A new study journal for a new goal. I've reached my goal of 1d and I did it in a satisfactory timeframe, but would have liked it to be a little faster though. As of writing this post, I play on 2d tygem and 1d KGS. I intend to study hard to reach atleast 3d KGS in a year. But that's only 2 stones, so you can say I'm aiming for more than 3d, but 3d is definitely minimum.

Here's the schedule I've put together so far. I would appreciate it if you could suggest some good books/lectures(guo juan's go school maybe), for me to improve fast.


Here is what I'll do so far. Lectures and books might be added on but so far this is the basic way I'll be studying. Maybe it'll give you ideas:)

Burst of tsumego, usually about 10-15. Then a break where I study Japanese for about 10 min. Then another Burst of tsumego. I will do this for atleast 3 hours a day, but will take breaks to play CS or watch anime/manga whenever I get tired out.

The tsumego I'm going through with this method is the tasuki tsumego collection. http://tsumego.tasuki.org/?page=tsumego

I'm working my way through Cho-2 Intermediate at a fast pace. If I feel like it, I might pop the LCH tesuji and tsumego sets aswell.

That's what I have in mind so far for improving fast. Now I'd like you to suggest some good books/lecture series to help me get stronger fast:)

I will try to keep this journal fairly updated but I won't post unless I have something to post about.

-Peace

Hey Nyuubi,

Congratulations on reaching 1 dan! I myself just reached 1 dan this week too, it's a great feeling isn't it??

I have put forth similar objectives for myself for this coming year, and I thought that since we are in quite a parallel situation as far as our go studies are concerned, maybe we could work together somehow!

How would you feel about playing 1 serious game per week or so, and then reviewing it together, and also showing each other any new josekis, openings or techniques we may have learned in the previous week?

BTW: I have a year membership with the guo juan lectures, and I think they are awesome!! I really recommend getting this.

All the best,
Dave

Good luck with Your goal, I don't know if the "burst learning technique" is better than just sitting one hour with tsumego, taking a break and sitting one hour with japanese, but most probably as a 1 dan You already know what ways of studying works for You

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Formerly Gorim

Yeah Gorim, I know that if I sit 1 hour with Tsumego I will be bored and feel like I'm forcing myself/burn out. If I do it in quick bursts I don't get bored easily and I can keep going longer. (No sexual innuendo intended! haha...)

And Dave! For sure I would like that. Sounds like a good idea to play someone of equal strength consistently and work over the games together. I'm definitely up for it. When would you like to play?

As a little update on my study methods. In the past I enjoyed playing over a few pro games now and then and I've recently taken to this again. Of course it takes some time, but it's so much fun. I also have a collection of random commented games, some by Go seigen and I could also start working through invincible again. But I feel playing over modern pro games helps in terms of what is being played professionally as openings. Sometimes I find a nice idea that I can use in my own games and it's a fun way of improving. So I'll be doing a bit of that now and then, whenever time allows.

Update: Recently I'm only playing in Tygem and I like the server very much, though it has its problems of course. I remember a discussion awhile back about how Tygem 1d was weaker than KGS 1d and after playing on tygem for awhile I'm not sure. It might just be that they have a different kind of strength. Generally players on Tygem are strong at reading but often play bad in fuseki and they try to capture all your groups and attack alot. Also alot of greedy overplay invasions that you must punish correctly if you must win. I think it's nice compared to KGS where people never get practice at repudiating such play.

In any case. I ordered Gokyo Shumyo and Igo-hatsuyoron books. I wanted to order Xuanxuan Qijing too but I didn't find it. The reason is that I'm going to Japan sometime in the next months to work at a resort and while I am there I want to use books to study since I might have to travel for internet connection. Also, it is more comfortable to sit on a beach in the summer than inside at a pc when doing tsumego don't you agree?

I'll have to finish Cho Chikuns enc intermediate and advanced before I start with Gokyo shumyo. My plan is to do Xuanxuan qijing after Gokyo shumyo, but all in due time...

I'm beginning to hate KGS more and more and like Tygem more and more, for various reasons...

I abandoned Cho's enc of tsumego and began going through all the LCH books (12 vols). I hope to finish them within may and maybe the first week of june. I'm currently on Vol 4 of tesuji and vol 3 of tsumego.

