I was under the impression that white was ahead up through about move 160 or so, when he decided to kill himself by going all out against your relatively connected center. I think instead, white should have started the ko at S9 and used all those forcing moves in the center as ko threats. If you look at the game through about move 60 or so, black has split himself into SIX separate groups, most of which are relatively small and sealed in. I think this came as a result of a few slow joseki moves, as in the lower right, when black pushed one too many times before jumping, and in the top left, where black should have perhaps played a less aggressive pincer, given the isolation of the corner stone, if he was going to pincer at all. That said, when white focused on the small side at instead of sacrificing a bit to keep black low and maintain the center, things became more up for grabs.

That said, regarding the upper right, after , if black just defends the stone in atari, I don't think white has anything spectacular he can accomplish in the corner, and will likely end in gote after weakening the M16 group.

Thanks skydyr for your comments. Yeah it seems i underestimated the value of whites influence a lot. I felt uneasy pushing from behind several times in the corners, but rationalized it to me as to keep sente and the possibility that influences could always be negated later. That was also the reason to play K3, in order to negate the influence of white on both sides by placing a living group in between. If white already had a stone on K3 or K4 i probably wouldn't have played in those two corners the way i did.
Maybe i just need more playing practice to become better at judging the value of influence.

So far nothing done related to Go this week, my master presentation is coming up in two weeks, so free time gets a bit rarer. But i stumbled apon a nice free service (http://www.trello.com), where one can plan and organize basicly anything. Like setting up a to-do list and then move items from there to "Doing" or "Done" and tasks can also be composed of sub-tasks with a nice progress bar.
So i went ahead and set a board up for my weekly go schedule. I don't know if i have to re-set up everything next week or if i can just change the "due date" (currently set to next monday 0:00). I made it public so anyone can now actually watch my progress even during the week before the next update of this journal.
Link to my Go-Study board (also in my signature)

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

Weekly Update 3

No Go this week. I didn't do tsumego, study or played any game. Somehow the opportunity never presented itself and i wasn't really in the mood to play or do tsumego.
Of course one thing about this study journal is forcing myself to do this, regardless wether i'm motivated or not, sometimes i just have to push through.

My goal of four games on average per week is in no danger, as i already have played 12 games this year, so i'm right on schedule there. I hope this week will not repeat itself, then one "lost" week is no big deal. Or i might double my study-effort this week - we will see.

However i still intend to keep the trello-board for my study (see signature) and just updated the due-dates there.

See you next week (with hopefully a lot more to report).

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

Keep on going! We all have bad weeks but keep on getting up and fighting!

PeterN

Thanks Peter.

A quick note about the last week/days
As you may have noticed, the weekly report for last week is missing. After the week before, where i did nothing for my go at all, the last week was a bit better. I played several games and was able to achieve my goal of at least 17 games in January (i think i even managed 18). I also did some tsumego, fulfilling my quota of life&death, but i didn't study tesuji or did tesuji-problems.
Part of that, and the reason i have nothing go-related to report for the current week, was an important presentation i had to held yesterday - about my master thesis. I was therefore more concerned about that one, than about my go-schedule.
However, now that the presentation is over (it went very well) and i therefore have finished my college education i intend to come back to studying go.

I fully intend to keep my schedule for this week, even though there are "only" four days left (including today) - lets just leave it at that.
I will report back on sunday .

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

Study Theory: Done
Tesuji Tsumego: Failed

Life & Death Tsumego: Done
Played Games: 4/4

Weekly Update 5
With the first half of the week being already spent without doing anything go related, the second half obviously felt a bit cramped. I played two games on friday but did nothing else for go until today. So today i had to play two games, study new theory and do my full tsumego (life&death and tesuji) quota.
But i managed - well nearly. I decided to do something different in regards to studying new theory, as the prospect of reading didn't appeal to me that much. So i watched a lecture from Guo Juan instead. Topic was "All about 3-4 point" and while it was interesseting, it wasn't the joseki-lecture i expected. It was mostly about a modern opening involving 3-4 but i doubt the information is very helpful in my games as my amateurish games rarely progress in the way (these) professional games do, even if it is only the first 10 moves. Still even if it is rarely useful it is still good to know.

Afterwards i did some life and death tsumego, the 30 minutes i set myself for that exercise went by really fast. The two games i played on KGS later were also pretty fun. One win and one loss is ok even though the last game (the loss) showed me that i probably didn't do enough tsumego as i messed up pretty badly. In my defense i have to say that my opponent played pretty aggressively i would even say mostly overplay. Then dying with a big dragon is not what should happen to me, even a small life with two eyes would have been enough and put him in a bad position.

