Fear not! You can't fall below 18k on igs!

Confession:


Theory:

I tried that. And I just stopped playing instead.

I'm currently operating on the priciple that any playing is better than no playing. If the principle is wrong, we shall see.

I'm 2 weeks out from the 6 month mark in Go. Not satisfied at all with my current progress.

Yesterday:

I'm still in Speed Baduk 6. I keep going back through the new stuff, like loose ladders, trying to let it sink in. And I keep realizing that my understanding of the concept is wrong. I've now been through loose ladders 3 times, and each time I thought I had it right, but only now am I sure (I was having Ja-chung issues on previous attempts).

At least I know for sure I am learning from the right Speed Baduk book; this is definitely a huge gap in my basics. I will go through at least one more time, maybe twice, to make sure I am comfortable with it before I move on.

I could not find time to play yesterday, as I had to go to a remote office for work, and lost 2.5 hours to commuting by car/train mix (but I got to work on Speed Baduk for a portion of that), and then I had to teach Kung Fu in the evening. However, I did get to replay some games right before bed (I cannot play before bed or I don't sleep for HOURS!).

I memorized 60 moves from one (Park Junghwan vs. Choi Cheolhan), and started re-memorizing a game that I had completed on but then forgotten (Kong Jie vs Mok Jinseok -- the "Shining Move" game), and replayed one other quickly (Lee Sedol vs ?). This is a lot more fun than learning joseki from a book.

For some reason, my shapes are better this morning. Perhaps subconscious learning really does help. I will continue with memorization today.

Also: 6 months on, I can read into and understand much better (though not anywhere near completely) that Shining Move game. I have a completely different perspective on it than I did before, and that is pretty exciting. It feels like valuable progress.

I just won an 18 kyu Tygem Game by 30 points, but the guy just played slow (maximum amount of timeout every move, moves that couldn't possibly work) for 2 hours until there wasn't anywhere to play on the board, and then passed and disagreed with the final score for another 30 minutes until my iPad crashed too many times and made me auto-lose (there seems to be a glitch in the pass/disagree feature that locks up your screen).

Very angry. Why the HE-double-hockey-sticks does anyone ever play on Tygem? It's a joke!

So you mean...I am not the only one??!! Even though for me it is "I cannot lose before bed or I don't sleep for HOURS! If I happen to lose I replay and analyze the game for hours in my bed instead of sleeping, and then I cannot play the following day because I am so tired

EDIT: I saw that you live in the US, now that I am not on my phone, so I removed the irrelevant part.

That's exactly what happens to me. But if I win, then I'm so happy I just want to dance around for a few hours. So, either way, no go before bed.

Except on Thursday nights because that's Dallas Go Club, and... annnd... I guess there's no really good excuse to destroy my sleep schedule, but I'm an addict. I can't miss Go Club!

S2W, I think your observations are right on the money. And if I can't be knocked back into the BC Class on IGS, that really does free me up to play there more.

With children, I can ONLY play before bed AND I don't sleep for HOURS...(especially when losing, which means nearly 50% of the time)

_________________
Converting the book Shape UP! by Charles Matthews/Seong-June Kim
to the gobook format. last updated april 2015 - Index of shapes, p.211 / 216

That sounds quite rough, OCA.

I am exhausted today. Go club kept me up wayyy past my bedtime, got home at 10:45pm and I couldn't wind down until about 1:30 AM. Got up at 7, been wiped all day.

Trying to go through the Mini Chinese 2 lecture on Guo Juan, but I am slow to learn an slow to think today and it's difficult for me.

I did 3 lectures Wednesday, another 3 on Thursday no problem, and reviewed all the problems, but I only did one very short lecture today, and it took ALL my effort to get it done. May not finish the mini chinese 2 lecture today.

I really wish there was a problem set for the Mini Chinese 2 lecture. I learn so much better when there are review quizzes.

I did manage to finish Speed Baduk 6 last night, and win a 5-stone handicap game against Chuck Bell (3/4 kyu?). But I wonder if that productivity is worth the lack of productivity today. It doesn't seem to be.

Playing

I've been playing a lot on OGS, 19x19 and 9x9 both, and getting my tail whooped thoroughly. I am really, really not good at what I am doing -- mostly blitz games. But you have to do something to get better, right?

I've fallen all the way to 17 kyu since I started blitzing. If I really am 9 kyu, which this makes me doubt, I obviously am only that good when I have time to think. My first instincts for shape and board position, which is what blitz seems to operate from, must still be terrible.

