Nutshell:
— Be your own most severe critic!
From all the various sources for you to study, your own person is by far the most accessible and available to you. It is also a great resource because it is exactly the object you are attempting to change, so any and all adjustments you make to your play should be quickly apparent to you (and your opponents). And thus you will be able to react quickly to the direction these changes take.
The problem, however, lies in our imperfect personalities, in our egos which often prevent us from being able to evaluate ourselves objectively. How easy it is to blame out mistakes and losses on some external events like street noise or lack of sleep. How hard it is to look in the mirror and admit that you failed. And here lies the greatest danger of all - the danger of misleading yourself.
And don't kid yourself, please - we are all like that! You, me, he, she, and they, whoever they are! Its a curse of the human condition, I think. And the recognition of that fact is the first step to self-improvement.
Let me digress slightly here, and talk a little about a topic which falls more under the topic of etiquette - namely the on-line behavior of people. Once you start playing on the net, you will notice that some people behave strangely. There are several different ways this happens, from simple rudeness, through escapism, all the way to sandbaggism and other strange rank manipulations. I often wondered why would people behave like this on-line, while they would never do that stuff in the local club. Come to think of that, why are pedestrians on average more polite then drivers?
Well, I have a theory. Yes, I do!
And the theory goes like that: Some people have weak egos, they cannot face themselves and their own failures or shortcomings. The tendency is to point fingers and blame others for our own mistakes... and the larger or more stupid these mistakes are, the more we are convinced that its their fault. Sometimes to the point of anger or even rage. This is how strongly our egos refuse to accept failures.
In everyday life, this tendency is to a large degree balanced by the pressure of our environment (society, other club members, etc.) We refrain from acting out on what our egos tell us out of fear of social (or even physical) retribution, so we conform and adjust and are good little boys and girls pretending to be oh so brave and good and honest and unbiased and self-critical.
Now, put the very same people in a situation where the balancing forces are weakened or even removed, and you'll see what happens. Driving a car is one such environment (you are not afraid of what those around you think - you will never see them again, and even if you do, they will probably not remember you.) The anonimity of internet play is another such environment. If you mess up too much, you simply change your handle and voila - new persona with all past sins forgiven.
How does this all apply to Go, and specifically to our subject, the study of self? Well, taking what I said above into account, you might look at yourself as an environment in which there is no balancing elements which would prevent your ego from telling you that you are the best and that everything is somebody else's fault.
This kind of thinking has, to a certain extent, go out of the window if you are to be successful as a Go player. Now, you might still become one of those who let their ego run rampant on the web (although I hope not), but when you are by yourself, in a locked room, be careful! See yourself for what you are. True - the balancing influence is largely removed... but also their is no audience to be ashamed of in a case of failure. Let this be your balancing factor, the leverage you have against your ego - what happens in between the 4 walls of your mind, stays there! If you fail, nobody will ever know! If you admit to failure, ditto.
But, if you conquer your weakness, people will notice, trust me. If nothing else, it will directly translate into increase of playing strength. And maybe, indirectly, in more people calling you a friend? Who knows...
But enough of that blah blah, lets go back to the issue at hand.
You will never amount to anything if you make the same mistake twice! This is probably the most important piece of advice you can ever get! It is true in fighting, loving, and in Go. But what does it mean in the context of a beginner Go player?
It means that you should try to identify the reasons for your loss and then try to figure out how to prevent yourself from losing in the same way in the future. Easily said? Well, yes! :)
However, this is exactly what it means. Every game you lose, you did so because of your mistakes. No matter how brilliantly the other guy plays, he cannot possibly beat you unless you make a mistake! Right? So... having this straightened out, let me emphasize that to learn from yourself, you have to look at yourself.
Don't look at the good moves of the other guy too much, only in the context of how these moves were used to profit from your mistakes. How they laid bare your own inability to play stronger at that moment. And then look and concentrate on this inability... work on it, analyze it, find reasons for it, and get to its bottom. It is very hard, and one of the primary requisites for being successful at that is to be have an unbiased view of your own abilities.
Practically, the first step is to identify the position in which you made a mistake. And then try to find a better move you should have made. This might mean you have to look up on a joseki, or grab a life-and-death book to remind yourself how to kill a particular shape. Or some such, whatever. There are millions of possibilities for all the millions of mistakes you are bound to make, and hopefully correct.
There are two important issues here, which I sort-of glossed over in the previous paragraph. And neither of them is trivial.
