Hi, i just want to know if i’m the only one with this type of career:
After a real long time i (re)started playing Go. Times have changed a lot and i soaked up tons of resources now that i have time to. Quickly starting around 8Kyu (yeah, SDK finally) for one year now i managed to regularly
play tons of games
review each single one with Katrain
play tsumego
watch video tutorials
review some books
Well its fun but
my playing rank is steadily going down
my tsumego rank is going up
with each game i review i can now quickly identify some (major) mistakes
and in one way or the other i repeat them in the next games
but they are available at any time (i always check the availabilty of humans) and my mean pride is much less hurt after loosing 100 times against a chip
At least, as you they “the standard response” i assume i am not alone with this problem. so i will concentrate on humans and report back…
If you identified bad habits, then perhaps before each game, try to focus on one bad habit you want to change; that’s harder than it seems. Our mind is lazy and constantly wants to keep doing the same things.
yes, i have a long list of habits to break or develop.
starting with one may be a good idea…
dont touch that single stone
hane from the stronger side
play the big point
dont pincer when you will be the target
dont live small in the enclosure
dont follow the opponent with his moves
How do you review?
Some people just ask the AI, what it would have done in their place. They look at the blue moves and follow up variations, but that’s a bit like watching TV. You may improve by doing so, but I think it’s better to be more active during the review. E.g try to come up with better moves on your own and ask the AI, if they really are better; or try to find your (biggest) mistakes on your own and ask the AI, whether those really were (the big) mistakes.
Don’t worry about that too much, maybe enable the option to hide ranks for a while. If you try new strategies, you might do worse at first, because you’re not used to it, but trying new stuff is the only way to improve.
Also the rating system might just be misjudging your progress.
Well you re getting strong with bots and that’s ok.
Move the challenge to humans. Find some competitive frame with them, irl tournaments, ladders, leagues…
Discover humans and yourself should give you a new, fruitful and enjoyable time. Maybe forget a bit on your ranking and more on what’s happening in your games.
Last but not least, try to get some short review on the spot, at least with your opponent, at best with a stronger player. Not an AI review but one by another human.
I feel like this is the biggest issue. Maybe you should evaluate why the mistakes are repeated. Are you conscious that these are mistakes when playing them or are they played unconsciously? If you are already conscious of them, then the next step is to try to avoid playing them. If you are unconscious, then probably need to think about how you can better identify the mistakes before playing them.
well.i admit comparing the relative strength and going through lots of variations is the main part - its simply best supported by the UI i katrain.
A ui supported teaching mode would be attractive: you walk along the game as long as an configurable threshold is kept. otherwise the system challenges you to work on the next move, here without showings the suggestions. doing this by hand is tedious… switching on and of “show moves” in a 100 moves game where the hotspot should be on 2 or 3 bad decisions.
kind of comparable to the feature “go to next error” but i do not find this configurable and errors of this dimension are rare.
i already thought about buying me in a “reviewer” so hat i can send in some games that punish me and get advice. AI just gives moves, not reasoning, tactics or strategies.
by the way, i thank you all very much for answering this at all. i thought this would go along mainly unnoticed as it is an everyday problem that does not bother or help anyone.
This configuration shows the game move and the AI move, and you can move to the next mistake by clicking on the red arrow “next error”.
But if you switch off “AI enabled”, you can still navigate to the next mistake but the AI move is not shown.
Alternatively, the interface can make a quiz and ask you to find the correct move.
That could be too much. I mean you need more some short pointers as a deep and long review. Answers about if your way of thinking was right or wrong. Important misbehave against fondamentals. Things like that.
So sure a payed teacher could provide this, but forum asking, and better some friends around or a club may provide it too.
At first you need to have opinion and question resulting from your game so you need a strong interest and investment when you play. Then together review with your opponent can be fruitful too
I think i am the strongest player at some distance here online is the only way…
I will see if i can distill some typical questions from my game records and forward to the forum. To be honest i’ve just the feeling that there’s no way to compensate for such work
I should add that you need to focus not on the mistakes themselves, but their ideas. Look, mechanical mistakes happen even at highest level of this game, that are unreachable for all(or 99.9%) of us. But mistakes by wrong ideas happen regulary. When you see a mistake, analyse not how you should have played firstly, but WHY you did it and WHAT should you have done.
For example, you played a game and at some point you had a chance to kill a group by performing big tesuji, and you didnt see it. Could you win a game based of it? Possibly. Should you concentrate on it? NO.
Its important to determine why you developed a mistake, this a basis. You should focus not to how change it mechanicaly(I bet same position can happen only on joeseci stage or-around common patterns, you should change your preception of the game and adjust ideas. Hope this helps
+Addition to that, weiqi isnt a work, its a hobby, you should play it when you want it, not when you think you “should”. Its better to have 3-4, but even 1-2 focuced games than 30 in a bad mood because you *should".
Good luck!
Thanks for your advice. I really try to squeeze out the Essence of miserable play, not a single move. I have lost many Games i am perfectly happy with because the failling move just happened.
But finding the essence, the rule, the improvement happens to be hard when only comparing 2 or 3 moves like in AI reviews.
online is the only way…