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I published an article based on a series of emails I recently exchanged with Tei Meiko 9 dan - one of the official instructors during the time I was an insei in Japan.

As he commented most of my insei games back then, Tei Sensei’s wisdom is behind most of the lessons that I published so far.

The questions are mostly around how to study Go. Here are the things that I found very interesting:

• memorizing pro games is a popular study method (I used to be under the impression that it’s only a minority of the studying Go players using it)
• professional players do study Go books (I used to think the only Go books they study are game collections and joseki dictionaries, and that the vast majority of the books are written for amateurs, but I was wrong)
• professionals don’t use any pattern-matching software for studying Go
• memorizing joseki doesn’t hurt (contrary to some popular opinion in the amateur’s world); in general, “don’t read this until you are that level” is bad advice
• making progress at Go is really easy - just “read and play”: learn something new, apply it in your games; repeat until 9 dan.

Thank you for the nice advices, Tei Sensei!

I added some details to the “play a lot of fast games” advice - see this page. Just briefly, it’s not about playing with time limits that make you cry all the time, but it is about pushing yourself to play with lower time limits than what you are comfortable with.

Yamashita won the 3rd Kisei game by resignation, just like he did in the first two.

Looks like Kobayashi Satoru is not in good shape. I don’t know the professional verdict on this third game, but it seemed to me that after the first day, with black so strong in the center and white struggling for life on the lower side, white had a difficult game already. Please let me know if any of you followed the pro comments!

One interesting position in the second day of the game was the following, after move 83: it is white’s turn.

The position is complicated, so it is very instructive to pretend you are white and decide where to play next - this is actually the basis of studying pro games, just pretend it’s yourself playing, think what you’d play, then compare with what happened in the game.

Another interesting question, about the same position: analyse the status of the white group in the lower right: it has 2 eyes, right? Well, there is a small catch: there is something that black can try, only it doesn’t quite work yet. What’s the furthest black stone that, would that be present on the board, the attack would succeed?

This is a good question to ask, because in the heat of the game we often forget that the status of a group can change when the surroundings change.

It is still day 1 in the third Kisei game - but a major fight was already consumed, and another one is about to begin.

Here are 2 quizzes from this first day of playing.

Problem 1

Black to play - choose from A to G. Pay attention at both areas of influence and potential territory, but also at groups and balance of power. Shall black play in the largest open area (A), or invade and put pressure on white in the lower left (B), or make a base for his own weak group (C), or attack from the center (D), or connect below (E), or take white’s base away while expanding (F), or strengthen his main area, the right side (G)?

Problem 2

Black to play - choose from A to F. Since the lower side is a hot area, all suggested moves are concentrated here. Shall black connect with A (to get strong before attacking), or attack from the outside (B or C), or take white’s base away (D or E), or play a large territorial move, threatening white from a distance (F)?

The third game of the top Japanese pro title, Kisei, starts today.

It “starts” today because it’s a 2 day game, so most of the excitement usually happens in the second day. I’ll watch it on Cyberoro and update my Kisei 2007 page as the game develops.

I intended to write my thoughts on the 2nd game as I watched it live on Cyberoro, but that good intention was “ruined” by the fact that Cyberoro published live variations to each move, which I believe to be the comments of the professional(s) following the game, and I just impatiently opened each one as it became available, so I only added my thoughts on those - which was definitely entertaining, but not the best learning experience for me.

So what I plan for this third game is to try to think, at each and every move, what I would play, and write down my thoughts, and only later look at the variations on Cyberoro.

I got a request from someone on godiscussions.com to have a look at a game he played and comment on it - which I did. The game is between 2 players who recently learned Go.

That inspired me to write some steps that people who are just starting Go should follow in the beginning to speedup their learning process and to make sure they are moving in the right direction. I posted them in the end of my “What is Go?” page, and I’m reproducing them here:

If you just learned the rules of Go, you may wonder what are the next steps in your Go career. Here is what I think you should do:

1. Play something like 50-100 games with another beginner. Teach the rules to a friend, or a family member, or a coworker - and play a lot of games together, just concentrating on capturing stones. Whoever captures more stones wins. In case you cannot find someone to play with, see step 4 below: play on an online Go server instead.
2. Read the “Lessons in the fundamentals of Go” book. It will not only mention the step 1 above, but it also provides a lot of very useful information about Go: fundamental concepts, how to study, and many interesting things about the professional Go world.
3. Read the Graded Go problems for beginners book. This will teach you about basic Go tactics.
4. Play a lot of games online. Try to apply what you read from books in your games. Register with some online Go server (there are links to several of them here) and get to play with various opponents of different levels - it is important to get exposed to various playing styles.
5. Follow my “how to improve” list
6. Check the list of books I recommend - some of which I consider “must reads”.