Ah, okay.

Yeah, I was able to beat three stronger friends with the usual handicap (4H/3H/2H), which they gave me before I started with this "program". On 4H and 3H it was the first time for me to beat them ^^

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

So, a little bit of an update.

I finished "Tesuji" today and plan to reread it the following week. I learnt a lot from it and I want to make sure, that I know where to search for the different Tesujis (shapes for instance).
Then I'm doing "Graded Go Problems For Beginners Volume 4" right now. I finished the first part already (I have done 131 problems in total) and now it gets difficult. I spent half the day on six problems and finally managed to solve five of them right (I knew how to solve the sixth but I didn't see White's strongest response, so my first move was wrong).

Still no "Attack and Defense" and "38 Basic Joseki", I think reading practice and Tesujis are more important right now.

In my 5k-series I have 2 wins to 1 defeat. I could say, the defeat was unnecessary because I played a bad endgame and omit a very important capping play, but well, that's part of my "strength", too, so no excuse ^^
More games tomorrow.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I wonder how much playing is included in your "month of pain".

(I like reviewing my old games. It hurts enough - at least with my games - to be part of your program.)

Even only reviewing your games is more than most people do.

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FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

I played 18 games on KGS, 1 on WBaduk and like 6 face-to-face, so average one game per day so far. I reviewed them all by myself and with stronger friends.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Okay, tournament ended today and I couldn't meet my goals. I scored 2 wins to 3 defeats, from which one was inevitable since I had to play against a 3 Kyu.
The rest, well,... I could actually have won under some sort of better circumstances ^^

In game 1 (against a 6k) I think I played a horrible opening and let my opponent build up a framework from his Low-Chinese, I had to attack and he let me live quite easily without getting much in return (wrong Joseki choice). Then I think, I was too obsessed with his fourth line "territory" around his Hoshi stone, so I invaded San-San harming my group which now had to face his thickness. He attacked this group while strengthening another and gave me nice fourth line territory. But I was afraid that he could kill my group facing his thickness so I played a move to defend the group or to connect it. Well, he didn't care and destroyed my just build up territory ^^
Later he misread a cut and I was able to kill a very large group of him (~32 points), because of this I could access the center, where his only territory was left. He gave up in the endgame but not without almost killing a group of mine, where I arrogantly thought would definitely live but again he let me of the hook quite easily, I just lost 6 stones.

Game 2 (against a 6k) suffers from the long first game (never played over one hour before) and from my stomach working on food. Furthermore all of my weaknesses emerged within my second opponent: He likes to play Moyo and invades everything. In the middlegame I was already 30 points behind, then he somehow let me cut off a tail of his corner which made the game fairly close. Sadly, I got cocky and played a Gote move in the endgame, threatening to kill a group in two more moves (what a nonsense to plan with...), he played like 5 Sente moves and then defended correctly... and he won by 1.5 points.

Game 3 was against an 8 Kyu and was luckily nothing thrilling. She misread a couple of things, so I captured a lot of cutting and reduction stones. I won by 10 points, although I missed a double Atari in the endgame and thus losing ~10 points.

In game 4 I had to face a 3 Kyu friend of mine. We usually play with 2 handicaps stones for me and then I have a good chance to beat him. In an even game, well..., after a douzen moves I already felt uncomfortable ^^ Furthermore I screwed up a reduction and missed two enormous reduction moves in my own territory and so he won fairly easy with 20 points.

The last game was against a 7 Kyu friend, who is actually 6 Kyu like me but well, she started at 7 Kyu ^^ I had several direction of play faults in my game and was too obsessed with defending my territory, which lead to her building up a big center territory. Later on I again missed a double Atari, so I had to resign. For fun we played out the endgame nontheless and she won by a good handful of points.
At least she scored 4 wins with this and won one volume of the Go World Magazine, which had very interesting Tesuji problems inside (although "diffcult" was solved within one minute : D).


Yeah, and this is it! So, one can say 6 Kyu EGF fits but more of a weak 6 Kyu right now.
I'm going to sit down in the next days and elaborate on how I plan to move on, but I think it will come down to doing at least ~20 Tsumegos a day ("Graded Go Problems for Beginners Volume 4"), starting with "501 Tesuji Problems" at the same time, after "Graded Go Problems for Beginners Volume 4" I think I will work through "1001 Life-and-Death Problems" again.
Then I plan to buy "Making Good Shape" and all volumes of Shuko's "Basic Tesuji Dictionary". Or does somebody knows a better problem book for Tesujis?


Thanks to all of you for cheering over this four weeks, it was fun and it was definitely worth it : )

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

It sounds like you would benefit greatly from spotting all double ataris

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Thanks for posting your story, it has been interesting to follow along and cheer for you. The important thing to remember is, even if you didn't reach your goal, you still improved. So it's not all for naught. Keep us posted on how things go. Sounds like getting more used to this sort of tournament game will help as well.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

You have improved at least two stones in almost no time. That is a very big achievement in these regions I think. Congratulations.

Get on with reading attack and defense. It's a wicked book!

Looking at your graph, I see you get 2 stone stronger in Jun, a jump in your graph. So it really works. I should read this post again from the begining to see if I can make some plan for myself.

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长考出臭棋.

I hope it'll be helpful. In summary I can say, I have benefit the most from doing a lot of Tsumegos and Tesujis - easy to intermediate difficulty.
And playing of course. Experience is the second important factor in my improving.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go