4 May 2014
*Did problems 522-545 in Cho Chikun's elementary
*Went over game #6 in Invincible
*Played a game against a 3k and won a ranked game.
*Went over a Fujisawa Shuko vs Hashimoto Utaro game to 55 moves with a 5k. I think it was as much indepth as I could go.
You can't really read the comments in sequential order but they're there.

*Watched Bat's KGS Series - 02 - 4kyu + Ina!

5 May 2014
*Did problems 546-576 in Cho Chikun's elementary
*Went over game #7 in Invincible
*Watched Bat's Lecture Series - Oct 19th - Take Turns.

I ordered a new book yesterday. I know I should be re-reading the ones I have but still, they tend to get stale.

6 May 2014

*Did problems 577-600 in Cho Chikun's elementary
*Went over game #8 in Invincible
*Played this game against an aga 1d (Online he doesn't think as hard as is 5k. Or so he claims) I got a review afterwards, and even though I resigned when the difference was sub 20 points, there were a lot of places I could've kept A lead. Or less of a behind-ness. Here's the review-sgf. In-game chat is mixed with review chat.

*Read the entirety of direction of play - State standardised testing. Finished a 4 hour test in one hour and, well...

Hi Abyssinica, very serious problems with broken shapes.
- , terrible. Broken shape.
- , , terrible. Broken shape.
- , see Toothpaste .
- 129, terrible. Broken shape.

In essence: Stop trying to be fancy and make less broken shapes. Black 43 was what I intended to do though because it looked like it makes my moyo bigger and I can live on the other side, so I went for it. Black 27 was from a willingness of not wanting to tenuki or break proverbs "Pushing from behind" At black 129, I planned to play m14 anyways and thought I could use some extra strength(? Even though it's still 4 to 4 liberties).

Not sure what you mean.
That "proverb" is a huge trap; I fell into it many times.
has nothing to do with pushing from behind, and neither does the correct block S10 --
that "proverb" has nothing to do with the local situation; huge misunderstanding.

makes a Toothpaste and hurts your D12 group. G12 instead is better. 129 is completely wrong. It does the opposite: you hurt yourself, you make yourself weaker, you make W stronger, and you make your local shape worse.

7 May 2014

And I will repeat to myself 10,000 times, "Do not create broken shapes." When I eat I will tell myself not to do this. When I shower I will sing this. When I play with legos I will not make them.

*Did problems 601-616 in Cho Chikun's elementary
*Went over game #8 in Invincible
*Watched Nick Sibicky Go Lecture #23 - Utilizing Thickness

Still waiting on my book to come in; the tracking thing from GGG says to expect it by the 7th of May, but they always lie. Also I'm completely sick of Life and death problems and should've probably bought Get strong at Tesuji or something else rather than Endgame. I looked at a random XuanXuan Qijing problem and I swear it was in Cho Chikun's elementary. Sadly I can't find the problem number at the moment.

You missed the very important "bad."
Later, you'll learn there are, as always in Go, broken shapes
that are correct and even good, even pro-level broken shapes.

Go is so deep.

See Post #2 of this thread.

Likely at this level it's okay as a rule of thumb to just not do it until you can see ways in which they are good, I think. Just like the "Don't create empty triangles" pseudo-proverb. Yes, I have found a few good empty triangles, but they're moves I have to think about and I do not just create them at random just because. (Most of the time, hopefully.)

8 May 2014

*Redid problems 1-50 in Cho Chikun's elementary as well as did 617-652 Someone gave me the bright idea of going back through all the easy, beginning problems as a sort of warm-up before going on to the main problems. Essentially, going through all the easy ones quickly while going through new ones is better than just forging through new ones, and I agree. I went through 50 of them in almost no time, and it feels completely different to when I started doing these problems. Besides that, somehow I managed to get 35 new ones done. The time just seemed to go by as I went through one after another.
*Read a bit out of Endgame. My go book collection is increasing. http://i.imgur.com/94PeoC7.jpg
*Went over game #10 in Invincible.
*Watched Studying Professional Go Games - Legend88 - 01
*Kgs 9k! Won my last 7 games in a row as a 10k and finally ranked up!

I'm sdk now. I'm ready to game with the big boys.

9 May 2014
Testing all day today (8 hours ) - didn't feel like doing tsumego when I got home since I usually do it at school.
*Watched Studying Professional Go Games - Legend88 - 02
*Went over game #11 in invincible.
*Read some more out of endgame I'm not reading it to study it now, just reading it for fun!

You know, I had a conversation with someone a few days ago that went like this:



I always wondered how people in the past, without acess to the resources we have now, got really strong, and it lead to this conversation. Instead of going through the pdf like I did/do, I think I might take my time with #12. I printed out the pages from the pdf and I think I might try what Wasuji suggested. Sadly I have double convex stones, so variations will be a pain, but I'll see what happens!