Which leaves the tesuji-tsumego as the last duty for today. And after three problems i found out why i am so bad at tesuji. I really hate these problems. What i enjoy with life and death problems is that there is a clear goal. Living or dying is something that can be assured with enough reading and so i can have confidence that i have really solved a problem. But some of the tesuji problems are "reduce blacks territory" or "make shape" which i find not as clear. There are many ways to reduce a territory, how do i know that what i find is the correct solution? I don't and if i missed the real tesuji i might think i found a good way to reduce but the real solution would have been better. Or i find a way to make good shape for my stones, but the solution in the book is different and it is not clear why my solution is worse (at least not without a deeper look).
It could be said that all of these problems can be solved by analysing the position or just with more reading but frankly i don't want to. I don't want to read out a problem several minutes and then spending another 10-20 minutes analysing the position to understand why the correct solution is the correct solution. With that approach i probably would need the whole year just to go through "501 tesuji problems". And i would hate every minute of it.

There is a sense of accomplishment when solving life and death tsumego which i miss in tesuji problems. The problems are either too easy, too hard (the Graded Go Problems for Dan Players book) or just confusing/unclear. I will probably read "Tesuji" by Davis next week, maybe that can help me a bit but at the moment i seriously considering ditching the whole tesuji-study and going straight to joseki. My time is better spent when i do something that is also fun and there are enough areas where i can improve, so i don't have to force myself to solve tesuji-problems in order to become stronger.
My reading strength is ok and can be further improved by life&death tsumego, which i enjoy. Maybe i will pick up some tesuji while playing or i come back to studying tesuji when i'm low dan .

As said before, the next week i will read "Tesuji" and file that under "study new theory". Wether i do tesuji-problems or not i haven't decided. If however i decide to ditch tesuji-problems i will do either more life&death or joseki-problems to compensate.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

OMG, that sounds all too familiar. A few years ago when I started to solve "501 Tesuji Problems" I was around 13k EGF / 8k KGS, and I stopped solving after around 100 problems, because I simply didn't understand them. One of them had the goal to "settle the stones", I didn't even understand what that meant. So I decided that it would not make much sense to continue. I am surprised that you (being more or less 10 stones stronger than that) still found this to be a problem. Unfortunately there is no tesuji book on the Western market that sorts tesuji according to strength (though "Get Strong at Tesuji" categorizes them into four parts, but these categories do not necessarily correspond to strength). I don't know what the right approach is to do tesuji problems. However I have seen SoDesuNe solving tesuji from the Lee Changho series, maybe this is the better choice?

Weekly Update 6

Another update delayed by several days. The last time i said i was frustrated with the tesuji-problems and thought about ditching them. Now i played my four games the last week and that frustration has seeped into my games it seems. It feels like i'm not making any progress at all, in fact it seems i'm playing worse.
I know all about the fact that new information has to processed and becoming worse is a natural phase before becoming stronger as one has to get accustomed to the new information, but i don't think that is the case here.
For one, i haven't really studied a lot of theory in the last few weeks. Even though it is part of my schedule i have no set routine and apart from the games if often have to force myself to do tsumego or read on new theory. Naturally these half-assed study has little effect. I like playing and have no problem motivating me to play, but when it comes to tsumego or study i can't seem to motivate me.
And the last few games i had the feeling of being way behind just right after the opening. Not only being behind on points but also on options on how to close the gap. I had the feeling of having to resign after 50 moves and this feeling also didn't go away in the 50 or 100 moves that followed while i tried crazy stuff or poked around. Also there is no way that my few games i played this year and the bit of tsumego i have done, had such an tremendous affect on my opening, that i'm in process of improving that part of the game and therefore having a short phase of "worse play".

It feels like a lack a grand strategy in the opening, or more precise my strategy falling apart two moves afterwards. This coupled with an increase of tactical errors makes me really frustrated with my play, mostly because i have no idea how to combat it.

I'm posting the free game i played today with Ember. If you recall our EGF ranks i normally should give her several stones but we played this game even (KGS nigiri). Move 41 is where i first thought my position was horrible and at 111 i seriously considered resigning. Anything after that was basicly desperate attempts at turning the game around.



Any comments on that game are welcome. And don't feel discouraged because i'm 2k, i certainly don't feel like one currently.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

A few thoughts:

22 is too small. Approaching from the other side makes black look a bit overconcentrated.

As a result, black takes sente from a joseki he should have ended in gote and pressures white consistently, leading to a decisive lead by move 41.

Move 50: This seems like the wrong direction. May as well make a giant extension from the wall and use it.

Move 64: This move feels really painful. White's attack is basically gone after this, and all white got was a few dame points. I suspect the problem lies in an earlier move, but I'm not certain where exactly.

Move 68: Take your points or tenuki, but letting black cut you after playing on top leaves you with a really heavy group to run with.

Just concentrating on grand opening strategy (your perceived weakness), I do see a few problems in this game. Since we are talking relatively high level opening strategy, treat these comments more as food for thought than as pronouncements of absolute truth.

is the wrong direction. In this corner, it would be better to approach from the other side (R14). The solid W position around the low stone at F17 means that the top side has less scope for future development than the comparatively wide open right side. For the same reason, if either side wanted to play in the lower left corner, F3 would be better than C6. Of course would also be good as an approach to the lower right corner, preventing a shimari.

looks like an overplay. What happens if B cuts at D6 instead of immediately defending the corner? It looks like a tough fight for W. Oops, I said I would concentrate on opening strategy, not tactics. Well, if W just plays safely on top (C5), B must connect under in gote (B6). W then gets sente to approach the lower right corner, which is the last large opening play. In the game sequence, W had to take gote to defend the cutting point, letting B make a shimari in the lower right corner.

