Some general questions from a new player

[tonybe]

Also - FWIW - there is a good thread where people discuss the differences of abilities and play-style by rank category:

Hypothesis - Tips: The Main Difference Between TPK--DDK--SDK--Dan

So I’m SDD? Got everything memorized. From my POV: DDK usually have basic understanding of some heuristics (corners, sides, center) seen some joseki and tsumego have developed some sort of feeling of where they want to play BUT lack or quickly lose view of the entire board don’t have the shape intuition to reliably predict and therefore read sequences can’t tell if a move is forcing or not, i.e. they respond to every move (ain’t that right, @opuss ) SDK know a great deal…

Hypothesis - Tips: The Main Difference Between TPK--DDK--SDK--Dan

tl;dr: Go is a game that is fundamentally about flexibility, reading and positional judgement. From these arise concepts such as exchange, urgency, big moves, thickness etc… Players across the spectrum have various degrees of mastery in these fundamental things. Having had a two year journey starting at the bottom of the TPK ladder to somewhat of a solid shodan player, here’s what I have come to learn about the rank ranges. Of course, these are my personal observations only. It is by no means …