How to Study and Improve at Go (Baduk, Weiqi)

Play Games

Playing games is essential. Make playing games your top priority to retain what you learn and apply it in games. You don’t want to only play games; you need to add new ideas and experiment with them. You don’t want to always be studying and never play, but you also don’t want to play all the time and never study. Use a variety of servers to expose yourself to different styles. Avoid becoming too comfortable on a single server. After each game, switch servers when possible to experience a broader range of players and moves. This keeps you adapting and learning. If a server is more popular and convenient, still aim to rotate to others regularly.

Review Your Games

After each game, review it yourself first. Look for areas you could improve, analyze why you won or lost, and identify mistakes. If you can get help from a stronger player, you should do that. Reviewing yourself before asking others deepens your understanding. For example, if you felt that you lost the game because of a joseki mistake, but the stronger player says that was fine and you actually lost in a fight in the middle game, then you can more clearly see that you were wrong and can learn from it immediately. If you had skipped your self review and just listened to the stronger player, the impact would not be as great because you did not get direct feedback on what you thought was wrong versus what the stronger player thought was wrong. Avoid relying on AI for reviews, as AI cannot explain its reasoning and may lead to simply copying moves. It might say something is the best move, but it’s only the best move because of something it read 30 moves ahead. The goal is to understand, not just copy moves.

Bonus Tip

One thing you can do to help speed up improvement is to take notes after
each game and review. Write down what you think is the reason you lost and
what you could have done differently. After you have a good set of games,
you can go back and look at the most common reasons you have been
losing. Then focus more on that topic to fix your biggest weakness.

Read Books

Reading Go books that teach you the fundamentals is crucial. Applying new ideas from what
you read will help you improve, rather than just hoping to get things right by chance. I
recommend starting with “Fundamental Principles of Go” by Yilun Yang if you are around 12k or higher. Janice Kim has a series of 5 books called “Learn to Play Go”. The first two books are great for beginners, and books three to five will benefit almost any rank. After these, move on to books like “Playing the Endgame: A Brief Introduction” by William S. Cobb and “How Not to Play Go” by Yuan Zhou. Any book by Yuan Zhou is worth reading, as he covers pro games and core fundamentals.

Tsumego

Tsumego is a very important step because reading is the most important part of the game. You can get to a high level without tsumego. I never did tsumego until I was already a high dan player. However, this made me inconsistent, and I would lose games very suddenly because I would miss something and die. So now I’m doing a lot of tsuemgo, trying to catch up. But if I had just done it from the start, I think I would be much stronger and would have reached high dan quicker and been more consistent.
Make tsumego a consistent habit. Set a manageable daily goal even just one easy problem a day. Choose problems you can solve in less than a minute to build up gradual improvement. Occasionally, dedicate time to harder problems to stretch your reading ability.
The way you solve any tsumego is normally the same. You want to try to read every possible
move you can for both sides from start to finish. And then try to find the best variation for both sides, not just you. The goal of tsumego is not to solve the problem, but to develop your reading skills. Reading more clearly and as far as you can. When starting out, this may be a tsumego that has very few moves, with only two possible variations for both sides, and both are short variations. A great place to practice tsumego is Tsumego Hero. It offers a variety of sets for all skill levels.

Important!

These first four steps are the most important. Build the habit of reading part of a chapter, then play and apply what you learned, review the game, and, if possible, get a stronger player’s feedback. For most books, read just one chapter at a time for the best results. Go books are unlike other books, where you read from front to back. You need to absorb and practice each concept before moving on to the next. After practicing, reread the book later until you can recall and apply everything it teaches.

Study Classical Pro Games

Studying professional games helps you develop a good sense of where to play in a game. It
shows you the fundamental shapes and moves. It will also show you how a game should flow. Flow refers to how the game should be played naturally and intuitively. Rarely are moves forced in pro games.

I would find a player in the 1900s to study. That matches a style you like. and try to review as many of their games as possible. After reviewing a few of their games, try to emulate their play style in your own games.

A few pros I would recommend are Ishida Yoshio, known for his endgame; Cho Chikun, known for his territorial style; Kato Masao, known for his fighting; and Takemiya Masaki, known for his focus on taking influence and building the center of the board

How to review pro games

Step 1

Play through the whole game just looking at the moves, just getting used to the flow they are
played in.

Step 2

Split the games into parts such as opening, middlegame, and endgame. Opening is typically
characterized by the enclosures, side extensions, and joseki. Once all the joseki are played and the extensions are made, the opening is usually done. The middle game is where most of the invasions and fighting are played. If there are no more weak groups, the endgame typically begins. You don’t have to pick the perfect places to start and stop each section. It usually helps to break up the game and study it in parts. Start with the opening, then proceed to the middle game, and finally, the endgame. When you start with the opening, see each move and then ask yourself why this move was played. Try to give it a reason. You don’t have to be correct. Even if wrong, you are developing your own understanding of the game. Do this for each part of the game. Continue until you feel that you have given each move meaning and understand the game better.

Step 3

Now try to play the game from memory. If you have given each move a meaning, it should be
much easier to remember each move and the order. Mark down the moves you don’t remember or if you mess up the order. Later, go back and restudy those parts, trying to understand them better and give the moves more meaning. Continue until you can play the entire game from start to finish from memory. Once you can do this, then you are ready to move on to the next game.

Most importantly, focus on enjoying the game. Choose improvement methods you enjoy and can stick with. If you dislike a part of this process, skip it. There are always alternative ways to improve, so find one that works for you.