- makes thickness, but that thickness is largely negated by the B stone at H17. B is a bit thin on the left side, so forcing him to solidify territory there is a local loss. Maybe you could look for a sharper attack? Attach at C10 or C12, then cross-cut if B hanes?

is the wrong direction again. Both B and W have strong positions facing the middle of the lower side, so getting the first move there is very big. In contrast, the game move makes at most a few extra points for W.

Middle game fighting started right after this, so no more comments. Well, maybe just one more. It looks to me like B would have been in serious trouble if W had played at either L18 or L16, keeping the two B groups separated. Even at , how about blocking at M18? If B captures two stones, W just plays L16, taking over the entire top side.

Thank you both for your comments. Seems my perception is right, i lack in the opening, making several strategic mistakes.


Now that is interesseting because i thought thanks to my position in the upper left corner developing the top side was better. I guess it would have been different if would have been played high?


I somehow thought defending against R13 was neccessary, despite my feeling that keeping sente was important. And that joseki is one of the few i know and play quite often.


Yeah after i played it i became aware of the fact that black could cut first and defend later. Maybe i was thinking to agressevly here, not wanting to give black the easy connection underneath.


The reason i wanted to build thickness there was to prevent black from using his thickness on the right to create a moyo. C10 and C12 never even crossed my mind as potential canidates, so thanks again for your input mitsun.


My first instinct was to extend on the lower side, however with the black shimari i couldn't find a really good move to extend. I didn't wanted to play on the third line again, fearing black would push me down and build a huge center moyo. But if i played high i feared Q3 would serve black very well in invading or undertermining my territory on the lower side. So since i couldn't find a good way to extend on the lower side, i decided to switch to the right side.

It seems i have made only a few but costly errors in the opening. Since josekis are also a weakness of mine (so said inseong last year) i will concentrate my studies on josekis and opening theory.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

MM, is wrong shape -- the correct local follow-up is extend solidly at R13, not jump. Maybe approaching at Q5 is better.

Weekly Update 7

The comments on my last posted game (thanks again guys) had encouraged me to change the topic of my studies. I was really careless in studying tesuji, it gave me no joy and i felt no real improvement in my games. I think in order to improve it is not only important to work on your weaknesses but also to enjoy what you are doing. Because if you enjoy the topic of your studies you are naturally spending more time on it and therefore become better.

I started with reading Opening Theory made easy. I have never read this book before and always thought of it as a sort of basic book for the fuseki. I admit that i initially thought that it would be a little beneath my level, but then again it never hurts to go back to the basics. And while all these principles were more or less known to me already, the example shown were really easy and clear to understand, i think i can get a lot out of this book. After reading it for a while, i took another look at some games of me, where i really felt behind after the opening and guess what - i always found situations where i had violated one or more principles of this book.
Sticking to the bascis of fuseki theory was probably what i needed most. I have played some games afterwards and played the fuseki with the 20 principles in mind. And in all games i was more or less satisfied on how the fuseki progressed. There were, of course, still mistakes in my play like playing to greedy or making big tactical mistakes, but at least the feeling of playing total crap during the first 50 moves has gone - for now.

Because i have caught a cold or something similar i layed back on the tsumego and instead opted to play when i felt well enough to do so. Still i didn't managed to play the planned four games this week. This is also partly because i encountered a rare species on KGS - the escaper. One of my opponents on friday became disconnected after around 150 moves. Giving him the benefit of the doubt i waited but when he came back online several minutes later he decided to play a new game instead of coming back to our game.
I'm not angry about this, i have just put him on ignore and went on. Still one thing bugs me. I'm keeping track of all the games i played this year in a nice spreadsheet, which also calculates my winning percentage for each month for example. And now i'm unsure how i should file that game. While i could see the act of escaping as resignation and file that game under win, the position might have been slightly favouring my opponent so it wouldn't feel right to do so. It is no clear loss also as the game was still undecided. Not filing it however feels also wrong as i had put quite some time into the game. Currently i'm thinking about filling it under jigo. While that is not neccessarly true, the game is played with 6.5 komi after all, it is the closest i have as the game is unfinished and has no clear winner.

I have to play five more games before the next weekend to keep my planned quota for februrary but i think that should not be a problem. My cold is getting better and i assume to be healthy again in one or two days.
After reading Opening Theory made easy i will now switch to joseki study for the next week. Especially since one principle was choosing the right pincer. My problem with that principle is, that i only really know some joseki for the low- and high one-space pincer with the star-point. It is hard to decide wether a wider pincer is better if you have no idea what to expect from a wider pincer, so i intend to look up some star-point joseki concering the 2- and 3-space pincer. I want to focus on the star-point first because this is what i play most often and because the 3-4 point has such a huge amount of possible variations.

