I still sometimes lose games by not realizing some stones are in atari, or putting the stones in atari myself (auto atari). When will I be strong enough to no longer make these silly mistakes?

Sensei: "I don't know, but when you do figure it out will you let me know?"

Makes me feel slightly better about some of my losses. Nothing is worse than finding that your brilliant 17 move plan requires your opponent to not capture your ataried group.

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1k KGS

I think Nakano Yasuhiro played his famous dog hand to relieve players from 30k to 9d from the frustration that comes with missing a simple atari or self-atari. He is one of the best teachers all of us have ever had.

I guess we all have these experiences. I recently played a friend who hasn't played go in 3 years and would have trouble attaining a 20k rank on KGS. In a 13x13 game we played, I missed an atari and I had to resign after he didn't make any more mistakes for the rest of the game. On the other hand, we shouldn't forget that we used to make a lot more of these mistakes. I was a grandmaster of self-atari when I first started playing, and now seem to have lost some of my ability to play dog hands. That's what improvement is really all about, I guess. You don't play better moves, you play less bad moves, and learn to punish bad moves from your opponent a lot better.