5k, 1k and 6d

There's sort've a chicken and the egg thing here.

The field is largest at 5k and 1k, with gaps between, so it's hard to find the stepping stones to move past there. At 6d, the competition kind've drops off, it's rare to find folks at your level, and so it's hard to get a leg up. (It also, of course, gets harder to advance as you get further on, there's a finite amount of knowledge to be gained, as you get stronger, you get the easier stuff out of the way, and you're only left with the hard stuff)

This suggests that wherever there are bulges in the rank density, there also you will have people getting stuck.

On the other hand, we might ask, "Why are the bulges there?". I suspect there are a few major concepts that hold folks up.

EDIT: I say "I stalled", but it was for like 3 months at 5k, 3 months at 1k. I remember them as stalls though, they were definitely mental blocks

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

He means you need to drop Kageyama like you drop acid. Just gobble it up and enjoy the ride, man.

I have slowly progressed from 2 kyu to 1 kyu...to 1 dan....to 1kyu...to 1 dan...to 1 kyu...

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Ko is the best solution.
With Ko, I can keep eating and drinking until I am full.

Visit >>>Koosh's Study Journal<<<

As jts points out very well: "Lessons in the fundamentals of Go" is pure poison : D

And on a more serious side: As far as I know, there a two kinds of Go-players. The ones who like and praise "Lessons in the fundamentals of Go", who say that it made them a couple of stones stronger and the ones who consider this book a great waste of time because it actually teaches nothing specific (but has horrible rude writing).

I'm with the latter : D I read the book twice and all I can say is, the chapter about nets and ladders is fine. The rest is just jibber-jabber. But... that's my personal opinion and a lot of players - interesting enough, a lot of stronger players - will say the opposite.
(I favour Tesuji-problem-books by the way.)

So, coming back to jts, you now have been warned about potential side-effects, if you still want to drop it like acid then enjoy the ride ; D

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Seems to depend on the type of player. Some find exact examples more and variations more enlightening. Lessons of the fundamentals touches more on the principles and general concept of playing go. Kind of comparable to Otake Hideos Opening Theory made easy I think. Both very good books in my opinion.

Lessons of the fundamentals also has a couple stories in between which some might find annoying to read through, I liked them. But I also like to read about go history and other go related topics that are not directly improving my strength.

When you read Kageyama or other theory books, what happens at kyu level is the following:

You go to tygem, play a random guy at your level.

You play out some well known joseki at one corner, he gets the small corner you get strength.

You are better off because his corner is too small compared to your outside influence. At least that's what the theory says.

Then the guy plays very close to your wall. Wonderful, he plays wrong moves and asks for being punished. Attack from the other side, push him towards your thick wall. That's what theory says.

Then he escapes with his stone and on top of that pincers your attacking stone. Super, he overplays, he will end up with two weak groups to run while you have just one in the middle. You are better off, that's what the theory says.

He manages to live with both groups or even connect them. If you are lucky your single weak group survives. You end up with 2 useless walls which merely consists of dame stones bringing you no points.

But nevermind, now you are even stronger outside, build a moyo invite your opponent to invade and kill him. That's what the theory says.

He invades and .... he invades. You have yet another group consisting of dame stones.

Now he has 5 separate groups on board. The theory says "if you have 6 groups one of them is likely to die". So you are almost sure to win. Then guess what happens...


Moral of the story : Don't give theory too much credit until you have enough fighting strength to base it, i.e. until you are already at dan level.

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

Well I started at ddk strength to focus on primarily fuseki, direction of play, shape and over all go theory. It has worked very well for me. If you understand why something is a bad play, you should be able to find a good response no matter what level you play at.
The reason why I like this way of studying for me is, that I grasp theory very early on. This way it becomes natural to me at a very early stage in my progression.

I would encourage even higher ddk to read kageyama. Its not the holy grail, but still a very good guide to form one's way of thinking about moves on the board.

I agree with you that Otakes Opening Theory Made Easy is a very good book, in my opinion even the best book about the opening for beginners. But then I don't find anything comparable between his book and Kageyamas. Personally, I think they are the exact opposite.

Where Otake explains one subject to sufficient detail for the audience, Kageyama jumps across the whole field of Go theory wihtout any context and explains very little but rants when the reader has not yet understand what he doesn't even try to explain.
Where Otake reasons, Kageyama gets upset why he even has to bother explaining such simple things.

Of course you a right, it depends on which type of teacher you like. If I read Kageyama I can't help but picture a teacher coming to class to let it watch a documentary while he leaves for coffee and a smoke.
He is not even funny with his ramblings (contrary to the video of the guy teaching japanese, which Araban posted somewhere).

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

It's been a while since I've read it, but that's not at all how I remember it. Sounds almost like you were offended by his writing ^^
When I first read it I was between 20 and 15kyu I think, I shall read it again (it reads fast) sometime soon.