Concering the tsumego routine, i will try to change the pace a bit. Up until now i tried to get the 1-hour in one session, which made it a little harder to motivate me. The better approach, which i will try now is to do some tsumego each day, maybe around 10-15 minutes. Over the course of a full week this will accumulate to a nice amount of time but at the same time it will be (hopefully) easier to keep.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

I've been a bad go-student.
I haven't posted here quite a while and that is because there was nothing to report. I've been slacking of in my go-studies, which showed in my games.

My goal of playing 4 games a week on average means roughly 200 games this year or 17 games a month. Now march is nearly halfway through and i count four games played this month. That is to say these four games were the only go-related things i did this month. I didn't do tsumego or have taken a look at some pincer-joseki like i wanted.

The results of this slacking of were most apparent in yesterdays game. The game i played yesterday was a game in the german "Bundesliga", so one could say even an enforced game. Now since all games in the bundesliga are played even and there are a wide range of rank-levels present in the teams, some wider gaps in playing strength are not uncommon, even though it is more apparent in the weaker SDK- and DDK-ranks. It seems most player stronger than 1d are playing in a higher league, so the strongest opponents i usually get are 1d.

And such was the case yesterday. A two-stone gap isn't that big and i can win these games sometime. They are difficult and i loose more often than i win, but the result isn't predetermined.
Anyway i will spare you the slaughter and the horrible mistakes i made and will not post the game. Suffice to say i made several grave mistakes and lost quite big.
It isn't the end result, that shows i have been slacking off, it is the kind of mistakes i made. For example in the beginning i lost a living 3-3-invasion because i opted to tenuki. I knew that i have to answer to live, but i didn't. I rationalized that i could still live after one tenuki but i didn't read that out. I'm sure that if i had done my tsumego during the last two weeks i would have been more comfortable with such basic reading and would have realized that tenuki was not a good option at that point - or at least not as good as i thought. I will post the situation below, since i have some question about it, which some of you might be able to answer.

The game yesterday was a bit of an eye-opener on the effects my slacking off had and has given me a bit of a push to get back in the routine. It also helps that i will play at a small tournament tomorrow and next week.

A slightly unrelated news, i have gotten a new laptop. All nice and shiny . Odly enough i know have some problems with KGS, or more precise probably with Java. For example the text-cursor shows up slightly off sometimes - i'm not sure if it is just a lag on the drawing or something else. Also i'm now another victim of the famous sound-bug on KGS. And playing these last 4 games without the stone-clicking sound made me realize how important this sound has been to me. I feel deeply disconnected somehow with game, now that it is basicly silent. How i solve this problem i haven't decided yet, but i even considered switching to another server (IGS perhaps) - especially as the HTML-client for KGS is hopefully released this year. I imagine that i will have sound again in that client, so switching to IGS would be temporary.

----------------------------------
Back to go. Here is the situation i talked about earlier. I'm white and you can see that my opponent didn't played the joseki perfectly to the book, but altered the last move slightly.



When black played it felt so small. Surely it is a big endgame-move, but an endgame move after all. It felt too early for such a move and that reasoning lead me to consider tenuki after . I just thought with the game in such an early stage, that there are bigger moves than answering and took sente.
Now my question is, did i made a mistake in answering or is my reasoning flawed? If the later then why isn't played more often during the beginning? It is after all also a big sente-move for white also i can see why white might want to wait a bit playing there. So why does black usually wait a bit before playing this move?

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

Weekly Update
Despite being my last post just three days ago, i decided to write another weekly update. I hope it helps me get back on track.

So saturday was a small tournament, four rounds swiss-system with 30 minutes main time and 20/5 canadien byo-yomi. I lost my first two rounds against a 1d and a 2d (getting 2 stones against the 2d, just black against the 1d) but both games were really well. Especially in the first game against the 1d i thought i could win it, until i didn't saw an important cut, which resulted in a big group of mine dying.
The game against the 2d also went well until he decided to kill a group of mine. Turns out i was mistaken about this groups status. I thought it was already alive, but he knew that he could kill it. Instead of outright killing it he decided to invade my moyo, which he found bigger. So i chased his invasion group, securing my side territory during that time and used the forcing moves on his weak group to break into his moyo and letting him get a second eye with his big invasion group.
I then played a big reducing move in his moyo - and he kills my group with his next move, game over for me.

If these two games teached me one thing then, that i really need to do my tsumego and that the dan-ranks aren't that far anymore. It will probably still take quite a while to get there, but these two dans didn't seemed overwhelming stronger than me. Maybe the 1k is in reach now.
Afterwards i won my last two games against a 6k (at 3 stones) and a 10k (at 7 stones) and finished the tournament with a result of 2:2. Given the lack of go-related activity the last weeks i am more than satisfied with the result.

