Forum for Coyote/ GoTraining Blog
What should I study at 19k? [#253]
Andy: If you are really 19K, what you are reading and doing sounds way too advanced. I suggest you get all the introductory books by Janice Kim. They are really good. From my experience these books are the immediate ticket to 12K and will provide a good foundation for further progress. Just my $0.02.
Coyote: I appreciate the advice. I have been noticing recently that I've a major blind spot in simple connection and cutting from avoiding fights for so long. I come off poorly in fighting so I don't fight, so I don't get better and come off poorly in fighting.
RiffRaff: I think the best things to study around 19k are (as recommended above) the Learn To Play Go Series and Graded Go Problems For Beginners. Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 of the problem books specifically. I do like Teach Yourself Go also, but the problem books have helped me more than anything else I've ever read. The tesuji books listed above, in particular, will be very hard going at this point.
Velobici: Work through Graded Go Problems For Beginners multiple times. When you tire or become bored with that set of four of books, work on 1001 Life and Death Problems. Learn To Play Go Series will give you a number of ideas to incorporate into your play, but doing life and death problems will develope your reading so that you can implement these ideas.
Hicham: I would recomend the same as Velobici. Do a lot of easy exercises, so you dont get stuck. I would also recommend Cho Hun Hyeon's Lectures on Go Techniques.Great book for 20-14K.
Once you get a little bit stronger, I recommend getting a taste of whole-board thinking, even if you don't understand it all right away. Opening Theory Made Easy helped me tremendously when I was 15k or so. Don't worry if a lot of it is confusing, as it's drilling home concepts that, as you gain more strength, will start to coalesce with the tactics gained by studying L&D and tesuji and the like.
Bill: Everything. That is, every area of the game, and every kind of problem. Study pro games, and especially study your own games. Try to find the losing move.
Good luck! :-)
Hey man, good luck with your studying.
I've read the following to get to 5k on igs in one year in this order and at these ranks: janice kim series (29k-21k) charles matthews, not shape up, the other one (29k-21k) attack and defense, elementary go series (21k-19k) lessons in the fundamentals of go, kageyama (19k-17k) in the beginning, elementary series (19k-17k) tesuji, from the elementary series (17k-15k)
then i wasnt going anywhere. Attack and defense was a bit over my head, despite that I was stubborn and didnt want to admit it. I wouldnt recommend it until about 15k. The janice kim books totally suck. They are for little kids. The examples are superficial and the points aren't deep enough. You do yourself a disservice by pretending to learn go concepts with her examples. Youre better off reading everything in the elementary series right from the beginning, or rather, after the mathews book which is a much better introduction.
To brake the high teen kyu barrier I just reread kageyama's masterpiece, tesuji, life and death, and did some graded go problems for beginners (dont try memorizing L& D, do it like problems). Then 11k, dig into tesuji, attack and defense and start looking at some joseki for strategy (not to memorize). A month or two later you should break into the single digit kyus if youre playing every day. ONLY THEN is it worth studying professional games.
Hicham: It is also very good to go through all the problems in a book a seconf or third time. I went through Life and Death, like 5 times in a row. It cost me a couple of months, but it certainly helped to get my L&D to a higher level. So do problems you find doable(not too easy, not too hard) and do them over and over again. I just get bored when the problems are too hard, some people like to solve braintwisting tsumego way above their level and I am sure that this is a good thing to do, but you will get more out of doing 10 or 15 medium level problems.
So I would advice you to go out and by the second volume of Graded Go problems. Be honest with youself, you will buy it anyway, so why not now;)
If going through a small book of problems 5 times in a row takes months, you're on the wrong book of problems!
I highly recommend the Korean Childrens Go Books (if you can find copies). Level 1 is quite beginner material (on par with the Korean Academy problems L1). I believe there are a lot of repeats between the Academy and Childrens books, but both are hard to find.
If you can't track down copies of these by any means (baduk books webpage is gone unfortunately), please contact me on my webpage ![[ext]](images/extlink.gif)
http://www.tsumego.net/rigo/bbs. I purchased copies of these books in Taiwan.
Life and Death is not a thick book, but I really took the problems seriously and try to read their 'status'.The book is pretty dense if you take it seriously. Combine that with the fact that I had limited time to spent, three to five months seems like an ok time. That is around 10-15 problems a day.
It certainly changed me from a 3k with bad L&D to a 1-2k with decent L&D.
Coyote, do whatever you feel like doing. At your level, you will become stronger no matter what you are doing as long as you are doing it seriously. Most important thing is to try to minimize you bad habits. This means that it might take you ab it longer to reach a decent level, but you will not get stuck as quick later on. Your oponents will play overplay after overplay(hard to say that they are overplays on your level, but you know what I mean). Relying on fighting skills is ok, but always play good moves(Shape and theory wise). For this reviews are very important, especially from high dan players. But most of us dont have high dan friends or money for lessons and have to make due with gobooks.
There's nothing wrong with studying harder problems, but for basic shapes (which is what Life and Death The Book is focused on) there are many good collections. I think the aim should be about 100 problems in 15 minutes.
For tesuji tsumego it will vary more taking from under 10 seconds to well over five minutes (the latter should be avoided unless you have extra time to spend)!
Limited time plagues most of us but with a PocketPC or 10-15 minutes on my computer, it isn't hard to get in some daily tsumego.
I need to object to 100 in 15 minutes. If you're doing problem that fast you're either very good at reading or you're memorizing patterns
![[Diagram]](diagrams/32/9e562772359389c44a1af0edf370b3c6.png)
If you just memorize how to kill the big 6 (which is how it'll take you only 9 seconds to figure out how to kill it) you will get a similar position wrong that has only 1 stone missing. Not that knowing how to kill these two positions is bad, but you still need to check your answer by reading through the solution and making sure there's not a hidden suprise
![[Diagram]](diagrams/36/6d736c691b8e7eddde5fc716f6086142.png)
![[Diagram]](diagrams/41/969b9903579711a178ee5184c6389e4e.png)
I think you're in for a shock when you find out how much speed is really required.
Yeah, I agree. When I complete problems this fast, I am reading all of them. Certainly there's some rememberance of vital points - this is something that must be trained as well... 10 seconds is more than enough to completely read through a familiar problem.
Life and death have a number of "tricks" (call them tesuji if you like). Familiarizing these shapes is the point of basic tsumego. Additionally, although I've only been "working out" for a short time now, it's already shown in some games.
I do follow the theory of "three levels of tsumego" (<20 second, 30-60 second, and >1:00 or so) but I've come to decide that the final level should be avoided or only tried for fun. As I said before, these problems CAN help, but the benefit is minimal.
(I think the 3 levels have been discussed on Bildstein's pages?)
![[Welcome to Sensei's Library!]](images/stone-hello.png "Sensei's Library")