Also, I remember someone telling me a while ago that at around 8k you will realise how much you don't know about this game. In the past 20 days, I have gained around two stones and it feels like I've lost 10. All that's happened was that I've been playing, and playing, and playing, and then suddenly I have to ask myself why all of my moves are suddenly really terrible and I'm still winning! Helsbecter was right; it did finally happen.

11 May 2014
*Did problems 91-100 as well as 676-687 out of elementary Life and death life and death so much life and death
*Read a bit out of chapter 2 of endgame and the first half of Opening theory made easy
*Watched Nick Sibicky Go Lecture #70 - Gu Li vs Li Zhe (AGAIN)
Bat's - Studying Professional Go Games - 04 - Shusaku
*A little bit more out of Invincible game #12, though not that much I think later I have to ask myself, why would you respond here? Why not just tenuki? etc.


What is go about? Really, if you ask me that now I'll say that I have no clue. I could just say, "It's to make more points than your opponet," but then I could share a quote an amateur 4d gave me. "But by that logic we should open at 3-3 and then just make a series of two space jumps along the third line for as long as our opponent lets us." Okay, so it's not just about making more territory, but then what is it? I could say it's about the strength and weaknesses of groups, but I don't feel comfortable with this answer. If there aren't large moyos on the board, I don't see where people are getting their points from. In relation to that, I don't feel comfortable making moves that don't at least gain me some points. I'm not talking about the capture of one tiny stone that should be saved for endgame vs somewhere else because I'm pretty sure I can tell that the capture is too small. I would even be hesitant as to gain a large amount of influence if that influence did not immediately make a large moyo for myself. If it was just a wall facing nowhere, I wouldn't feel right having it. I'd even be scared to think that the wall could come under attack because walls don't have eyes despite the fact that I know (if the wall was truly thick) the wall was fine and I can make profit elsewhere by attacking things towards the wall. But what if my opponet plays to make my influence seem worthless? Is that stone he played to erase my influence really working? Can I attack/kill it? I don't know! All I know is that I'm not strong enough to punish if it is an overplay!

Going back to making points, let's say I have a weak group. Sure, defending it doesn't necessarily make me any more points, but the reason you can't do whatever you want when you have a weak group is (I think), that if you allow your opponet to kill it, then the territory they gain by killing said group will dwarf whatever you gained by playing elsewhere, thus, you have to defend it. It won't make you many points, but it will stop your opponet from gaining a large amount. When I was 15k or thereabouts, I used to be territorial to the point where my opponets got game-winning influence. That only existed for a little while, but I think I still have it even now. So what is go about? I have no clue. If I go to wikipedia's page on Go and look at ranks, then 9k is at the weak edge of "intermediate player." I can say with 100% certainty that if you ask me something about the game or go over a board position with you, I will respond with, "I have no clue what I'm talking about." And even when it comes to score, I won't even be able to tell how many points are needed to win while in the midst of a game.

Game with Dsaun. He says I'm visibly improving, and robertT took over from the position at which I resigned. Will edit in the results.





B+0.5

If this is truly how you feel, you're improving.

12 May 2014
*Did problems 101-120 as well as 688-708 out of elementary
*Watched Bat's Low Chinese Fuseki Lecture Sadly it's in really poor quality which is why I've been avoiding it for so long.
*Game #12 still. The next topic will be trying to find reasons as to why white didn't ignore X or Y and etc.

Should have ordered 1001 tesuji problems or get strong at tesuji. I think I might just do that. Buy all the books! ALL OF THEM!

13 May 2014

*Did cho chikun's elementary problems 709-734 and 121-137.



Despite the fact that problems were tedious when I was first starting, I think they're better without the answers. There's no temptation to look up the correct answer when a problem seems too hard. Yes, I've had those occasionally in this collection, but so what? And even if you get the wrong answer, your reading improves. Maybe it doesn't visibly improve, but if you go back to a problem after you have more experience, you'll be able to solve it and may even remember getting the wrong answer sometime in the past.

*Did chapter 2 problems in Endgame I got 6k on the results, so that's something. I did spend a lot of effort I wouldn't have put into an actual game into it though.
*More of game 12. I'm just dragging it out doing a bit at a time. I originally started it as a diversion, so I don't feel that this is doing any harm, and it's probably waay more useful that way too.
*Watched Greatest Games Ever Played - Episode 01 - Go Seigen vs Fujisawa Kuranosuke - 1953

14 May 2014

*Did problems 735-747 as well as 138-151 out of Elementary.
*Did macroendgame problems out of Endgame. I didn't really go into the detail of the moves, I just answered with what looked biggest and checked my answers. I got 3-2k, but didn't think too hard about the problems. Of course, a multiple choice answer is always easier than a board with no help.
*Game #13 I think it's time to retire #12 and move on. I'm way too weak to go into too much detail, so I might as well move on and return later. There's 80 or so games, so when I come back, which will be in a while, who knows where I'll be?
*Watched Batt's lecture on kgs.