Terrence's Road Map to 13k
Hello, I got serious about Go on 8/18/08. I was 30k on KGS then. I am 13k on KGS as I write this, 11/25/08. I have been 12k for a week or so now, it is 12/24/08. I would like to share what I feel is a good series of steps to learn go.
Table of contents |
Beginner to 16k
Igowin
If you simply play 9x9 Go against Igowin, you will eventually be able to beat it, simply by experience. It is nice to see your rating go up quickly and to be able to play a lot of games quickly.
Kerwin's Road Map for Beginners
In order to get a good idea of how to handle yourself on the 19x19, Kerwin's Road Map for Beginners is a good overview of the very basic principles of the game.
Go Program
I found having a program to analyze my games to be useful. I use Many Faces of Go, but you might find something else useful.
IRC
You can get very quick feedback on your games at the Go channel on Freenode
I find the go teaching ladder to take too long for me.
Godiscussions.com was excellent for rapid feedback until it went down.
xela: It's been back up for a while now, and it's still excellent!
xela: Also, if you want to talk about a specific position from one of your games but don't want to review the whole game, you can post it at BQM on this site.
16k to 13k
Life and Death
Life and Death is probably the heart of Go. The more you study Life and Death, the more power and connection you can feel in your stones. That being said, I am still quite weak on L&D in general and have managed to get by on the other study resources in this section.
The reason that L&D still has not taken first place in my Go study is that the opening is quite vital: the opening is when there are the most options for placing a stone. There are fewer options as the game goes on, and if you do not sketch out a map of influence and territory from the start, the game could well be over in the opening.
So even though L&D is important, most of my study is still focused on good opening as well as certain heuristic principles in the middlegame.
That being said, my friend Suto has skyrocketed past me and all he does is study Life and Death on goproblems.com. For me, I'm enjoying my slower path. And that is no suprise to Ben Teuber, based on his excellent article motivating L&D study.
The resources I have found adequate for L&D so far are:
-
Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia - this is a very systematic introduction to L&D
- Senseis Beginner Exercises - again an excellent set of teaching exercises.
-
http://www.goproblems.com - some people like this place. For me, it is a bit too much of a jungle and not enough of a teaching tool.
"Fundamental Principles of Go" by Yilun Yang
Fundamental Principles of Go by Yilun Yang is an _excellent_ book. It really gives you a perfect sense of direction about how to play the opening.
It is well-written and has very illustrative examples. I cannot say enough about this book.
"Graded Go Problems"
The Graded Go Problems series by Kano Yoshinori has a lot of good problems.
To be honest, I have never really studied this book. But for some it might prove useful.
Bruce Wilcox's Contact Fights and Sector Fights
The material from Bruce Wilcox took me from 14k to 13k in 21 days. You can contact him via his website.
Start with the first two levels of contact fights and then move on to Sector Fights. His book "EZGO" is the most unique and entertaining book on Go you will find!
But the heuristics he provides on Contact Fights is solid gold. And sector fights as well...
I am now 11k
I was stuck at 12k for a very long time. In fact, it was the first case of me feeling I had reached an insurmountable plateu. You can see that in
my rating graph.
tsumego
My friend Suto started out in the low DDK at the same time as me... though I am 11k, he is 5k (no joke). And there is no secret: he simply studies Life and Death. And yes, I can attest that L&D will make you a strong player fast, if you dont believe me, just read Ben Teuber's guide to become strong.
I like using Go Grinder for studying tsumego, though Many Faces of Go is good too. And L&D really really makes a difference in your game.. I'm just too lazy to study it.
And many of Shygost's students dont. But it _does_ help tremendously.
The Shygost Era!
Shygost, with just a little teaching based on his list, has solidified me at 11k. A single stone gain and I am pushing 10k all the time.
You can download videos of my weekly lessons. A guy called "kaiji" said shygost was the best teacher for kyus, even better than Kerwin.
I was split between studying with Bruce Wilcox and Shygost. Bruce was the first person to help me see the Go board via his software packages. With Shygost you get a lot of help and he is always around on KGS. And you can even email him games outside of lesson time.
So far, I must say things are going quite well.
"Shape Up" by Charles Matthews
This is going to make a major shift in how I play go.
I improved just be reading the first section. I now know a lot more about running and can form eye shape as I run just by using the table shape.
Just look at me run in move 63 of this game
You will see the table shape repeated over and over.
I am pushing 9k!
I'm on the brink of 9k. I have some performance anxiety when I play online.
At this point Shygost is still the key factor. I do look at Yang Yilun's book and I am going back through Bruce Wilcox's (EXCELLENT!) material. But shygost is the key. And there are two simple key things to good play: 1. look at all weaknesses on the board 2. a move in Go is designed to get free moves. you arent just mapping out territory. you are leveraging his weaknesses and simultaneously protecting yours and in the process gaining territory. And if you must fix a weakness, then take a move to fix it. Because the opponent has sente on that weakness even if he hasnt used it!
You can see all video lessons here