I'm finally breaking down, and I'm going to set out a study plan. Inspired by SinK, here, I'm going to improve with him. I'm incredibly competitive, and I'm not going to go down in the Malkovitch Game without a fight, so I'm going to improve.

The story so far:
The story begins when I first began to get good at chess. I couldn't beat one of my friends, and he beat me about 30 times in a row before I beat him for the first time. During the time that I was failing to beat him I was studying chess non-stop. Now I really only play for enjoyment, not for the rating. Improvement stopped when I didn't have a target to reach for.

I first saw Go several years ago on Yahoo! Games, while I was looking for other strategy games that were different than Chess. I was bored of chess, and from time to time I need a breather from Chess. I played eight games, and said, "This is so stupid. Chess is better.", and went back to chess. So, two years ago, I was bored and remembered a conversation that I had with a friend of mine, and she said that I'd like Hikaru No Go. Well, I watched the anime and in January of 2009 I played my first game on KGS. Again my play was uninspiring, and I lost every game that I played that month. Slowly, but surely I've improved to 12K. I don't play much online, but when I do it's about 50% win 50% loss.

Obviously, I can't spend 24/7 on Go. I'm much older than I was when I could play and study chess non-stop. I'm a poor starving college student . I've got to go to class, do homework, study for tests, look for a job, and buy a new car (I unfortunately totaled my car recently). I've got competing interests for time, so I can't spend all of my time on Go. But what I can do is play all I can. Preferably, one a day. Also, I have the books Tesuji and Life and Death that I plan on working through. Also, I downloaded the Cho Chikun Tsumego Collections without answers available online. I will be working on problems as well as playing games.

So, putting all of this together the plan, starting Monday, is:

1. Play at least one game per day. If I can't log in to KGS, then I'm going to play the computer. I know that playing the computer isn't the greatest thing to do, but I like the option of always having an opponent handy. I don't know anyone that is on my level personally, so the computer is going to have to do.

2. Do 50 Tsumego a day. This will be the difficult part of the plan. I don't like doing problems, and I don't see how they're going to help me improve. However, I'm willing to try it out. I haven't done a lot of tactical chess problems in my life, and that could be why I'm stuck. I don't have the answers to Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of problems and I want to be able to eventually solve all of them, so I have a lot of work cut out for me.

3. Review the games that I play, win or lose. I'm going to do this in two passes. The first pass, a cursory look for both sides and the mistakes we made. The second pass a more in depth look at my moves and why I made them. This means that I'm going to actually have to think about my moves. I play way too fast and I need to change that.

4. Ask any questions that I have about the game on this forum. Most of you guys are willing to help answer the weaker players' questions. You've been very helpful so far. I even want opinions of people weaker than I am.

4a. Try to absorb the information that the stronger players present.
4b. Weaker players have the tendency to charge blindly into some situations. I want the courage they possess when they play in those situations. If I can't read something all out, then I'm going to need the weaker player's courage to actually play the move if it's the right one.

5. Keep playing my Malkovich Game with SinK and compare my progress with his. I'm not going down without a fight. For now, SinK is going to be my rival, so I'm giving myself the same deadline: December 31st at 11:59 p.m.

6. Have fun. This is the most important thing on this list, since if I'm not having fun, I'm not going to improve.

Bring it on.

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

Last one to 9kyu is a rotten egg!

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Teamovich 2
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3062

My (Dead) Study Journal
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=2058

LOL. Hopefully we'll both be SDK at the end of the year.

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

If either of you would be interested in playing a Malkovich game with me (or a non-Malkovich) game, my username on KGS is kaimat, same as here.

I'm 21 and pretty new to Go (I'm not ranked on KGS but probably a kyu in the high teens).

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I came to go through Kawabata and was introduced to a whole new world.

great plan just a couple of my thoughts/oppinions




These two seem to conflict. Because as you point out 6. is the most important I would reduce the nr. of tsumego and play an extra game each day. It is my opinion that you will learn more by getting experience from real games you enjoy playing, than from doing tsumego problems you do not like. (also I would not recommend problems without answers at your level. It is too easy to miss something and think you learned something while in fact you were just wrong)


don't overdo this. You need time to proses the information. It is better to just take 2-3 basic concepts/mistakes from every game, as opposed to trying to find every mistake and forgetting most of it.
games at your level are decided by 20 point mistakes, not by 2 point mistakes.

If you have more time just play another game and get 2-3 more things from that.

in short, don't lose yourself in the details. focus on the main concepts, and worry about the details and exceptions later.
They key to SDK is not learning nice tesuji,finding the best endgame sequences, or memorizing loads of joseki variations. The key to SDK is to avoid making basic mistakes and stupid blunders (I would say L&D problems are therefore more interesting than Tesuji).

anywy good luck.

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Laurens
Go school: freegame's Teaching School
Author of: The Next Move a book for 15-3kyu players.

