon me that doing tsumego is the key to reading ability.

In 2001, I had a friend living in my place (he was having his boat built in Ghent and needed a place to stay) and we played many serious games. We used a kadoban principle, stretching our abilities to the maximum. Afterwards I used to review and analyze my games. This is the time when I experienced most improvement. Since then, I keep the habit of review and analysis to discover mistakes.

4. Server Go and Minue

I believe server Go came too late for me. KGS' style suited me better than IGS and I've been on and off ever since its existence, mostly because my passion for Go and music have proven to be mutually exclusive, in terms of time management and focus. Up until today I prefer live play much over online play. Somehow I can hardly bring myself to play long games online, while I can go on for hours in the club. In one of the more intensive go intervals, in 2007, I got acquainted with Minue and took lessons with him (see /studying with Minue).

In 2009 and 2010 I had a few eruptions of online play, and temporarily became fond of turn based play, notably on DGS. Playing at such a slow pace had a strong impact on my style, which I think also showed in my occasional returns to online play. I seemed to emphasize thickness much more. When you have all the time in the world to calculate a complicated L&D problem (or even half cheatingly play it out), tactical ability does not matter anymore: what matters is the positional judgment. So, I tended to leave my groups less vulnerable to attack, since even slow thinking opponents may find a killing or at least harassing move, while I also (and consequently) let my opponent's moyo develop more freely, since I would have the time to find the proper invasion technique or the way to send his weak group into a direction which harms the moyo.

Funny how literally slow play leads to figuratively slow play. About this time I more or less decided that my example in Go would be Otake Hideo. See /studying games of Otake.

5. Today

While trying to catch up with the solid 2 dan I used to be, I stand by my /Ideas on Improvement. Next to that I tend to be more flexible and free in what I study or discuss with other players. I used to think there was an almost fixed path to become a good player quickly. I still think so, but it is much more fun and sociable to seize the opportunity to study or discuss whatever seems to be up in the air. In particular, since everybody seems to be crazy about fuseki, why resist ...

Yet, the most viable strategy to me seems to hang in with the game to make sure we reach the endgame and try to excel there. The associated compass is:

  • North: be ahead on thickness, don't drop behind too far on territory. Don't think of influence as thickness.
  • East: don't play too fast; consider 3 moves, always
  • West: carry games into the endgame and do not resign unless behind by a big margin in the endgame
  • South: apply techniques acquired by studying get strong at the endgame

6. Teaching and strength

As you can read in my /teaching experiences I'm quite fond of teaching and I'm probably a better teacher than a go player. But something nags me about it: it's not quite right to be a KGS 1d teacher. Teaching ability is great but when teaching the wrong things well, that ability can produce very bad results. With newcomers I'm pretty confident in what I teach (see /recommended introduction but once people move to intermediate levels, how can a 1d be inspirational? Although authority may be established with rank, it's not necessarily a hierarchical position I'm after, rather the confidence that what I'm saying about the game of Go is actually true. With 1d being in reach for anyone playing lots of games mostly untutored, it's not a comfortable position for a teacher, whatever the educational prowess.

I believe that 5d must be within reach for anyone reasonably smart and devoted to the game. 6d is so close to professional level that one must probably have reached dan level in childhood already to break such barrier or be a real genius. At 40 years of age, 5d seems however out of reach. Becoming a stable 3d would be significantly above my current level, so I'll aim for that. I keep convincing myself it is not the rank I'm obsessed with, but the increased appreciation and mastery of the game. I'm never sure of my true intentions. (And even less when I reached 2d on KGS again and awkwardly felt how good it felt ...)


This is a copy of the living page "DieterVerhofstadt/History of approaches to the game" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2012 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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