'Why are we still SDK?" -- some thoughts

If only I could tell if something is settled…

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I’m 9k EGF now after ~3y of playing. The amount of knowledge you need to accumulate for playing 1d is quite high, I continue to find out :wink:

  • solid knowledge of all the going josekis, especially those coming from AlphaGo/AI games
  • solid knowledge of corner and side L&D situations
  • that includes knowledge where and when to invade or not to invade
  • good understanding of the whole board position: where to play, how much an area/group is worth
  • excellent understanding of the direction of play
  • how to get and retain sente
  • good repertoire of technical situations (e.g. attachements/approach, playing away from a half-finished fight to get extra chances later, combining 2 local situations to make something impossible possible…)
  • serious games to have the motivation to bring together everything you know in every position

And I’m sure there’s more. For me, I cannot even imagine getting to 1d without a good teacher. And I mean good, not just some random high-level player who reviews some of your game (but that is certainly helpful). Anybody getting to 1d in under 3 years, with or without help, is a genius in my eyes.

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It’s unsettled if you are not sure. It’s all relative to our own strength.

I am speaking of live game only. Time is precious.

  1. Do I use the time to count or do something else? Most likely it is better to spend the time to read the board. I know most of the time, I don’t have enough details read out of each group, mine and my opponent’s.
  2. The accuracy of counting is important, but is only important when my strength aligns. I am guessing at my strength, I can probably lose a 10 point lead in yose phase easily, so no need to have 1-2 point accuracy of counting or spend extra time to ensure the accuracy. Coincidently, I was watching a Shin Jinseo game yesterday, he played a very slow yose at one time. The Chinese 8p commentator said: this is a slow slow move. This also means Shin thinks this is enough to win. In a recent game of mine, I thought I had 15-20 points lead and my groups were thicker than opponent’s, so I started to play safe, making only connecting moves. Otherwise, I would just play normal. No need to make a special tactics out of the situation.
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“Attack and Defense”(I think) offers a simple counting technique, just visually compare the size of areas. No need to count. :smiley:

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That’s what I mean when I talk of"eyeballing" the territory.

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I think that if I knew why then I wouldn’t be a SDK any more :wink:

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Knowing what you have to do doesn’t mean you will actually do it Changing bad habits and reading thoroughly are hard and not everyone is willing to make the effort. Common flaws I find in my games and in games of opponents of similar level are:

  • Responding automatically, without checking better alternatives.
  • Not considering to tenuki.
  • Guessing that groups are connected, without actually checking.
  • Guessing that groups are alive, without actually checking.
  • Playing shape moves just because they seem good, without checking if the shape works and/or if nearby intersections would be better.

An example from one of my games: White to play.

The bot's suggestion

N6.

If you thought like me that N7 was the only move then you are stuck at SDK level.

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Counting liberties is an important step that seems to be missing from your list then!

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I agree. I did count… but miscounted.

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What’s the follow up? I can’t see how to make that work. I did not fall for the obvious but my idea was to just tenuki :man_shrugging:

Possible continuation.

Capture
White captures 2 or 3 stones so is alive.

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Thanks. Nice :sunglasses:

Here is my recipe for disaster:

  1. Play at least 1 game per day, preferably several. Try to play about 10 games per day on weekends.

  2. Play lots of blitz games to develop a sense for shape, sente and fuseki, which doesn’t require a lot of reading. Shape is really important.

  3. Do tsumego at tsumego-hero.com every day until they throw me out.

I know that blitz does not improve my reading skills, but on the other hand, doing dozens of tsumego every day does, and I don’t have time to play half hour games every day. 10 seconds per move is more than most players use for the majority of their moves anyway; people only start thinking when they suddenly realize that they are in deep shit. I have played a few “1 minute per move * 10 periods” (which is a lot of time) but most players make nearly all moves within 3 seconds.

Without actually knowing anything about it, I would guess that shape and sente are the most important things from 5 kyu to 1 dan. I don’t think joseki is important at all at this stage because you don’t fully understand all variations anyway and frequently get them wrong when the opponent deviates. It only works because the opponent doesn’t understand them either and therefore usually doesn’t deviate.

Maybe this doesn’t work at all. We will see who reaches 1 dan first.

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Would you call this good strategy? :thinking:

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because we play all moves like this:

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I found this red-hot take on the BGA’s study advice page:

You can get to shodan quite happily knowing no joseki at all

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No, so I try to be consistent and never think at all.

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Look like I am doing all of them. lol

I’m not doing any tesuji problems.

Where do you find yours?

I don’t. I read Tesuji of Elementary Go series. That’s all. I don’t feel I need to know more than the basic Tesuji or Shape to get to 1d. The problem is I don’t exercise them, especially shape well in the games.