Eidogo: A healthy source of vitamin joseki

As I've been memorizing games from various professionals I've been wondering about the nutrition value in each one. How much will this game help me in my day to day playing? The one that helps me the most now is the one that taught me a new joseki that I added to my day to day games. I'm kind of slow though so I didn't actually understand what I was supposed to do until after the next paragraph.

In a recent study game with my good friend allara[5k] he devastated me in the fuseki. He then told me I needed work on opening knowledge. After the game I went to Josekipedia and Eidogo  (two websites for studying joseki). I found out that Eidogo lets you view a whole bunch of pro games for every joseki you type in. 

This is life changing! all I have to do is type in unknown joseki, memorize a pro game or 2 from it and boom! Now I can get the benefits of 2 kinds of study at once. It's even better than a protein shake.

other posts you might enjoy

Memorize 100 masters Games

Some great books for getting deeper knowledge of opening play

38 basic joseki

Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go

Play Go!

Go is not automatic. Fun is not automatic. Learning is not automatic. When you play go you must play go.
Devise strategies, take unexpected turns, and play deeper than you ever have before. Throw yourself into each and every move. Go cannot and will not play itself.

The moment you are content with the first move that comes to mind is the moment you will stop improving. It doesn't matter how many thousands of games you play. You will not improve without stretching yourself to think in ways that are hard for you. Your brain makes connections when you do new things. If you rely on what you are already comfortable with then your brain won't make new pathways and you'll be stuck in a neural rut.

When you learn a new concept and apply it to the way you think about go it is difficult at first. Once you understand it fully it becomes automatic. And once it is automatic you must look for a new concept to apply to your thinking.

We learn things one thought at a time. Every move is a chance to think in a new way and understand a little more. Think outside your comfort zone or it will imprison you. Chaining you to the walls of apathy. Holding you back from the unknown. Yes, learning is scary, but not learning is far scarier.

Memorize 100 Masters Games

I was recently challenged by Ikebrawler, who is my sensei/teacher/friend/tomodachi what have you, to memorize professional games as a way to improve my game. As you all know by now I'm never one to pass up a challenge and as usual I have quantified the challenge and am approaching it systoporadically (systematically/sporadically).

Challenge

Memorize 100 masters games at least 150 moves deep

Have them in working knowledge all at one time

So far I have 3 games Memorized. I'm picking my games from GoKifu.com, but you can get them from wherever (yes I am assuming you are joining me in this challenge). I mainly look for ones that end in +0.5 so that they are fairly close. You can also look for games from your favorite pros. 

Memorized games so far

http://gokifu.com/s/140y-gokifu-20121013-Gu_Li%289p%29-Zhong_Wenjing%289p%29.html

http://gokifu.com/s/141n-gokifu-20121013-Zhou_Ruiyang%285p%29-Meng_Tailing%286p%29.html
http://gokifu.com/s/162j-gokifu-20121122-Cho_Chikun%289p%29-Tajiri_Yuto%283p%29.html

Many go players believe that memorizing games is basically useless toward improving your go, however most of professionals advise it and Insei (young people in go schools) do it as part of their training.

In in interview with the late Hans Pietsch (a German go player who moved to japan to be part of the insei program) he says  

"From my experience, for amateurs, where there is still a lot that can be improved, the method to memorize games is very helpful. Of course it depends on how hard you are willing to work in order to improve. Memorizing means that you have to be able to play many games to the 150th move within 5 minutes. The meaning of that is not on a rational, logical level. You are trying to reach a deep point in your brain where you develop a feeling for shape and position. This is going to help you especially during the fuseki. 

Check out the complete article a  http://361points.com/hans/

I'm sure your tired of reading my ranting by now good luck!

Tsumego: Speed up by Slowing Down

I'd like to start this post with a short portion of my favorite book of all time.

Suffering produces Endurance 

Endurance produces Perseverance

Perseverance produces Character 

Character produces Hope

and Hope does not put us to shame.

There are many many things I could say about this passage, but I'm not talking about this passage. Today I'm talking about Tsumego. Tsumego can be opposed to Tsumeshougi which I just learned a few days ago and gives me some more context for what tsumego means. If you don't understand what I just said that is by all means completely fine and you are not missing out on much more than a joke between school friends. 

Several months ago I was going through Cho Chikun's elementary and intermediate Tsumego collections which I finished in just under a month going at an alarming pace of several hundred per day.

The results were in and I gained about a rank and a half on KGS. Although it was fun and I did have some gains, I have now switched my whole methodology of doing Tsumego.