And regarding tygem ranks. They might have become stronger than they were a year or two ago. I remember reading a thread which stated that tygem dan ranks were atleast 2 stones weaker than KGS. It might still be kinda true, but either Tygem ranks are getting stronger or I'm just really unlucky with my pairings. I've had some seriously strong people. The kind of people who you play once and think is he a sandbagger? blast he's strong. Then you play him again cause he doesn't mind getting a second win and I manage to press him to +5.5 moku in endgame. He leaves immediately after. Not the game he expected. These players are overflowing on tygem@2d and some of them have like 8k wins and 8k losses it's insane lol. Anyway tygem is a great place to play and I'm looking to rank up to 3d soon.

http://www.igoindonesia.org/tutorial-go ... -hard.html

The link above changed my reading list to the 12 LCH vols. It states that after you complete them you're atleast 4d tygem. (going from 2d to 4d). And that's what I need right now. Since I'm going to work in Japan soon and there won't be much time for studying go at all. I arrogantly still hope to improve fast like I usually do, though:D

I'm also solving Yi Ch'ang-Ho's Life-and-Death and Tesuji series at the moment and I must say the Tesuji volumes are very strangly arranged. I found vol. 1 quite challenging (a year ago), vol. 2 quite refreshing because I knew almost all moves, vol. 3 very difficult in the beginning, vol. 4 was plainly a joke, I browsed through the book in half an hour and vol. 5 (I'm at it now) is yet on a different level (somewhere above vol. 3). But since I don't know chinese well enough, they might be arranged by some sort of theme rather than by difficulty.

The Tsumego series is different, I feel the difficulty raises from book to book (I'm at the 4th now).

Nevertheless, good luck with your progress. This link also changed my study plan a while ago and I almost have all the books needed to become 8D on Tygem - as if that counts for anything :P

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Ah well, all that's left is to go at it then :p

I found vol 1-3 of tesuji (The ones I've done so far) pretty easy most of the time. The tsumego set seems more balanced with regard to difficulty.

A little reflection on my style. As you know, I've only been playing on tygem recently and I see many different styles there. Some play influence oriented fuseki and try to kill kill kill. Others play über territorially and invade anything you make. I've tried playing different styles, experimenting with influence styles mainly. I lost 6 games in a row like that. As soon as I returned to my balanced style of taking territory and a bit of influence, I started winning games immediately. I'm not saying influence style is bad, I think it's great and I'm really good at it, theoretically. But when push comes to shove, the koreans on tygem simply read better than me at the same level. I need to work on my reading, for sure. I find the tesuji problems in LCH really easy, usually. But the tsumego of vol 3 was challenging and I got some of them wrong. Vol 4 should be even harder and I'm gonna slave away so I can improve my reading fast.

It's really annoying, playing influence style against people who read better than you. You establish a 30 point lead or more, your territories are mostly solid and you just need to wrap up the game, then one mistake and the game quickly becomes super complicated, I start running out of time and my opponent just outreads me in the battle.

A funny thing. I did Alexander Dinerschtein's strength test, and according to it, I'm 4d EGF... That just shows that I'm great at the game theoretically, but I lack reading capabilities. So I must work hard at that...

Ah yes, the other test, style, said my style is flexible. I think so too. I take both territory and influence. I remember reading in Invincible, the games of shusaku, that shusaku liked to take a mix of territory and influence in the fuseki. Not to compare myself with him or anything, but I find it encouraging nonetheless

Tygem is THE place, if you want to improve through playing games and reviewing them afterwards. It's also frustrating, so be sure you have a strong heart or be ready to develop the thick skin required to play on tygem. Rank doesn't mean much there when you're in the kyus/low dan, as many opponents will be significantly stronger than their rank states. For example, yesterday I met a guy who was 2d on tygem. After we played a bit I resigned and I said he was really strong. He admitted he was 4d korean ranking. (He had a pic on his profile too). He was really nice and we played some free games afterwards because he offered to teach me. I managed to lose by 1.5 in the last game, which was quite nice. The key to playing on tygem as opposed to KGS is to make sure your groups are fine and that you can't be split in two.

