HJJ GO Pros and Cons

Greetings,
Just thought I’d throw in a quick update since it might be relevant for players of my level (around 9 Kyu) who are thinking of investing in this course.

One of the messages I received from the company in question said that the system is designed to guide you smoothly through progressively harder challenges to a presumably quite advanced level of play.

At least for me, this has not been the case, although the level I started at was not bad and I made some improvements in focus, reading and a little knowledge from the lectures which are quite useful, albeit short. (They don’t contain anything that cannot be found free of charge on the Internet.)

The so called smooth progression ended abruptly when I was asked to win a few games against the AI in order to finally get into the next level.which I assumed I had earned.

In fact the level the AI is -calibrated- ? is so high relative to my ability I simply get beaten to death in every game. I play reasonably well for my level in quite a lot of the games, but the AI unerringly out thinks and out counts me while demonstrating an infallible ability to play random looking moves with a directional sense that allows it to acquire huge areas of territory with a minimum number of stones.

In fact, I have lost 97 games against it so far :slight_smile: Since there is no access to new lectures and puzzles while one is working though a level there is essentially no smooth progression at all. I doubt if I am learning much although I am religiously playing through the rather limited review pointers which range from very useful to something the AI understand but I cannot fathom.

In order to reach the level where I can play this AI I would have to stop playing it for a few months and immerse myself in Internet lectures, GoMagic, books of problems and some lessons from an expert tutor.

That being the case, my tired brain is asking why one wouldn’t just do that anyway. It would be quite a bit cheaper and certainly more fun.

Although I don’t want to disrespect the work bearing the name of a superstar professional who has had such a positive influence on the Go world I think players of my level should know what they are getting into before they shell out that money thing we are all so short of these days.

In the same vein, I hope the wonderful streamers who have , with the best of intentions, promoted this material, explore a little more deeply before attaching there name to it, because lower level students of the game like me take their advice very seriously :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Buri

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