For once I went over a game without using Crazy Stone (yet), so I'm posting it here without computer assistance in the hope of getting some human thoughts. This was a live game played against a friend last night. I was very happy with my opening (though I'm not sure yet how happy I should be!) but made some big strategical and tactical mistakes at the end and lost by 2.5. Thanks in advance for any comments.

141: Can you omit the connection and take sente?

164: For the move on the top that you didn't take, I believe the sente hane and connect is better than the gote clamp.

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Occupy Babel!

Thank you for the comments!

141: Yes, and Crazy Stone confirmed this. In fact I ran into a similar situation a few days later when playing a training game against Crazy Stone, where a stone two diagonal points away from a first-line hane can help reduce the severity of the second-line cut. So hopefully I will recognize this in the future.

164: Yeah, I have to learn to recognize sente and gote sequences more easily.

In going over the game later with Crazy Stone, the biggest mistake that I made that I didn't already have some idea about was that a push at D4 (during the middle game) would have been very strong, because the cut at C3 is huge.

Yeah, that's one that you see a lot after that joseki in professional games, sometimes surprisingly early.

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Occupy Babel!

I just got back from another AGA tournament, going 1-3 as a 3k, but one of the losses was giving 9 stones to a 12k, and all my other games were interesting. The result should bring me back down to 4k, but that's okay. I'm now 4-8 as a 3k, which is decent enough that I'm still going to keep entering tournaments at that rank. And I have four (well, three really) more serious games to learn from!

I guess it's time for an update. I've played 7 tournament games since the last update and went 4-3; my AGA rating is 4.3k but I'm entering tournaments at 3k and feeling confident. In my last two casual games I beat a 3k and a 2k by resignation.

I joined AYD in the spring and have played 15 games in it. It's been an awesome experience and I've already signed up for the next two seasons. The lectures are outstanding (you get access to the full backlog) and getting your games regularly reviewed by a very strong player who knows your play personally is gold. It also has helped with my nervousness about playing games, since I feel like the point of playing is to get a useful review, not as much just to win.

I also have been watching lectures and doing problems at Guo Juan's site. The spaced repetition system is something I was already sold on, and it's been great for retaining things like joseki as well as training my pattern intuition. There is a small mismatch in that In-seong (of AYD) is very up-to-date on the latest fuseki and joseki developments so sometimes I will be memorizing a joseki line that he regards as obsolete. Not a huge deal in practice because obviously the joseki can't be that terrible if everyone was playing it until 2015, but to get the most from his reviews I want play things that he recommends and maximize the review time spent on other things.

I've backed off of all the tsumego (still haven't finished Maeda vol. 1) and am concentrating on playing and studying the areas that those two sites focus on. 1d may still be a while away (and I may never get there) but I feel like my play is a lot more mature than a year ago. Most importantly, I'm still feeling very motivated and enjoying go a lot.