Keep it up. I wish you luck to your quest of becoming a sdk. You will feel awesome when you get it, trust me!

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Stefany, web programmer

I wish you luck. If you want a teaching game, don't hesistate to ask. We will always help you.

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Stefany, web programmer

50 tsumego is a lot. You might try and do 5 from the book or 10-20 from something like goproblems.com. Too much tsumego is going to drive you crazy and will take up a ton of time. It's important, but better to have a realistic goal.

The things that helped me the most get to sdk were reading on opening strategy (not joseki, but basic strategy), small amounts of tsumego everyday, watching audio reviews on KGS from Battousai and Dsaun, and playing games.

Good luck!

Re: Point 5.

Are you ever going to make your next move?

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Teamovich 2
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3062

My (Dead) Study Journal
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=2058

Yes...In fact, later today. Life has been crazy the past few weeks.

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

Life has always been crazy if you ask me

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Stefany, web programmer

So true.

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

That's exactly what I needed: competition... Anyone in for a rival?

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My blog with World Go news in Portuguese: Jornal do Go
The link to the Google Translation to English: Jornal Do Go

It does make it easier, hence, why I declared SinK my rival. Though, SinK and I haven't played in real time yet.

On a completely unrelated note, here's a game that I played (and lost) on IGS. I had trouble with his invasion of my left side.
I think that move 141 lost me the game.



Up to 141, I thought that I had the upper hand.

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

One quick comment. The joseki on the bottom left was tenukied before it got finished. You should ignore his approach on the top left, and seal him into the corner with E3. Getting sealed in hurts much more than anything he can do to your top left.

Hmmmm....That's interesting. I'm going to have to remember that. Can anyone expand on that?

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

A few comments, some are just stylistic.
5: Great approach. Kind of a super-Kobayashi in idea.
9: What Red said. While I MIGHT choose to wait until after the top left resolves, it's certainly huge for the next time sente drops.
13: While this move lets you threaten to chase W (which is good, and a reasonable plan), this is basically a 4-4 joseki transposed one space closer to the wall, so it seems less good (you get one line less territory on the left). Instead, I like E13. You get it anyways, but it seems like it's higher-priority. If W took E13 instead of stretching in the corner, W would have less troubles.
17: While this is reasonable, I'm interested in the peep at F16. Honestly not convinced it works or is a good idea, but I figured I'd mention it.
21: I prefer K16. The link is better, and it's attacking better from a distance, giving less forcing mess to your opponent.
33: Doesn't help much. White has J15 if W wants it. That said, H13 is probably better for the purposes to get out.
61: Good!
67: I think your corner is fine, which means you can (and should) keep pressing below at R7. The single point per line W threatens to get doesn't match the benefit of the strength you gain. The hane actually looks like it might work, but that's more aggressive than I feel like I'd be.
95: I'd have a hard time resisting the M9 net. Your move is on a larger scale though, but you're ahead enough on the board that I like just capturing to settle points solidly.
141: You're right, D12 is simpler and safer.
147: The chicken has flown the coop by this point. W can live at this point (these black stones have two liberties and nowhere to run). Therefore, if you're going to push the white stones somewhere, shove them against the wall (with something like B12) so that you can wall off where the points are.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

5: Yeah, I was surprised he gave it to me.
9: I'm going to have to look up the joseki now to see what he should have played.
13: I was planning on chasing, and didn't want to give up the corner. Your suggestion looks interesting.
17: Interesting. What are peeps supposed to do?
33: Yeah. After you pointed it out, I saw it. Should have played J14.
95: M9 is interesting...Need to start looking for these.
141: Saw that after the game. I think I could have killed him if I played D12.
147: More inertia than anything. I knew I had screwed up, so I was trying to attack at will. It didn't work.

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

Another game on IGS which I played yesterday, and I think my opponent lost on time. The end of the game was quite confusing. I was playing on my iPod touch via Tetsuki (which is an awesome app, by the way), and all of a sudden something glitches and all of a sudden the game was over. I wasn't ready for the game to be over. Oh, well, I think that he and I played quite well.



I don't count at all so I have no clue who was winning at the end. I have a feeling that he gradually outplayed me, and if the game ended normally he would have won. I feel I didn't really make any big mistakes, which is surprising since I was talking to a friend on the phone for the majority of the game.

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

Forcing an opponent group to live small (say, in the corner) by locking it in (enclosing it) is really really big. The whole point of josekis in the opening is the two players trying to get access to the center and sides. The profit is secondary. The only josekis that involve someone getting entirely locked out of access to sides and center are usually because either the profit is so big that it doesn't (hopefully) matter (5-5 joseki) or the opponent's position was so big that stealing any of it back is good (3-3 invasion of 4-4 stone).

If you lock your opponent entirely in the corner, their group won't be able to help or hurt any other stones for the rest of the game. You, on the other hand, get impressive thickness that you can use to run enemy groups towards, or build moyos, or whatever.

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1k KGS