Kageyama seems to have a number of detractors, who feel quite strongly about it

He also seems to have a number of advocates, who feel equally strong, and seem to outnumber the detractors (particularly amongst dan players it seems). However, as with everything, it's down to whether his style works for you. I certainly wouldn't recommend dropping the book however, unless you personally feel that it's irritating, patronising, unfunny, or a bunch of things that people have thrown against it in the past

So you're saying that you would have better games on Tygem if you gave your opponent bigger corners, pushed him away from your thickness, took gote to make your groups safe instead of launching splitting attacks, and didn't bother trying to use your thickness to make a moyo?

Further, even though this were a valid critique of some books on the opening, I can't see it applying to Kageyama. Taking the first chapter alone (ladders and nets) seriously will hugely improve your fighting strength, which is why Kageyama stresses them so heavily. Ladders and nets are the first techniques most beginners learn, but they never bother to master them.



Not jibber-jabber! Anything but that!

What I am saying is, it is better to spend your time on exercising fighting skills (maybe tsumego, maybe analyzing/memorizing pro games, maybe... whatever) rather than on reading theory books.
As kyu players we can discuss for hours whether chinese formation is suited against orthodox opening or where kobayashi formation has weaknesses, etc. But as soon as a dan player makes a "for us obviously wrong" move against kobayashi formation, all the theory becomes silent and we are alone with our fighting skills.

That is of course not to say that you should not read theory. If you enjoy it and study it as part of Go culture (like reading the life story of Shusaku), nobody can have anything against it. But do not expect much improvement from it, at least at kyu level.




I refer to theory book, not specificly to Kageyama. Indeed Kageyama has some nice chapters too, even though I find to book way overrated.

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

(emphasis mine)

By "stronger players", you mean "stronger than you"? Wouldn't that mean that these stronger players see something in the book that you don't?

It could of course also mean that the book is simply aimed at stronger (dan?) players. The kyu-level explanations are a bit rare, and there are lots of examples of high-dan-level mistakes in the book, even though Kageyama makes it sound as if they were obvious

I read it at 18kyuish and was very happy with the advice. I got most to all tsumego wrong, but the guidance offered by the presented principles was invaluable. That is not to say that the book is aimed at DDK, but it still can provide more than enough. Later when you are stronger and read it again you get more out of it than the first time...

Obviously for some players there has to be some sense in it, otherwise there would be no dispute, right? : D
But if you are aiming at: Stronger players see something in this book, so, because they are stronger, they are right - this doesn't work for me.
Furthermore it seems that a lot of the stronger players, who are fond of this book, read and liked it when there were Kyus themselves. So... I don't know.

A little bit more off: I read Kageyama's "Secrets of Handicap Go" aswell and uhh... yeah, for me it almost fits in the same category as "Lessons in the fundamentals of Go". So, I think I really can't stand his style of writing or what he tries to sell as teaching.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

This reminds me of a game I played as White years ago. In the early going my opponent got territory and I got a wall. In the early middle game I chased him towards my wall and, well, he killed my wall. But hey! I got a second wall. The middle game fighting continued, and he killed that one, too. But that was it. My third wall lived and I won by 5 pts.

IMNSHO, advice to ignore theory until you are strong is hogwash. Everybody is different, of course. There are many paths up the mountain. My own view is to take a balanced approach.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

By saying "don't give too much credit..." I didn't mean "ignore...". But the weaker the player is, the less useful theory becomes. Meaning that the balance point shifts towards tactics.

For a ddk player, studying the strategic concepts of chinese opening is as useful as for a primary school pupil studying differential equations.

Maybe you don't see it at dan levels but at sdk levels, the style difference between kgs and tygem is striking. Very good sdk fighters at tygem are apparently totally ignorant about strategical concepts that westerners learn when they are ddk.

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

Well, strategic concepts of the chinese opening and fundamentals like staying away from thickness are really apples and oranges.
In my opinion these fundamentals benefit ddk greatly. Much like proverbs, they are not to be followed blindly, but it is good practice to keep them in mind while searching for the best next move. A ddk maybe not as able as a dan player to utilize them, bet that does not render them useless. Fighting/reading strength as theory knowledge and everything else are all variables that combined from the overall strength. Reading strength is a little more important I guess, as it scales with everything else. But that doesn't make theory knowledge useless.

Not quite.

What I'm saying is the other way round: The players that say they got something valuable out of this book are stronger. So there seems to be at least a correlation between liking this book and being stronger. A possible explanation could be that the book contained some advice that, in hindsight, helped these players getting to the strength they are now.

But of course, we all know that correlation does not necessarily imply causation

I found attitude much more important for improvement than knowledge. Kageyama tries to teach attitude, I believe this makes him look heavy handed or even offensive, as in his rant about people who never bother to read. But look, he makes no derisive remarks about you, when you fail to read his examples, but the emphasis is, that you should at least try. In the long run there isn't a shortcut.

I personally was most impressed with his review of his own masterpiece in the end. The willingness to criticize heavily his masterpiece, his best game, showed me not only that professionals make mistakes as well, but is a display of the necessary attitude in itself. How many of us prefer to review their won games, not their lost ones? Or to analyze the opponents mistakes and not their own?