The first is - how can you identify the position in which you made a mistake? Some mistakes are easy to spot... you ignored an atari, you played tenuki at a wrong time and your group died, you did not remember a joseki and messed up after some improvisation, and so on...
But other mistakes are not so easy. You just realize at some point that you are behind in the game, without losing anything major, for example. One of the methods to identify bad moves in such situations is to work your way backwards from the point in which it became obvious that mistakes have been made. On each move you ask yourself - could I have played better? Or, failing that, could I have played differently, so as to avoid the losing position some moves later? Often these two approaches are equivalent, but not always, by far!
In a sense, you now have a tool you did not have during the game - hindsight! You know what will happen if you play thus, so you have to play differently as to avoid the bad result. So use this tool!
Which brings us to the second question - how can you find a better move? I have partially answered it in the previous paragraphs, and I am afraid that I will have to leave it at that. At least - as far as the self-analysis is concerned. The topic is much too complex, and my own abilities much too limited to attempt to discuss it any further. Sorry.
If you feel you hit a dead end and cannot get anywhere by yourself, you can try asking strong(er) players for help, both in identifying major mistakes and in figuring out better ways to play.
Another important aspect of self-improvement next to learning from one's mistakes is working on expanding one's horizons. Its all intertwined, of course, one subject touching another, but let me explain...
The first step in self-improvement is self-evaluation, and the trick here is to identify one's weak and strong areas. In terms of Go game, it means you should be aware of what kind of games you like in general - be it fast fighting games, or slow strategy games, or dreamful moyo games, or whatever. And what kind of games you do poorly in or simply dislike.
Sometimes the evaluation is easy, especially if you're looking for your weaknesses. You might notice that you lose a majority of your games by dropping a large group... or by messing up a joseki, or that you feel you are even until the early yose but then somehow manage to still lose the game. All these, and more, are clues about your weaknesses.
It is usually somewhat harder to determine one's strong points. Clues here are not as much won or lost games, as the way your games develop. Do they contain brutal fights, or large moyos, or whatever, regardless of who you play? Well... this might indicate your likes and dislikes rather than your weaknesses and strengths, but often these are close by. After all, its stands to reasons that you are stronger in the areas you enjoy... and conversely, you usually enjoy more the areas you are stronger in. And vice versa.
So look at your games carefully, both as individual games, and as collections of games against the same and multiple opponents. Valuable clues are hidden therein. Clues that you most likely will have to uncover yourself, since, unless you have a steady teacher to review games with, it is only you who sees all your games in their completeness.
Now, once you have determined your strengths and your weaknesses, you have
to decide what to do about that. You can work on increasing your strengths...
Or you can work to remedy what ails you... Or both. Preferable is, of course,
to do both, but lets not forget that this is just a game, and you do what is
more enjoyable for you. Nobody can ever blame you if all you do it take the
easy road and work with your strengths. Nobody, but you! :)
So, after all this writing, let me offer you some practical, to the point advice.
Nothing is more important that this. Go through each of your serious games move-by-move, and decide why you lost (why you won is not so important here), and what do these games tell you about your overall pattern of play, about your likes and dislikes, about your strengths and weaknesses.
Try to figure out where you could have played better, stronger. And why
you didn't. Then try to remember these moves you failed to make so that
you won't fail to make them again. Engage strong(er) players here if you
are not sure. The
Go Teaching Ladder
is an invaluable resource here. But also, do not underestimate the more interactive
resources, like the
rec.games.go
and the
Sensei's Library.
Face-to-face session with local players are of immense value!
Quick Note:
Do not dismiss weak(er) players as partners in discussing your games. I found
out multiple times that even a player weaker than me can still teach me a thing
or two or even three. Everybody can know something you don't, even if the
overall playing ability is in your favor. I find the players who say or even think
"I can't learn nothing from a weakling like you" to be fools and sooner
or later they will have to pay for their foolishness.
Sounds strange, I know, but we seldom make moves which are perfect... which means that each move we make, even the good ones, can be improved upon. Do not become complacent because you winning games. Do not think that because you are getting stronger you do not need to look at your moves critically.
And do not diss those who tell you to!
The motto in the previous section about Games was "Take it easy!". Well, in this section, it is quite the opposite. You should take it hard! be your own most severe critic. Do not let your ego tell you how great you are. Do not blame your failures on external factors, even if they are at fault. Think what you could have done to avoid mistakes.
Conquer yourself!
And nobody will be able to conquer you.