To counter the lack of playing prior to the tournament and partily to prepare for the next one (next weekend) i played a game yesterday on KGS. Interessetingly enough i saw quite a bunch of my mistakes right after playing it but the game against a 2k still remained close, until i could capture three of his stones in the later endgame, after which he resigned.
When i play i often get the feeling that i am playing better than a 2k, but then make some horrible mistakes which in turn hold me back and keep me at the 2k level.
Well i can now see my mistakes right after playing it - which is the last step before seeing them before playing them. Which in turn is important in order to avoid them.

Plans for the week
Like i wrote earlier, there is another tournament coming up this weekend. The China-Cup a normal two-day tournament with 5 rounds McMahon. Until then i want to play some more games and finally take a look at some joseki for the wider pincer after a kakari on the 4-4 stone.
And of course do some tsumego. I have already finished nearly the first half of my Graded Go Problems for Dan Players 1 - Life&Death and want to try to at least finish it once during this year, well maybe even until summer. Because so far i have always quit after reaching around halfway, since the problems become seriously harder. Maybe i will take a look at the later problems in 1001 Life&Death Problems, to spice things up a bit as only solving hard problems may not be the best tsumego-practice possible.

There are 8 games i have to still play in march to keep my average goal, counting the 5 games for the upcoming tournaments that leaves me with 3 games - i plan to play these three games this week. Meaning i will hit my goal one week early.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

Life is full of ups and downs and the last several weeks were clearly a down, at least regarding my Go study.
But life also tells us that the sun comes up after rain and so after several weeks of little to no go activity, a period of increased activity will follow.

But first lets recap what happened since my last post.

China Cup
On the last weekend in march there was a bigger tournament in Berlin, the China Cup. I played 3-2 in the five-round McMahon tournament, which included one win against a 1d in an even game. The other two wins were against other 2k players and the two losses were against a 1k and a 2k.
An additional „benefit“ of the weekend was, that i played a 3d on saturday evening after the tournament, with black and no handicap stones. While we both didn’t played to the best of our abilities (it was late after all), the game was very educational.

Spring Tournament
Another four round swiss-system tournament followed shortly after the China Cup. Like in the Winter Tournament, mentioned in my last post, I lost my games against stronger players (1d, 1d) and won against weaker opponents (5k, 8k), which of course may be because the games were played with a reduced handicap of one stone.

Total number of games played
I had set myself the goal of 4 games per week on average, which I had translated into 200 games this year or 17 games per month. In February and March I fell short on this goal. In February I only managed to play 16 games and in March only 15. Coupled with the fact that I played 9 games during the two tournaments in March it shows how little I was playing that month.

Joseki Study
For quite some time i wanted to take a look at some pincer josekis, especially the 3-space low pincer (starting from a low kakari against 4-4) but never actually did it.
Now last saturday I finally did it. My girlfriend and i were invited that evening to a kind of private go meeting and I used the time before we left to take a look at some josekis.
I can’t really call it studying, but at least some of it stuck - for now.

That day also was really successful in terms of playing. I played an amazing total of six games that evening and even managed to win five of them. Now at least one of these games I played against a weaker player with not enough handicap (on her request) so this actually didn’t really count, but the rest were even games against players around my strength.

Tsumego
Nothing to report here, I didn’t do any problems at all. I thought about taking a look at the later problems in „1001 Life and Death Problems“ since in „Graded Go Problems for Dan Players Vol. 1“ I reached a point where the problems are really though for me and it stops being fun when I need at least 3-5 minutes for one problem.

—————————————————————

At the time of writing this, I have played already 14 games in April with still around 2 weeks left. The most astonishing fact, however, is my winning percentage. During the first two months of the year I only won exactly half of my games, in March i managed to score 8-7 increasing the percentage to 53%. The percentage for April currently is 78%, my score is 11-3. It is a bit scary, since I haven’t really done anything to justify a sudden increase in strength. So while i’m happy for the results so far, I still expect a sudden losing streak to start soon.
Looking at the games it seems this is due to my blunder-rate going down. I currently make a lot less misreadings and sometimes still manage to find that one move in difficult positions that allows me to live (or kill). But I don’t know why my blunder rate has gone down - I don’t have the feeling of playing calmer or slower than before, I still play too fast sometimes.

This is also the reason I’m not posting a game record. I don’t want to post a game I won, that would feel to much like bragging and I simply don’t have a record for any of the three games I lost this month.

In order to keep my winning percentage that high, at least until i become a KGS 1k , I decided to join the Yunguseng Dojang again. I currently signed up just for one season (3 months) but i will probably renew it, when the season is over.

I have also joined a private league, giving me an additional long-time game per month. That is at least two serious games per month, maybe even three when the Bundesliga starts again in fall. (Still one game left in May before summer break)

Also regarding the Bundesliga I managed to beat a 1d last week. Even though he made a costly mistake in the end, probably due to time pressure, I thought I was slightly leading at that point. An interesting fact is that it was the same 1d who had beat me at the Spring Tournament a week before.

So despite my lack of go activity in the last few weeks, things are looking good for the future.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

I probably should not only work on my Go, but also on my discipline in posting a report in here once a week.

Since april is now over i will first try to recap the whole month and then what happened in may.