My hands shake quite a bit when I play (adrenalin), so I have 2-3 misclicks per game, and those definitely don't help, but even without those misplays, I would still be losing. It doesn't occur to me to stop a massive moyo until it's too late (this is a board position weakness). Also: I am terrible at securing the edges of my own moyo (I consider this to be caused by shape/liberty problems).

I have been trying to play slower, but even in a game where I have time, I find myself playing far too fast and not reading deeply enough. This seems to be the worst side effect of blitzing. In effect, I keep blitzing even when I don't have a fast time limit. I need to figure out how to play slower again.

Here's an irony: I'm currently better on a 9x9 than a 19x19, which is the exact opposite of how it used to be.

Hopefully I can get whatever used to make me 9 kyu back; it seems to have gone on vacation for Christmas.

---

A little off topic: I'm thinking about asking for Crazy Stone for Christmas. Anyone have it? Thoughts/feelings/reviews?

An example game, because examples are always better than generalizations. 11 min blitz game.

Lots of mistakes I could see immediately after I played them, but there is something more fundamentally wrong on this, in that I was more worried about local responses than about the global situation, and I feel like I was way too passive at the end, just reacting instead of counter-threatening. Also, he's better at fighting than me

I'm too close to the game, so I cannot see the opportunities I missed.



All of this is of course guesswork. All I know for sure is that I am really, REALLY, --REALLY-- bad at blitz.

Problems at the level of intuitions, though.

Play a low approach at the top if you want to limit Black's framework. That way you aim to settle a group quickly. This leads to trouble.

Play F4 on instinct. You seem to be missing this shape.

Jumping to N7 looks better to me. You develop thin shape this way, and Black's framework is untouched.

Why? A ladder-breaker plan?

One to the left, obviously ... A whole move wasted.

The central fight has become serious. H2 is going to be big, so you have to take care of the three stones as priority. I'm a fan of plays like H11, aiming at H9 for good shape. At the least they may baffle the opponent.

Just play E13. You gain every time this shape is made with stones that are not heavy.

The game seems to turn Black's way.

Yes, but you can't win the game with two big corners on the left.

Ouch.

Wrong feeling. Leave these guys, play something like P9 I think. wastes another play.

D2 kills.

Poor feeling, aji keshi.

Practically a wasted play again. Comments end.

Thank you highly, Charles. I will go through and add your comments to my file right now and see if I can play out some common-sensical variations.

I wish I could say I had an instinct for the game, but this puts the lie to that. Almost 6 months in, and it seems my primary skill so far has been talking myself out of the bad moves I instinctively want to make.

Yunguseng and Guo Juan

So, I have joined Yunguseng Dojang for one season, and I have signed up for Guo Juan's site. I'm not sure I can afford any of this, ad I'm kind of afraid to get addicted to Yunguseng because it is so expensive, but it seems important to try them both at least once. It seems most important to do get some sort of formal instruction near the beginning of my training, if six months is really "near the beginning".

Guo Juan is very good so far. My major disappointment is that not every lecture has a corresponding problem set (Mini Chinese lectures 2 and 3 being key examples so far). I feel like for the lectures that don't, if I don't make the problems myself, keying them in by hand for later review, I am almost wasting my time.

The Yunguseng lectures are very thorough and very long. I have not quite completed registration for the problem sets, so I cannot say how thorough they are. But hopefully they will be a lot better than keying the problems into Drago by hand.

I have worked my way through 4 of the Yungseng lectures, but it is hard to find an hour for solid study, so the last 20-30 minutes of each lecture have been highly distracted, and I will need to rewatch them.

Book Training
I have been going through Jump Level Up #2 again. The ja-chung and double-ja-chung problems are very challenging for me. This indicates I have problems with ja-chung in general, which is probably one of the key reasons why my fighting is sub-par. I will focus on them again.

I am only 2 sections into Speed Baduk 7. The connection problems there are very challenging for me as well. Basically, everything is challenging right now.

Game Memorization
On the game memorization front, I have made some progress. I have the first 50-70 moves memorize from 3 separate games. I will try to continue this, and memorizing the first 50 moves of 100 games is my eventual goal.

Games
Overall, though, since I started focusing on improving my fighting, I have noticed a backslide in my ability to tenuki and to think globally rather than locally. Hopefully I will dig my way out of this hole soon.

For sacrifice on the altar this week, the last 19x19 game I feel like I played passably in. I lost on time, despite being 29 points in the lead.

Mistakes in style: capture, omit, one higher, is aji keshi, snapback.

etc. Should be trying to play on both sides like this, because it leaves weaknesses. Concentrate on pushing in the centre, which is big, and then play D2.

