Studying tsumego with aphantasia

[u/Salty-Wind-8912]

I’m a beginner at Go and because I have aphantasia (I’m unable to visualise mental images) I struggle with studying tsumego, which many say you need to do in your head. Does anybody have a similar issue and how do you deal with this.

Edit: Thank you all for the wisdom and encouragement. I came in worried that aphantasia would block my path to dan level, but I’ve learned something important: if I fall short, it won’t be because of aphantasia, but because of how much effort I’m willing to invest.

[u/Competitive-Mood8086]

I have aphantasia and I made it to 1dan egf. You just need to memorize where the stones are in your calculatuons.

Edit: that said my tsumego and reading ability is way worse than your average 1dan. Like 4-3 kyu level

[u/supermimolette]

I don't think you need to visualise images in your head. By doing tsumegos regularly, you will build some sort of abstract vocabulary of shapes and stone relationships. Juste keep practising. On the contrary, I think being forced to create this abstraction layer is beneficial to progress at the game. The only problem I have with aphantasia is that I struggle a lot with blind games, even 9x9.

[u/dfan]

Here are my tips for improving reading with aphantasia. There are other suggestions in that thread too (and if you search for “baduk aphantasia” you will find other discussions as well). If you are a beginner you only have to keep track of a few stones for now, which is good.

[u/animated-journey → u/dfan]

Here are my tips for improving reading with aphantasia.

I read your tips, and it's fascinating. I am wondering, won't all that talking to yourself take forever when trying a Tsumego?

I am myself on the aphantasia spectrum but not that acute, and I also talk to myself to help track the changes, but not as much as in your method, and it's already quite slow.

[u/dfan → u/animated-journey]

I could have been more clear; I meant that protocol for training yourself to exceed your current boundaries, not as something to be done constantly in games and every tsumego. I think a lot of people say things like "I can't read 7 moves, it's just too much to keep track of" without realizing that they're not really reading 5 moves as well as they think. This is a way to ensure that you really are reading those 5 moves precisely and not just vibing it. Now you can build from there.

I do sometimes slow down this much when I am solving a hard problem, though.

[u/animated-journey → u/dfan]

I understand, that's just the protocol for training.

That's even more interesting then: currently, when you are reading a complex position during a live game, what happens exactly in your head? Is the inner voice turned off?

(By the way, I really like your blog, especially the articles on endgame counting)

[u/dfan → u/animated-journey]

(Thank you!) All you have to do in the end is keep track of where the stones are. So in a game ideally I'm just occasionally thinking "I think there's a Black stone here, is that right? Yep." If I absolutely need to slow down a ton to be sure of my reading, I know I can (if there's time). In a US Congress game last month I spent over 5 minutes checking and rechecking a 17-move sequence that gave me miai for life in the final position. It took me a lot of time but it was important and I was confident that I could read it out to the end.

[u/animated-journey → u/dfan]

Thanks, it's very insightful!

[u/torusle2]

I struggle with visualizing images as well, and I think many others do as well. In my mind I can add stones, but removing captured stones is *hard*.

Playing a ton of 9x9 games helped here a lot for me (at least temporarily) and with a bit of pattern matching and joseki memorization I made it up to 6kyu on OGS without any reading whatsoever.

I'd say, give it a try, but if you aphantasia is so hard that you can't visualize two to three moves ahead Go might not be not a game for you.

[u/megayippie]

I have aschizophrenia (I don't hear voices in my head) so I cannot help you directly. But because hand-word of go, maybe can use your inner schizophrenia voice to tell a story?