Dieter: ((no subject)) (2021-08-30 00:49) [#11832]

1. It's just numbers. Since 5k tends to be the roughly average rank, it should be surprising that cresting the hump is difficult.

Dieter: the law of diminishing returns

2. Satisfaction / complacency. This idea, alluded to by strong OGS player and amateur Go writer Mark5000, is that many 5ks believe that they're in the top quartile: that they're "good" rather than, as said, average. Having attained a "good" rank, they no longer feel the incentive to improve.

Dieter: having been around go forums for 20 years, I have rarely seen people who are happy with their rank. Most people would still like to be higher ranked. Few people want to invest more time though, when that becomes needed due to above mentioned law.

3. Aptitude. There's no denying that some people take more readily to Go. It can be suggested that strong Go players are often also particularly skilled at mathematics, music, medicine, language learning and other board games. Talent exists, and perhaps 5k marks the distinction between talented and untalented players.

Dieter: indeed I have observed people reaching different levels with similar effort.

4. Wealth and teaching. When one reaches the Wall, it will become clear that the availability of free reviews, commentaries and lessons has become sparser. To continue receiving teaching of a sufficient standard to improve, it might be necessary to become a customer of a commercial organisation such as the NGD, the AYD or so on; or else pay a professional like Michael Redmond for teaching games. This would suggest that low income players will struggle to pass 5k. Travel and accomodation costs to visit tournaments and congresses are another feature in support of this theory.

Dieter: no, I don't think that plays a role for the average person having access to the Internet.

5. Failing to play stronger opponents. If one mainly creates open game challenges with no handicap, they will often be taken by weaker players and those of the same level as you. And it is important to play down and across the pool, of course, but not to excess. Making a game offer with handicap may be better at drawing stronger players in for an interesting game; players who dislike to take handicap might, then, find it harder to reach stronger opponents. Facing better players is a key part of improvement.

Dieter: there is no shortage of stronger players on the Internet and nowadays you can even tune the bots.

6. Not reviewing one's games.

Dieter: now we get into the how rather than the why. Reviewing is important but it's accessible to anybody, so that's a matter of just doing.

7. Not counting.

Dieter: depends on what you mean by counting. Keeping track of the score is good but not a necessary skill to improve beyond 1 dan I think, because it mostly affects decision making in sharp cases. Estimating the score at multiples of 5 is enough at our level I think.

8. Not doing tsumego. It is at the 5k Wall that many players first become serious solvers of tsumego, since their reading skills require improvement. It was once difficult to access large quantities of tsumego, but 101Weiqi has made this easier.

Dieter: tsumego is known to be important for improving reading skill. Agreed

9. Careless time management. Especially needlessly slow play in the opening. At this level, a time lead of ten minutes is arguably worth more than even a five point gain in fuseki.

Dieter: not sure. Using your time well is important, which is not the same as having a lot of available time. I would say blitzing is more harmful for progress than slow play, especially at the 5k level. As a beginner, slow play is more harmful because you can learn fast from your first games.

10. The language barrier. Players with linguistic access to Oriental materials in Chinese, Japanese and Korean will have a larger sphere of content to choose from.

Dieter: yes, but rather at the 5d level.

11. Excessive copyright. Almost all books relevant to breaking through the 5k Wall are held in long periods of copyright. For instance, even if John Fairbairn passed away this year, his 1968 translation of Sakata's Modern Joseki and Fuseki would not be released into the public domain until 2092, 134 years after publication. In comparison, Honinbo Shuho published Hoen Shimpo 139 years ago, in 1882. How absurd would it be for Hoen Shimpo to still be a copyrighted work, and how could a modern player hope to learn from it on its eventual emergence?

Dieter: come on ... I hope this was not some kind of hidden agenda. Books are valuable for our collective understanding but hardly matter for your individual development. And the amount of freely available material is too much to digest even if you made it a full time job.