If you play a very bad move, you may get angry or feel depressed.　　
If you have a tendency to become like that, then you have a very hard time turning around a game.

In fact, the more angry or depressed you become, the more you make a bigger mistake, and you lose more stones. Then you will get even more angry or depressed, and you will make a even bigger mistake. It’s a vicious cycle.

If you do that, you will never learn anything from that kind of emotional game.

Believe me. I’ve experienced it many times when I was an apprentice.

In my case I tried to study at least 10 hours, often 15 hours every day, Monday through Sunday, for 365 days without going to high school. Then I lost often for almost 3 years. Can you imagine how angry and depressed I was?

If you think you made a terrible mistake and lost a game, feel free to resign a game. Then watch a movie, walk outside, or do anything to refresh your mind. If you think you calm down, then you can review your game. If you don’t want to review it, then study a Go book.

Your main goal is to become strong. So don’t let your emotions control you. You have to manage yourself to control your emotions.

People who don’t care about their mistakes and / or people who are optimistic, tend to have a higher winning ratio in general. So it’s important for you not to get angry or depressed.

My first Go teacher was really good. He taught me that when he played a mistake, he naturally got mad at himself. But then he closed his eyes and counted 10 seconds. Then he often calmed down. When he opened his eyes, he could often find a move to minimize the loss or find a move to turn around a bad situation.

So you might want to write that down, put the note on your computer before a game, and when you make a big mistake, you should read it, close your eyes, and count 10.

Also you should keep in mind the following:

1. Regardless of how strong you become, you will always experience making a mistake or a flop. We are all humans, so we all make mistakes. So you might want to live with that. Even top pros make a serious blunder. A top pro couldn’t resign a game and resulted in 35 point loss. Pros usually resign a game when they are losing 10 points or so. So counting a 35-point loss was such a shame. I guess this pro really lost his mind during a game. In fact, he did it more than once. Later he never lost his mind during a game and won more than 50 titles.

2. You may think you make mistakes more than your opponent, but that may not be true. Your opponent also makes lots of mistakes, maybe more than you do. But people tend to feel that you always make mistakes more than an opponent. When I look at my students’ games, their opponents often make more mistakes or bigger mistakes. But I don’t pay much attention to it because they are not my students.

3. You may think that you made a mistake, but it can often be a good move. I have had experience like this many times. I thought I really played badly. But when my first Go teacher reviewed it, he told me that my moves were good. When I review my students’ games, the moves they thought were bad, were not necessarily bad. Some moves are good. So be optimistic.

A state of mind can make you two stones weaker very easily, sometimes four stones weaker. I’ve experienced it many times. So the psychological effect is really big.

As long as you’re my students, I’ll help you. So be optimistic. So be optimistic, then you may very well increase your winning ratio.

via Go, Igo, Weiqi, Baduk. Kaz’s original Igo-advice & fundamentals of Igo http://ift.tt/1qw4sBP

August 01, 2014 at 02:58PM

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Those Go players who are very passionate and eager to learn new things tend to overlook the importance of solving easy problems. Many of them think they know that stuff (some of them did say “I know this, so I don’t need them. Give me something more worthwhile” ), so they think that solving easy problems is a waste of time, and they try to solve hard problems.

So some people think that some of my problems are too easy and dissatisfactory. I hope you don’t feel that way. But if you do, then I’d like to explain why I do that.

First it takes time to learn new things.

Learning one tesuji can often take a month. “I know this problem” is not good enough. You have to be able to do that in your real game regardless of how complicated a situation is. Even if you’re drunk, you should be able to play that without thinking. (I’m not suggesting that you should get drunk and play Go. You shouldn’t. ) If you didn’t play that in my lesson or in your game, that means you lack basics. If you think my problems are easy, I have to ask you to be patient. If you cannot patiently solve easy problems, you will not be able to solve harder problems. I could give you a 6dan problem relating to a tesuji, but you won’t learn it because of the following reason.

Second you have to learn things step by step.

I know most Go teachers teach 6dan tesuji or pro level tesuji to kyu players, even 15 kyu or 20 kyu players. But that’s not a good way to teach. In fact, it’s impossible to learn a 6dan tesuji and to be able to play 6dan moves continously without learning 4 kyu tesuji, 1 dan tesuji, 3 dan tesuji, and 5 dan tesuji. You have to learn these things step by step. You also improve the ability to read many moves.

If you’re a 6dan, I expect you to learn at least 20 moves easily. I also expect you to know lots of 6dan tesuji and shapes. If you cannot read 20 moves easily, and if you do not know 6dan tesuji and shapes, you cannot see a danger ahead of you. Then it’s really dangerous to try a 6dan tesuji. It’s like flying a jumbo jet even though you just started learning how to fly..

I explained the importance of learning things step by step on my blog; http://ift.tt/1q5h6Mq

The other day, I was commenting on a 4dan student in his mid-20s, who started playing Go at the age of 16. He is much, much stronger than most of my Go students. But he made some mistakes about not hitting the head of the two stones. He knows “hitting the head of the two stones”, and he knows how important this tesuji is. Yet, he couldn’t see them in two of his games in the middle of a game. In the first game a situation was rather simple, and in the second game a situation was very complicated.

People often don’t see an important tesuji especially when there are many stones and things are very complicated. Even if you’re a 4 dan or a 5dan players, it’s still not easy.

Why?

Answer: They haven’t practiced basic problems a lot.

How are they able to see that?

Answer: Learning basic problems once or twice is not good enough You have to solve them repeatedly with regard to that tesuji. Then they can try harder problems and solve them repeatedly.

( I sometimes suggest an opening in which that tesuji comes up often. But this doesn’t work for all tesuji. But the fact is that the more he plays that tesuji in a real game, the more easily the tesuji will become part of him. )

Only then will they recognize a particular tesuji even in a complicated situation.

I can present a 6dan tesuji, but that will only be harmful to you. So I won’t do that.

But you don’t have to learn 4dan or 6dan tesuji if you want to become a 1dan or 2dan.

via Go, Igo, Weiqi, Baduk. Kaz’s original Igo-advice & fundamentals of Igo http://ift.tt/1oTaUVL

August 01, 2014 at 08:38AM

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