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BGonline.org Forums
my plan for improving, does it look good?
Posted By: Smcrtorchs In Response To: my plan for improving, does it look good? (Tenland)
Date: Tuesday, 20 November 2012, at 1:19 a.m.
I am not sure if I can tell you how to do better what you are planning. Maybe telling you the mistakes i have done while studying can help you though.
1) I never revise. This is a huge mistake and it is not only about the fact that someone forgets. At least I learn in circles. And with this I mean that I cannot understand fully an area unless i have understood fully every area of backgammon. Instead I started by understanding every area of backgammon, bit by bit, a little better . Once this was done, I felt like i have done a "backgammon cricle". I think it took many months to perform my first full circle. After that circle, I was able to look deeper at what backgammon is as a whole. I was able to connect the pieces better. This allowed me to see new things in every area and better my understanding of each area again by a bit. That was my second "backgammon circle". Since then I did not stop doing circles, and if I have time to study in the future, I do not expect that I will stop doing circles. Since I am not revising, connecting the pieces together and completing a circle becomes more difficult as well. At least for me, the setback, appears to be double.
At this point, I should probably give credit to Phil Simborg, as a few months ago on this site I asked if it is a good idea to study each area of the game separately, and he told me that to study better, I should never forget that those areas are all connected. Or at least this is what i remember he told me now. Sorry if I paraphrased that wrong. It was the best advice for me at that point and it led me in making those circles. I think this advice had helped me on its own considerably.
2) I always try to understand things that are more complicated than my level. I find much more fun in understanding something that I know it is hard to understand. The thing is that when someone does not know the basics or even some advanced material of backgammon and he tries to understand complicated positions and issues, in the best case, he will only partially understand those issues. In the worst case, he will understand the position - issues wrong and he will make many more mistakes from what he understood wrong. So my advice here is when you do not understand a position, ask your self: do I have the background to understand this position? If not, I believe it is better to save it somewhere and check it again after a "backgammon circle." Ask then your self again then the same question. If your answer is yes, only then look at it. The advantage of this method is that your time will not be wasted. And yes this might mean leaving for later a bunch of positions. The ideal would be to follow a process that lets you try and understand many positions that are difficult - unknown to you, but for which you have the background to understand them. Maybe a good way to do so, would be by trying to search further around a group of positions that are found in a book or online. By saying a group I mean many positions around the same subject + their variations. If you search near those groups, you can always have a good reference point. Of course as I said I can only give such advice and not follow it.
3) When I play backgammon, I am often not fully focused. Well better not do this at all. When I am fully focused and I try to use every bit of knowledge I know-have, not only I play better, but most importantly I can see and track my mistakes better. This happens because I develop a theory about why each move is the best and I can track in real time the mistakes of my thinking process. This is by far different from just seeing a position and understanding the correct move. If someone keeps correcting his in game thinking process, he has a good chance to make the correct thinking process next time. If someone understand at a specific position why a move is better, but does not take the time to modify his thinking process, then most likely next time he will repeat the same error. This is the only point that I follow as closely as I can from everything I propose.
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