As an aside I would like to say to those of you who have questioned me in private, public, or begrudgingly in the back of your minds that it is impossible for a 10k to go through Cho Chikun's Elementary and Intermediate Collections, I offer my complete agreement and condolences. I'm quite sure that I did not get more than 60% of the Elementary and probably less than 20% of the Intermediate correct. I was young and niave`, however I must say that I did still get something out of it.

My new methodology is something I invented in about 8 minutes one morning sitting out on my porch after an argument with my mother. I had spent 4-5 hours on the computer supposedly doing Tsumego but when all was said and done I had watched 2 anime episodes, browsed the internet, played a game of go and done only 11 Tsumego problems.  Thus leading my mom to, quite wisely if I may say so, take away my computer privileges until after 4 o'clock.

As an aside I would like to say that I do not, in fact, speak with a british, australian or texas accent.

However if it would make your reading experience more interesting I highly recommend that you pretend I do have one of the listed accents as you read through this post. I believe it may make your already enjoyable experience more entertaining and enjoyable.

The new method is simply this

I am going to go through Cho Chikun's Elementary Again at 30 a day by splitting my work into 10 12 minute sessions and doing 3 problems per session. this will allow me 3-4 minutes on each problem to fully think out the problem. If I finish the problems early in the 12 minute period, good for me and I can  take a bit of a break. if I do not finish a problem in the given time I will simply post it on KGS and have 

one of the stronger players there help me figure it out. After about 30 days at this pace I will have finished the set.

Step 2

Repeat step 1 doing twice as many of the Tsumego in the alloted time.

This basically means spending 10 12 minute sessions going again through the same set of problems but doing 6 problems every session. this time it will take 15 days to complete.

Step 3-7

keep repeating and doubling your speed until you reach the point at which you can solve atleast 100 problems in each 10 minute session.

if this takes more than 7 steps go ahead and continue until you make it there. But it probably wont.

After this point I sugguest going back through the whole set in 1 day twice a month to keep it in your mind. And also starting this same process again with the Intermediate set  or any other large set of tsumego you come across that you like.

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Well that's basically the method. One problem allot of people who have done this have said is 

"It's hard to get the perseverance to keep on keeping on with these problems" My advice to you 

is to go through a bit of suffering. It will help you build your endurance and perseverance.

Rival Grindy[5k-4k]: upcoming match

A match between me and my considerable stronger rival Grindy is coming up on may 31st (this year (2012(AD not BC))). Which means I have about a month left of training. Grindy is, like me, also working on tsumego. He is trying a new method of tsumego to try to boost his reading level even further. instead of just doing the problems, he looks at the problem, turns away, tries to re-create the problem in his visual mind, and solve the problem without looking at the book.  While his method may or may not be superior to mine, his pace seems much slower as I've done about 1600 problems in 10 days and he's done about 600. Feel free to watch the match. Tickets are 0$ (USD) and the time is so casual it is unspecified as of now.

my Journey today

Cool so I've been working hard at tsumego. I've Averaged 180 a day since 10 days a go (really 200 a day but 0 on sundays). Now I'm sure I can hear my multitude of blog followers wondering how its affecting me. Well I thought I wouldn't have answers for a while but something came up.

Nick23 tested my reading level yesterday. It kind of felt like a Gameshow. There were about 30 people
watching. Anyway Nick would ask a tsumego and I would have a minute to come up with an answer and then state my confidence in percentage. The problems were 6k-1d level and I think I got about half of them wrong. Anyway after the test Nick said my reading level was about 7k  so I guess that means I've made about 3 levels of progress in 10 days. I don't know if this is a fluke or misconception yet but I'm going to keep doing tsumego and have my progress tested in another week or so

500 tsumego, ring a bell?

The reason I haven't posted for a few days about my tsumego progress is that I've been busy doing tsumego!

stats:

saterday  - already posted about this but 150 tsumego

sunday - 0 tsumego, it was the sabath and I told God I wouldn't work on Go on sundays

monday - 500 tsumego AMAZING tsumego day, I found a new techniuqe

tuesday so far - 150 maybe I'll do some more today.

New techniuqe = the stop watch! I found http://www.online-stopwatch.com/interval-timer/

this online stopwatch, set intervals to 25 seconds and set sound to ting tinge

then whenever I hear the beep I switch to next problem whether I'm finished or not

and if I finish early I skip ahead and maybe give myself 2 beeps 'cus the first one doesn't count or whatever.

using this method I can do about 120-150 an hour. and even though sometimes I didn't get to finish a tsumego I found that was still getting the answers finished about 80% of the time.