It's been a month since I returned to my go studies. I've worked through 3 tsumego books this month, namely Graded Go Problems for Beginners vol.3 and Lee Chan Ho's Tesuji vols. 1-2. I noticed that with the easier tesuji volumes, I can almost instantly spot the correct move, though it still takes too long to read out whether the move actually works. Getting the reading going again is going slower than expected.
I played over 50 games this past month and have noticed two trends: At first, I played very calmly and started winning a lot of games (against stronger opponents too). In the ASR league I won in even games against 3k and 4k players, and played some calm, good games against players which were rated around my strength. I was quite active (especially during the first 2-3 weeks of the league) and managed to win my division. But even more than winning, it's the games I played that I'm happy with. They show I can play on even footing with stronger players, and should eventually be able to rise to their level.
[sgf-full]http://www.hushfield.com/L19/110615-A1-Igneel-Hushfield-W.sgf[/sgf-full]
(the comments marked H are mine, those marked dv are from my teacher)
Then something changed again, I lost focus and started losing many games because of mistakes in reading and hasty, unbalanced play. I suspect it has to do with a series of close losses I had on tygem, after which I lost confidence, and immediately dropped back to 14k on the server. I had always thought the difference between KGS and Tygem was blown out of proportion, but it's truly a very big difference. The players there seem much stronger than their KGS counterparts with the same rank. I believe this is the result of two things:
1) There are a lot of sandbaggers which makes the rank of your opponent effectively void. I have played against 13k players which were very weak, and then 14k players which ate me alive. This might be a result of the "instability of amateur play" as Kageyama calls it (more on this later), but I believe it's also a result of plain old sandbaggin'.
2) There are players on this server which have played massive amounts of games. I mean thousands. When you play these players you notice their opening and general sense of direction isn't all that good, but they are great at initiating fights and instantly exploiting any weakness in your position. I have lost time and again in middlegame fighting. I also noticed that I also play differently on Tygem than on KGS. It's so easy to get sucked into the hyper-aggressive, blitz play of many of the players here, which severely hampers my ability to look at relations of influence on a larger scale. I get sucked into a fight and find myself waking up to find I've lost a game in about 10 moves.
So, I have some mixed feelings about this month.
Good:- I played well in the ASR league, I think I can even say I managed to rise above my usual play. I have seen that if I put my mind to it, I can play a calm game.
- I retook the playbaduk strength test, and it has the audacity to claim I'm around 2dan EGF in strength. One shouldn't take such tests too seriously, but it does show that in the areas the test measures (namely calm analysis of wholeboard positions), I'm doing fine. That means something else in my play must be severely lacking. Which brings us to the bad:
Bad:- It seems I still suffer big blows to my mental attitude because of losses and dumb mistakes in reading. Perhaps as a result of my results in the ASR League I got quite concerned with rank and promotion again, and my desire for the win immediately made my play take a nosedive. The fact that I can win in an even game against 3k players and lose to an 8k a few days later shows that something is quite wrong. I need to work on this.
- Perhaps as a result of the change in mental state my reading and middlegame fighting seems to have gotten several stones weaker again. During this period I also changed my approach to tsumego and did look at the answers.
So, just as one needs to analyse single games, one needs to analyse the bigger picture. Do I need to change anything about my study plan?
- When doing tusmego, I've tried looking at the answers, and I've found that though it does provide a faster way to discover new moves, it mainly promotes laziness on my part. I will therefore revert back to the plain old "no-peeking" method of working with tsumego.
- The same should apply to my attitude in-game. I have started playing too many hasty moves, without properly reading out the sequences that flow forth from the stone played. I seem to encounter a few points in almost every game, where I'm just stuck for a move to make. This is usually when it's my turn and I decide to tenuki, needing to invade a framework, etc.. From now on, I'd rather lose on time than play without properly thinking out the move. I'd like to end with a nice quote I found upon re-reading the treasure chest enigma (as someone mentioned it on the boards recently, I think in the "Bestest of Books"-thread). It shall become my motto for my study during July:
Suzuki Tamejiro wrote:
"If you did not know how to play, why did you take a stone from the bowl? [...] The job of a go player is to search for the truth, no matter how long it takes."
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
SoDesuNe
at D2:
, white can even get a ko: