How to improve at 4d fox?

I conclude from Uberdude’s video that to beat a 3d Fox easily, it is enough to

  1. See instantly weaknesses in your opponent’s position;
  2. Read precisely at each move.

Somehow when I try that method it works well, but only against 3 kyus instead of 3 dans.

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Some improvement has been underway. Wasn’t able to play much on fox recently because I doesn’t have a mobile client (edit: accessible to a westener) so I was playing here instead. I think I improved in the process, but I’m also not sure if it’s at all applicable to fox. It’s like a completely different game over there.

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Yeah. Wake up some gold memory of my first games IRL with korean players, especially the not too strong ones.
You learned things like make a base first, extend this far… They don’t care, their first idea is to not let you do this even if it seems doubtful. So you rage about overplays until a lack of sharpness let vanish your theory.

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If you have trouble at 4d, often what happens is that your opponents are trying to get sente moves off of you way too early in the game so you become overconcentrated. Just focus on direction of play and making better exchanges and you should hit 5d. (Though I am only 5d on fox, dunno if it helps you much)

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I’ll try that when I get back to playing regularly on fox.

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I skimmed through the answers and I am fairly certain that it was not already proposed, but I am not sure that there is learning material for such a level, so how about these two:

and obviously trying to review pro games. You obviously know your playstyle better than anyone else, so while reviewing pro games you might be able to spot what is most useful for your improvement. :slight_smile:

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I attribute my recent progress to studying modern pro games actually. Or rather just casually looking through them, sometimes reading things out but most of the time not. I picked up a ton of joseki related sequences and other good stuff from them. I’m not a fan of studying old games because I don’t think I can learn anything from them unless I specifically play all the old joseki (and hope my opponent does as well). So I’ve been really into park junghwan’s games recently and I found shin jinseo good too, both of them resonate with me in terms of the “style” if you could call it that.

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Welcome to the 3k wall. Some people have described it as the toughest rank barrier.

Come in, have a coffee and a couple of custard creams. You might be with us for a while…

I’d advise to grind tsumego and buy lessons, because those are the things I’m not doing. I did recently hear, though, from a 3k who said that even tsumego didn’t boost him.

On the lessons front, idk your economic situation but I did persuade Clossius to lower his review redemption price from 10,000 to 5,000 channel points. The cheapest standard lesson plan is BenKyo’s Tier 3, which is one 45m lesson / month + perks for about $15 (disclaimer: I’m one of his mods).

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Last year, I authored the page 5k Wall at Sensei's Library in which I suggested eleven reasons for the existence of the wall. (5k is where it appears as an EGF rank).

These were:

  1. That one is at the average (?) rank, so statistically improvement becomes harder

  2. That one becomes satisfied / complacent with having reached the average (or, perhaps, better than average) rank

  3. That only talented players can easily progress further

  4. That only players with enough wealth to visit enough tournaments can get enough serious experience to progress further

  5. That one gets into the habit of playing too many weaker opponents

  6. That one omits to review one’s games

  7. That one omits to count

  8. That one doesn’t do tsumego

  9. Careless time management

  10. The CJK language barrier

  11. Excessive copyright on resources (see wealth)

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I just realised that of all the people I know in Go, I’m not sure I’ve witnessed a single one improve from OGS 3k to 1d in the time I’ve known them.

The closest candidates are:

  1. AgentNeigh, who spent a lot. I think she might’ve bought lessons as often as twice (perhaps only once) a week, and she also spent money buying professional lectures.

  2. Sofia, who plays a lot. Let’s savour this understatement.

  3. The British Youth Champion (I think former now), who attended a lot of tournaments. By some kind of dark magic he found over forty tournaments to attend during lockdown.

To break through, then, I can only conclude that you probably need to be mildly superhuman.

After reading through this thread, I feel that your original question has not yet been clearly and directly answered: what should you do to improve?

My answer is similar to the 5k Wall reasons list, but I’ll relate it to your situation a bit.
You sound like you play games and pick up your skills from that experience, which is good.

Apart from that, what sources of knowledge do you tap to increase your skill? It should be a diverse set.

To start, you must do tsumego every day. You must practice tesuji, endgame, counting and clock management. You must become an expert in all these areas, not just your favorite one. Learn it like it’s your day job and your livelihood.

At your level, you have probably acquired bad habits, such as moving reflexively without thinking or always playing certain sequences by rote. You must work every game, every day to break those habits and replace them with mindful actions.

You must cultivate your competitive attitude. Choose improvement over fun and enjoyment. Treat every game like a precious tournament game and every move like an exam question from a strict teacher. :slight_smile:

Find some like-minded peers at your level to start a friendly rivalry with. Motivate each other and help each other out.

Physically get in shape. Sleep a lot, eat healthy, don’t drink alcohol - do everything to increase your time of peak mental performance.