There are three components i think, that are vital to improving in Go. Playing games (and reviewing them), doing tsumego and study. When i restarted this journal in january 2014 i had made a schedule that incorporates all three of these components. But now, after a third of the year gone by i have to say i rarely follow that schedule anymore. Instead i do what i enjoy and that is almost exclusively playing.
Would it be better if i also spent some time doing tsumego or watching pro lectures? Probably but i don’t think my current strong focus on playing is hurting my progress. Looking back at the last four month this is a breakdown of my game results:

January: 18 games (9w 9l) 50% winning percentage
February: 16 games (7w 8l 1 jigo) 50% winning percentage
March: 15 games (8w 7l) 53% winning percentage
April: 24 games (17w 7l) 70% winning percentage

Note: The jigo in february is actually an unfinished game where my opponent escaped on KGS even though he had a better position on the board.

As you can see april is not only the month where i played the most (and therefore did the least tsumego/study) but also the month where i had the best winning percentage. In my last post i had written that i had no idea why this was occurring, but now after some thinking i came up with an answer.
For a long time i think my weakest point in go was not my limited joseki knowledge or something other directly game-related instead it was the small amount of games i played.
I had joined the yunguseng the first time in fall 2012 and during these three months (Sep - Nov) the five league games per month were almost all games i played. During the following year 2013 i nearly played no games at all. If i exclude the games i played around christmas 2013 i could probably count the number of my games in 2013 at one or two hands.
Another possible reason is that the amount of work i have done in the first months of this year now finally starts to kick in.

The only thing that still bugs me about this huge amount of games i have been playing is that is almost always against players of equal or weaker strength. I have nothing against playing weaker opponents but i also would love to play some games against people stronger than me. But it seems the amount of 1k that use auto match on KGS is quite little compared to the number of 2k and 3k that use it. (At least with the medium time setting)
I will probably have to resort to using manual game offers to get some games against stronger people.
Maybe it will help that after the very successful april i have been promoted to 1k on KGS, even though i can’t say how stable this will be. So far i have only played one game as 1k and won.

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May
While may has not been as successful as april in these first two weeks, it was still very interesting and helpful in my quest to improve.
The most notable change is obviously the Yunguseng Dojang, which started with a lecture on May 5th. I tried to incorporate the ideas of this lecture in my games and so far had varying results. Some were very promising, like the private league game i played on may 6th. Others i probably overdone playing tenuki and got in some very bad situations after letting a group die because i refused to respond.

Last weekend i played at a tournament in Dresden and was not so successful (2-3). Apart from playing tenuki to often, like i already said, the opening seems to be in general a weak point of mine. I should probably check up some joseki and maybe have a look at „After opening“ to learn what is possible in certain positions. Oh and another lecture from the tournament - don’t be greedy =).

I currently stand in may at 4 wins to 6 losses (40%). While i would love to increase the percentage up to at least 50, it is still not such a bad start, especially considering i finished april with 70%. And lets not forget that incorporating new ideas into ones game will often result in slight decrease in the short term. And with the yunguseng league now running i will obviously try to incorporate new ideas into my game (and hopefully erase some old mistakes and bad habits).

Since i haven’t posted a game in a while i will post one now. Since i have now quite some losses to choose from i will post my first loss as a KGS 1k. It was the first game played in may.

Anyway, thanks for reading, i hope you don’t have to wait for the next entry quite as long as you had for this one.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

Time for another entry. Actually my initial plan was to post this entry on sunday, to go back to an easy one entry per week schedule but at least it is pretty close to one week since the last post.

The last week was actually quite filled with go-related activities. I played several games on KGS and went to a private go-meeting on saturday. Overall i’m currently standing at 12-11 games (w-l) in may. Considering that my actual schedule requires an average of 17 games per month i’m way ahead in that aspect.

But despite an okay-looking winning percentage of 52% i am currently really unsatisfied with my game. On KGS i was demoted back to 2k after losing against a 1d and got promoted back to 1k after i won the next two games against a 3k and 2k. At least i kept the 1k after losing against the next 1d for now.

The problem with my current game is that i am playing too aggressively. For quite a time i have been a player that enjoyed fighting and as a result i tend to favor influence during the opening. But handling influence correctly is quite difficult and for the past weeks i seem to have problems with that. Since my opponent will get secure territory in exchange for my influence i have to make up by attacking his weak groups, that will emerge from him trying to erase my influence.

And currently i either fail to see how to profit from them without killing them, or become too greedy and try to kill. Which is obviously in most cases rather difficult if not outright impossible. Coupled with the fact that i then tend to ignore vital defense moves for my group and have a certain tendency to misread you can see that most of my games don’t end well for me.

However since these problems seemed to have started mostly after the Yunguseng started and the first lecture was about playing faster moves it may be just a normal phase. You know the phase where you are playing worse as you try to incorporate new knowledge or new moves into your game, but you come out stronger once you’ve regained your balance.
At least i hope thats the case.

