Studying Professional Games
Studying professional games is one of the ways to improve. Both insei and amateurs can benefit from going through the games of the masters, although their way of studying and their level of comprehension differ widely .
Most insei in Japan will have gone through the entire Shusaku collection. Chinese pros will study the games of Nie Weiping while the Koreans will focus on Cho Hun-hyeon. All of them will have studied games of Go Seigen.
While insei will try to understand the reasoning behind the moves, this lies outside the scope of most amateurs. So, what benefit can there be in replaying professional games? The common reply is: to acquire a feeling for good shape and for the flow of the stones.
Sites that offer studying professional games
- There are many Go Databases, some freely available, some at a cost.
- Gobase, with many study facilities
- Audio Go Lessons, with audio commentaries for certain recent games
- mingon?
http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go_meikyoku.html
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http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/news.html Igo Kisen, covers all big professional tournaments in Korea, Japan, China, Korea and world wide.
- Go4Go
http://www.go4go.net/v2/ -- mostly recent games
- Andries Brouwer?'s collection
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~aeb/go/games/ -- mostly Japanese title games from the mid-20th century
- GoGameWorld famous games
http://www.gogameworld.com/gophp/pg_famousgames.php -- a small but interesting selection from Dosaku to the present day
- Jan van Rongen's Friday night files?
http://www.xs4all.nl/~rongen17/Cho/Site/index.html -- many games with Cho Chikun
- British go association links
http://www.britgo.org/gopcres/gopcres1.html#s-data
- Links from the kombilo web site
http://www.u-go.net/links/gamerecords
- Many commented pro games
http://www.baduk4all.com
How to study pro games
In his column The magic of Go, Rob van Zeijst writes:
- The first time, just play according to the diagram. Then play the game without looking at the diagram, if possible. The third time you play the game, start actively thinking about reasons and alternatives for every move. The reason for doing it this way is simple. If you think about the game from the very first time you play it through, you will use your own knowledge as a reference point for understanding the game.