I’m sure you can find some points in the list above that you can do better in, as do I. So good luck with those. :slight_smile:

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Fox players seem to want to fight regardless, as long as you can fight them successfully, you are fine. I can get to 5-6d over there generally but OGS play is alot more about shape and optimization.
I have beaten OGS 3ds and rarely lose to anyone below 2k but I don’t feel like there a huge strength difference between those ranks.

Funny thing is I just lost to an OGS 8k in one of my teaching games, first time that has happened. Felt like he played a lot better than 8k though.

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Ah, fortunately or not, I think I’m already past that. When I get matched with a 3k with no handicap I expect to win by ~10-15 points, giving me room to even blunder something in the opening. I feel like there’s a big difference between 3k and 2k.

These stats are from february 1st. Being no lower than 2k I’m 23-4 against “weaker opponents”, which I assume counts both 2k and everything under it. So I’m confident that I’m not 3k or 2k anymore. I lose to an occasional “mysterious” 3k that keeps me at 0 AI percent from move 30 to 250, which is something even 3-4d OGS players can’t manage (anymore).
I don’t like setting up goals but I think if I keep with the grind I might settle at 2d here. That is if I play exclusively 1k and 1d. I played some 2d here and they were riding some crazy volatility wave where the system ranks them both 6d and 2d, I guess that’s due to the lack of opponents. Only due to that I’m not sure about reaching 2d here.

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Thanks for advice, and I do all of that except for this.

I’m not convinced it’s a must. Last time I was trying to do tsumego 3-4 hours a day I lost 2 ranks, and I gained them back not by virtue of reading but by reimagining my entire gameplay. I regret doing that over “reading” out pro games instead.

I agree. I think this is the biggest obstacle for me. To make sense out of fights that shouldn’t be good for them.

Speaking of which, I played at 4d tygem recently and it’s even more wild than the wild fox. Here’s a tygem 4d invasion I had to handle, and it lived, even though it wasn’t meant to. It feels like I’m forced to read flawlessly against this while they just throw a stone here and there and play the shape moves. And I can’t read flawlessly.

inv

I’m not asking for a review, just showing you probably my biggest weakness.

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Well, 3-4 hours seems excessive. :sweat_smile:
One piece of wisdom that I have heard (and I don’t have a source now unfortunately), is that you are supposed to spend no more than 10 seconds on one tsumego. Or was it 10 minutes? Anyway, if you’re stuck, move on. Do the minimum effective dose daily, not more.

I want to stress again my main point, which is that you need a diversity of training.

Regarding your game in the gif, you need to be Neo from the Matrix having this conversation with Morpheus:
“What are you trying to tell me? That I can kill groups?” - “No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.”

These kinds of opponents who give you two weak groups to attack in the middle of your moyo are really defeating themselves. I can see you’re trying hard to kill him, but in reality you don’t need to do anything.

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But I gave 30 points on the left (plus the opportunity to invade 3-3, it was a kick variation) and 5-ish points on the right. If I just let them live inside I can’t see myself making more than 35 points from this. I heard this advice “do not kill” many times and it feels like the people who give it play a game with a different definition of “points” than I do. If you think that “you’ll just naturally make these points by surrounding”, I think you should review the invasion #1 and the probability of it happening 2-4 more times until through “not killing” you’re left with 20 points of territory total.

I saw a pro(-level?) player ranking up from 3d a long time ago and I distinctly remember them losing several games at 3d and thus failing the double rank up precisely for this reason. That was post-AI but those weren’t cheaters. In the rest of his 3d games he was forced to cut everything and fight everything, making a mess of a board. Surely he outfought them almost all of the time, but the fact that he lost a few games screams to me that none of these western advices have any merit in the real world. I came to the conclusion that you have to straight up outfight them or lose and no amount of theory will help you.

Maybe other pros ranking up from 3d?

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It was a long time ago but I verified that they weren’t. They were one of those 7k+ games accounts on fox.

I can’t remember where from, but I think I remember seeing a quote from a top pro saying how the old Japanese style doesn’t work anymore and all you can do now is fight over everything or you can’t win. I don’t remember who said it though… Maybe KJ or LSD or someone like that :thinking:

I actually lurked around my HDD and found 2 of those games. The person in question is 锦若丹, 9d on fox, stopped playing shortly after the abovementioned climb. During the climb lost two games at 3d (didn’t prevent him from double ranking up, my bad) and then none at 5d and none at 7d. You can check the games on fox by yourself but both of them ended in this fashion - misread and a failed fight.
The profile is still up on fox under that name, you can check the records yourself, especially if you’re into learning from the “climbers”.


(b is 9d, w is 3d)

One of the opponents was a sandbagger who loses 1, wins 20 games at 3d, and all of those games are unranked. So maybe they’re also a high dan player. The other opponent can no longer be found on fox, so I can’t confirm his legitimacy.

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