Message-Id: <9306202200.AA28473@thor.INS.CWRU.Edu>
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 93 18:00:12 -0400
From: smg6@po.CWRU.Edu (S. Max Golem)
To: smg6@thor.INS.CWRU.Edu
Subject: More Go stuff.
Reply-To: smg6@po.CWRU.Edu (S. Max Golem)


Greetings-

>>One of the traditional ways to get stronger is to do lots of
>>fairly easy problems quickly, without laboring carefully over
>                      ^^^^^^^

Jonathan Cano writes:

>what's quickly? 60 seconds, 30 seconds, less?

I suppose this depends on the person.  The idea is to keep away from
investing relatively large amounts of one's time studying tough
problems before an intuitive understanding of basic principles has
been gained.

For myself, if I spend more than five or ten seconds on a problem, I
pencil a check mark next to it and go on to the next one.  Later I
go over the checked problems more carefully.  My goal when I'm fin-
ished with the book is to be able to solve each problem with little
more than a glance; this is the intuitive understanding that you
should strive for when going through a problem book.  (Though I
don't think I've ever managed to do that with every problem in a
book 8^)

>>each subtree of variations.  The idea is to build up your
>>intuition in recognizing vital points and reading out their
>>continuations first.  

>I've used mgt to read and edit SmartGo files and I've read and replied
>to ascii diagrams in rec.games.go.  Here's my assessment of the two
>formats.
>
>ASCII'S ADVANTAGES: 1) Low overhead; you simply read the mail messages
>you receive.  If you want to comment on a position you simply invoke
>the editor from within your mail reader.  With mgt you must save each
>SmartGo file and then load it into mgt for viewing and editing (like
>adding your own commentary). 2) lowest common denominator; everyone on
>the mailing list already has a mail reader with an editor and THEY
>KNOW HOW TO USE THESE TOOLS.

MG:  Ummm.  Can anyone recommend a good mail reader for MS-DOS?

>MGT/SMARTGO ADVANTAGES:
>on a terminal - I find it much easier viewing a file of problems with
>mgt that looking at an ascii file.  compare logging into IGS without a
>client program to using the IGS ascii client to see what I mean.
>
>printing - people may want to print out collections of go problems.
>The sgf2ps program transforms a SmartGo file into a beautiful set of
>postscript Go diagrams.  Ascii diagrams look, well, ascii :^(
>
>editing/creating new diagrams: mgt beats ascii editing hands down.
>With a text editor you must create a new ascii board for each diagram
>(cumbersome), sequences are show with numbers (yuck) and variations
>require duplicating diagrams.  What can I say about mgt?  It's purpose
>is to view and edit SmartGo files!  Try a SmartGo reader/editor (mgt,
>Xmgt or the original - SmartGo for the Mac)!!
>
>FINAL ANALYSIS: People are more likely to participate in roundtable
>discussions with an ascii format because they don't have to leave
>their mail readers to do so.  More participation is good for a
>roundtable type discussion!  Mgt is much better for viewing and
>editing a large number of Go diagrams.

>>I've run across eight Japanese Go books that we might try working
>>our way through:
>>
>>   9-kyu Fuseki
>>   9-kyu Tesuji
>
>I think we should work from the bottom up.  The above books get my vote.

Thanks for your letter, jonathan.

Max.