Concerning new ideas and studying apart from playing, i started reading „Direction of Play“. While my reading mistakes are probably easily cured with better concentration and more tsumego-practice (though i currently don’t solve any tsumego), i feel that the opening in general is a big weak point of mine.
Surely that is partly because of my lacking joseki knowledge but i also feel often quite at a loss when the opening stage is over on how to continue. That may be one reason while i then fall back to „attacking weak groups“ as this is the only option i know.
I’m hoping that reading direction of play can help me in this regard to appreciate the opening stage more and the future potential that is created in this stage. This may help me not to play an opening just blindly following some simple patterns, but play with some kind of plan in mind on how to develop my position in the future.

I can’t say that i understand everything written in this book, it appears to be actually quite high level, but not everything there is lost on me. I find it quite enlightening to see an amateur opening being picked apart and explained how the flow of the game should have developed (or how it develops in a professional game). I’m pretty sure that i will read this book several times, especially once i have become a little bit stronger.

Last tuesday i played a game in the private league system i’m in, in addition to the Yunguseng. I consider this game to be a really low-point in my current play. I made several mistakes, both in joseki and local fighting. Even though the observer said after the game, that it actually was quite close i felt miserable most of the time. Main reason for that was, that nothing in this game developed even remotely like i wanted. Of course you can’t get everything you want in a game, but usually you have some parts that go well for you and other that go better for your opponent. In this game it felt like everything went well for my opponent.

After this game my girlfriend suggested i should try to replay some pro games on a real board. Especially Shusakuus games as he plays very calm and solid, which is probably the total opposite of my current style. And also because we already have „Invincible“ =).

So i tried it wednesday evening before my fourth yunguseng game. Maybe it helped, or maybe it was the classical music i put on during the game but that last game went really well. Both of us used a lot of time in the beginning and the game proceeded very calm and close (minus some mistakes on both sides). I can’t remember when i was this satisfied with one of my games, especially the opening stage.
In the end i blew the last chance i had gotten due to the time pressure in boy-yomi. Having to play 7 moves in 53 seconds put me in some kind of panic state, which prevented me from clearly thinking about my moves. So even though the game was a loss, it felt like a major accomplishment for me.

Future Study
What do intend to study next? In addition to the normal yunguseng-schedule (lectures and reviewed league games) i want to work on my major weakness. And that is joseki. Because one important lesson also repeated in „Direction of Play“ is that just because a sequence is joseki, doesn’t mean it is always good to play it. Depending on the circumstances a particular joseki may be a bad choice and another one should be considered. Choosing the right joseki is important, especially at my current level. However in order to choose a good joseki for a situation one has to actually know several josekis. And this is where i’m lacking. That means even if i avoid the few josekis i know, because they are bad in the current situation i will go into unknown territory, that is unknown for me, but familiar for my opponent (since he knows the josekis i don’t) which can result in even worse situations for me.

Since there are so many joseki and just skimming over the sequence in a book will do me no good i decided on a 1 joseki per week schedule. I will start using corresponding lecture videos from yunguseng with additional consulting takaos joseki dictionaries.
The goal will be to know some josekis for most typical early positions. Like „what can i play if he plays a high wide pincer“ or „what are my options against a 3-5 point“
There are obviously too many joseki to really know them all, but i what i want to avoid is a position where my opponent plays a normal looking move and i have absolutely no idea on how to continue. Currently, this happens way to often.

What about tsumego?
I have not been solving tsumego for quite some time. The last time i was actually semi-serious doing tsumego was probably in march. So nearly two months without any tsumego, that can’t be good, right?
Well doing tsumego would certainly help and they are a lot more efficient in improving reading ability than just playing but at the moment i’m not really in the mood for them. I tried solving easier problems from „1001 life & death problems“ but i got bored very quickly. Since go is a hobby and not my job i find it important to focus on the things that i enjoy, which are currently playing and watching lectures. Forcing myself to do tsumego would probably do more harm than good, as my general interest in go could dwindle.

The time may come again where i enjoy solving tsumego and will do them more, but currently i don’t and i don’t think my reading is currently a major weakness of mine.

Posted Game
I post here the game i played on tuesday in the private league - my lowest point so to speak. The mistakes are probably numerous and i will comment on some points where i think i made a crucial mistake.
You can comment on this game if you want, but hopefully you have the same impression i have, that the mistakes are not (only) a question of reading or concentration but more of style and general game-flow.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

Nearly three weeks, so my report is way overdue. The reason for this and my current go-situation can be phrased in just one simple sentence:

I hate (my current) go.

I have played quite a lot games since my last update, a total of sixteen just in june. And my winning percentage is at 31% - only five games out of these sixteen did i win.
But it isn’t just the number of loses that is frustrating me, it’s the way in which i lost.

I was 1k on KGS, maybe a weak 1k but somehow stable. And the two games i won on KGS in june were against a 2k and a 3k. All games played against 1k or even 1d did i loose.
That is not to say i didn’t stood a chance. In most of these games i played quite good even if i wasn’t necessary leading near the end, but i was satisfied with my play.
Until the mistake happen that all these games have in common. Some kind of simple stupid reading mistake. We all make mistakes and sometimes blunder occur, nobody is save from that. But the regularity in which this happens and the fact that it isn’t a mistake in a complex situation but somehow an easy situation where i can’t seem to read three moves ahead, is what makes this so frustrating.