But I digress. I think it's good that there are so many strong players at lower levels even though it makes the ranking system kinda futile. It's a good way to improve but it's a bit hard on the self-esteem. You just have to remind yourself that you're playing an 'account' with 16k wins and 16k losses, then you should be fine. Oh how I've seen many of those lately. But the most common ones I see are people who have between 2-5k wins and losses. Endless hordes of people like that. And when you check their games, you see a whole bunch of losses in a string, then a whole bunch of wins. So..you know

Also, in korea 1 when it's night in korea, I can join and I usually play people whose rank correlates with their strength. In the morning and afternoon (korean time), I can't get into korea 1 so I end up going to Korea 3 or japan or something. There seems to be an extremely big amount of the aforementioned type of players in korea 3. Not quite as many in Japan, but still more than korea 1 (night). It may be because the kids have gone to bed by then

Anyway, I love tygem but it certainly has its own flavour.

How can he be 4d in Korea if he's only 2d on tygem, is he sandbagging?

Yes, of course he is. There's many of those on tygem:)
If players have huge strings of losses and wins, alternating between the two, then you can be almost certain you're dealing with a sandbagger. But I like the challenge of it.

my friend said the way to reach high level asap is "mimicking" stronger player moves.
it's funny but it's true.

I have to disagree. Maybe that works for DDK/SDK but for me it's not even worth considering such an idea. The last two games I played on tygem (3d level so far), I have looked up the opening in the moyogo database and even with the first game, which had a bit of a crazy opening with 6-4 and stuff, I was able to find games to look at. It is interesting to see how the pros play and In the second game, I was a bit shocked to find quite a few moves were the same as my game, except when my opponent deviated to play an outdated joseki where I had been expecting the joseki found in the kifu. That made me kinda happy since I hadn't expected to find it. It was an opening I'd never seen before too :O

Anyway, I have something to say about playing games. As in the famous igoindonesia article, I have found that with matches, it's quality that matters, not quantity. Some might disagree, but for my level atleast, I think 1 game where you try your best every move and review in depth afterwards, is worth atleast 10 'normal' games with no review afterward. What matters is what you learn from post-game review. How to handle a crosscut, maybe you find an interesting sagari, you look up how pros play that particular fuseki, a lightbulb turns on in your brain. Quality over quantity. It may be simple, but I realize I've underestimated the truth of this. To the extent that I myself have fallen pray to playing mindlessly, the only thing in my mind being rating and whether I will go up or down at the end of the game.

With Quality, you're only thinking about the game, and naturally you'll be stronger if you try to find good moves every move instead of playing mechanically. That Mechanical play is the bane of progression. You have to exercise your calculation muscle every game, every move. One thing is being told this, another thing is realizing it for yourself. Needless to say realizing it for yourself is much more powerful. Anything not realized by myself feels fake and shallow. That's also why Imitating other people's moves is not an option for me.


Oh yeah, by the way....I'm going to Okinawa to work at a super-nice beach resort hotel. And I found out that there's a go club only 3km from the hotel. Wooh!

Anyway. The contract starts in the beginning of July. By that time I want to be as strong as possible so I'll atleast finish the 12 LCH volumes. Gonna return back and burn through Cho's intermediate problems if I have time after that. I'll be printing some of the advanced problems and bringing them with me along with Gokyo Shumyo. While I'm there I'll try to do lots of tsumego when time allows for it, since I probably won't be able to play much for most of the week.

Guess that's all for now

Yes, I also can't imagine it. but it's the truth. yes,that's absolutely right.
quality over quantity. few months a go I only play with my instinct and don't read too much, but right now even though my reading is awful I'm trying to give my best move in each moves.

btw, may I know the articles?
Where do you come from? it seems that U do know about igoindonesia too?

Very very true, I think. Playing even 'obvious' moves casually is an awful mistake (that is very easy to make).


I also want to ask the same question as Osvaldo! Would you like to schedule a weekly serious game/review? I'm trying (very unsuccessfully) to break past 2d on KGS recently. (Actually, same question to Osvaldo, Sodesune if you're interested).

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

No, people here don't know about igoindonesia, except for this one famous article about how to get to strong dan. It has already been linked to in a posting above

Sure! Although I'm still weakish 1-kyu ; )

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Yeah I'd like to schedule a weekly game/review for sure. Just throw some numbers at me and I'll see if they fit into the clockwork

owh. I see.. there're a lot of players here that follow that guide?
I'm really appreciate for this. hopefully U all share a lot to ur buddy too. btw,this year tournament is coming up in 24 june. hopefully I can give nice game. I'll try to post my kifu later.