Black 139. If you played N18 the white group might die. No more comments.

Thanks once again, Charles. Merry Christmas, sir!

So, I have been training.

I really like Guo Juan's site, so far. Very good information, and the drills are great reinforcement. My major problem is that I am taking too many courses and I have too many problems in queue to actually review! (In my defense, I did manage to keep up until Christmas Eve. And I (obviously) has bigger priorities after that!)

The Yunguseng season has not started yet, thankfully. Still nervous about it. Their lectures are extremely thorough and very good, and it is nice that they have problem sets to go with it. The issue is that their problem system is very new and not anywhere near as slick as Guo Juan's, with a couple of annoying interface bugs. But still. Very good information, and to top it off, Inseong Hwang has been very kind and generous with his time. He seems to be a good man, which is really cool. The Yunguseng lectures are between 1-1.5 hours each, however, so they are quite a marathon. And he recommends you finish around 30 of them before the season begins! Even I can't manage that!

Go Club Games
I played several games at Go Club on Saturday, but they were against a much weaker opponent. The first game, he wanted to play even, and the second game he only took 4 stones, an he needed more. I made some pretty terrible mistakes, and pulled off some clever stuff too, but I feel guilty about posting these, as I was never really in trouble. I focused primarily on going back a few moves and showing him what I would've done.


IGS Game
I logged back in to IGS at last and had a game. But this Online Anxiety thing, it's real. My heart was beating out of my chest for the whole game, even though I knew it was "only a game" and I couldn't lose rank and blah blah blah. So there were literally nothing at stake for me in this game, but I still couldn't stop shaking. It was quite scary, really; thought I might have a heart attack. Perhaps I am just not used to losing on IGS yet, like I am used to losing on OGS? It's probably just one of those "Being Human" things. What a drag j/k.

I played this one immediately after setting out the "Santa Claus" presents for my 5yo daughter and hanging candy canes from the tree for her. And I won! A Christmas present for myself! Good karma maybe?

My opponent was only 17 kyu, though, and I basically took the whole board, so I don't feel right posting the game.

OGS Game
I've been playing on OGS mostly, a little less than once a day, blitz and 9x9 primarily, things I am terrible at. But my rank is only 16 kyu there. Even when I play slower games, I lose to 13 kyu players over there. I have heard that OGS kyu ranks are significantly stronger than KGS, but the can't be 5-4 stones stronger!

Anyway, here's the latest OGS game, from this morning. I really tried to focus, but I started falling apart at the end, making stupid mistakes, being distracted by real life issues. I'd thought the game was a 4 minute blitz, but it was actually just 1.5 minutes per move with 4 overtimes. So... a lot slower and more deliberate than I really had time for. My fault, really. I resigned as my quality of play was only going to get worse.

Still, I'd like to know what I could do better. BTW: I experimented with something I learned from Yunguseng -- the across-attach to cut a knight's move. Tried it twice. The first time failed, but the second time worked.

I've been having a bit of an identity crisis, Go-wise. My rank on OGS is so much worse than my rank on KGS, I have had significant troubles believing the KGS rank could be real.

However, today I played two games in-person, on the same day, one against a KGS 10-kyu and one against an OGS 15 kyu, and I won against the 10 kyu by 45 pts and lost against the 15 kyu by 40 points. These games are currently stuck on my iPad, but I will try to get them onto here shortly.

This pretty much is how my online Go life is going, so it's good to see it reflected in reality as well. I am consistently 5-6 stones weaker on OGS than KGS. I'd heard a rumor that the differential was 3-4 stones, but 5-6 seems statistically within reason for a single user's experience.

Also: Mark S., my normal sparring buddy at Go club has recently become 7 kyu on KGS, which means it makes more sense that I'm now losing consistently to him -- he got significantly stronger!

Basically what I'm saying here is: Yay! My self-doubt is alleviated! Game on!

Hi Sam,

Within the last month (12/1/14-12/31/14)

OGS you have played about 15 19x19 matches against people that were similarly ranked to you. I attached an image of those games. I have no idea about these games (if they're rated/free), but some of them seem to be blitz.


KGS you have played no rated games. The games you have played are either against unranked players or a many faces of Go player. Also, your rating is still technically undefined.

I think if you want to see progress you're going to have to start playing on a more consistent schedule against similarly ranked players in a more serious setting. If you can do at least 3 slow ranked games a week on KGS you should see some eventual progress. Otherwise I do not think you will see the progress you want. I don't think playing on OGS, blitz, or 9x9 is beneficial to your game at all.