To give you an idea of what i’m talking about i’m posting a game against a KGS 1d. In terms of game-loosing mistake i hit the rock bottom in this game. It was not a careless mistake i made because i played to fast - i actually took my time and read the situation and i considered the answer white played - i just failed to see during my reading, that it was atari.



I hope you all excuse my little rant, but writing this down seems to help me calm down.

The positive news i can report is, that the yunguseng-training seems to pay off. I am a lot more confident in my opening play even though my joseki knowledge hasn’t improved that much. That is probably the reason why i still can win against 2k and 3k on KGS. It seems they don’t put me that much under pressure that the stupid mistakes occur, which i make in games against stronger opponents.
And if i ever get over this blunder-phase KGS 1d doesn’t feel like such a big threat anymore.

But the question remains how can i overcome these blunders? Since they are reading mistakes my lack of tsumego may be a cause. I always thought tsumego were mainly a tool for improving and if you didn’t do any tsumego you’re reading would just not improve but stay what it is. And since i play a lot and study in yunguseng i thought not doing tsumego wouldn’t be such a big deal.
However now it is the first time ever i get the feeling that not doing tsumego is actually making me weaker. Considering that in the past my reading and attacking skills were quite good this feels extremely odd. Worst of all i don’t want to do tsumego, they feel like a chore currently and not like a fun activity.
None the less i started doing some, easy ones as that is the area where i am making the most mistakes currently and because they are less frustrating. So i started „1001 Life & Death Problems“ again. (Yes from the beginning, black to live 1-move problems)
However a lot of slacking off will probably occur, so i have no idea when i will actually finish the book.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

Nearly two months since my last post. Quite a lot had happened since.

June
June was my worst month so far. While i played the most games so far, 40 in total my winning percentage dropped 42,5% - i won only 17 out of these 40 games.
Now objectivly speaking, that isn't so bad, after all a 50% winning percentage is what you should expect. But what made this month so frustrating were two things:

First of all, the amount of lost games made it seem like i wasn't improving at all. Considering that i had joined the yunguseng, and i felt like i was improving - seeing the (potential) opposite in the game results was a bit frustrating.
Second it wasn't only the fact that i lost so much, it was how i lost these games. In many cases i made a simple mistake, because i misread an easy situation or just played stupid without a reason. This made me very angry about myself after these games, and more problematic was the fact, that the wins i made during this time, didn't felt rewarding. Even in those games i had the feeling of playing "crap" and only won because my opponent didn't punish my mistakes or made a lot graver errors on their own.

So despite the huge amount of games in June, it was the month where i had the least fun playing.

July
July started with a big go unrelated change, me starting my first real job after getting my master degree. This obviously means a lot less time to play go and study (and part the reason i played so much in June was to exploit the lot of free time i still had), but on the plus the negative emotions i felt after the games in june, were starting to vanish. Sometimes i still felt angry after losing, but i could regain my composure a lot faster and not all loses were so terrible. I started to feel joy about my play again, even if didn't win the game.

I only played 18 games in July, with just 8 wins which means a winning percentage of 44%. Also i recently started doing tsumego during commute time, which may help me with my misreadings.

Yunguseng
If you remember i had joined the Yunguseng-Dojang in May for one season (three months) which just ended. While i did lost most of my games i managed to learn a lot. This was also a major factor in my disappointment in june, because it felt like i learning new things and improving, thanks to the yunguseng but it didn't showed in the games.
Still i'm so satisfied with the yunguseng now, that i will continue to participate - especially since i now have a bit more money to spend on such stuff .

About improving and mistakes
What i experienced these last two months is probably something very common. Learning new techniques or ways of thinking it takes a while before you can really consistently apply them in your games. Until then you are trying to apply them in situations where they may not fit, or are just that good, so becoming "worse" after studying is not uncommon. After a while and practice when this new stuff becomes natural for you, you jump in strength - that is the normal way these things work i think.
This thinking was also what kept me pushing during june and early july, always believing it was just a phase i had to go through, but a phase that would eventually end. Interessetingly i had never such an intense stretch of improving-sickness before. In the past i either improved too fast to notice it (20k-15k time) or improved so slowly that it also wasn't really noticable.
These last three months are probably the first time i intensevly studied for so long since i became a SDK, so it may have also been a reality shock about how bad my game actually is. It seems there are so many areas where i really lack, that it seems odd i can play at 2k level. (Or that i'm really good at other parts)

Since the yunguseng is in hiatus for month i now have time to digest everything i learned so far. I will probably continue playing a few games here and then and rewatching some lectures - and continue doing tsumego on the subway

I still hope to wake up some morning and be 1d

PS: I don't know when i will post again, as keeping a fixed schedule doesn't seem to be a strong point of mine, but i'm sure it won't be that long again.

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Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)