Hi everyone,

I'm 1.Kyu for a long time now because I never found enough time/motivation to study or play serious. My priority was to teach some people in my evironment go and reviewed a lot of games. Besides I'm currently studying computer science and that takes a lot of time as well. However, now that I passed another period of exams I have some free time and want to spent it into becoming better at go to finally become 1.Dan. I'm, already 1.Dan at KGS but that doesn't count much in my oppinion.

A list of my problems:
-I play to fast. At a tournament with 1 hour thinking time it's rare that I use more than half of it.
-This is an effect of my fast playing style: I'm unused to think ahead more than a few moves.

My plan:
-I become a fast player by playing on KGS the most times (There aren't much players in my city). To balance this I'm playing on OGS and try to think about every move.
-Doing a lot of Tsumegos
-Playing at least 7 games a week (most on Tygem/OGS not counted) which I'll post here.
-Reviewing those games for myself (with the help of SmartGO) and with the help of everybody who has comments on the games here.

Any other tips you have ? I would like to read a book as well, but I don't know which. Here are 2 games I played today. The first one is not complete (I don't know how to export from Tygem and replay them on SmartGo as far as I think it is useful)

I think this games shows my problems. Even in fights I often play only with my instinct...

This game seem to be the exact opposite of the game before but I think he just underestimated the situation at the top left and got deperate afterwards.

EDIT: Fixed 2nd game link

Hey Celebrir

Feel free to hit me up for some longer games (20 min / 30 sec byomi) on Kaya; I've been diagnosed with a similar problem of playing many of my moves too casually/quickly when I'm not under time pressure.

Tsumego-wise, when doing them online, I am constantly told not to click at all until I'm finished my reading. Tchan001's blog has some strong words on tsumego drilling too: http://tchan001.wordpress.com/interesting-tidbits/

Something that bemuses me endlessly is that you're only 3k on wbaduk (I'm 4d there) but only one rank below me on KGS. Maybe one of us is a terrible sandbagger .

On the book front, I really loved Cho Chikun's Positional Judgement; it drives home that counting is a both practical and fundamental skill, and I wish I had read it many stones ago.

Good luck!

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Sure, I'll do. I'm really looking forward to the time when everybody can play on Kaya and finding an opponent is easier



Seems to be very true because you don't have second chance in a real game as well.



The text from Cho Chikun is really great. It seems to hit my weak point exactly



Are you playing only at one country ? Seems to be really weird, because I feel like I could get the 2d at KGS without ro much effort if I really would try, but I'm more serious at wbaduk and Tygem...



Seems like a good idea. Is the style of the book more or less similiar to the text on the blog ?



Thanks

Here is todays game with some comments:

One thing was weird with this game: He let his time run out when I passed the first time. This kind of things happened sometime to me on Tygem. Is it because they don't want to admit defeat because of skill to a western ? Or is it because this are kids which are already as strong as we are ?...

Today I made a really bad mistake:

I started to read two books: "Dictionary of Basic Tesuji V.1" and "Positional Judgment High-Speed Analysis". It seems to be good to read this both books because you're bored with the one you can continue the other.

Besides I followed the Kisei game 6 which was a really intresting one. I'm sad there is only one game left in this title match because they all were very exciting.

Maybe this?

topazg,

@celebrir:

Your diagrams are the reason I added the possibility to play at my 'a' for B. Besides black isn't completly sealed in because off ?

Mmm, sorry, when you said Black had sente I assumed that you were implying tenuki, and I felt it wasn't sente due to Black wanting to play something like "a". Even so, I think White can then descend in almost-sente due to the same squeeze nonsense that the double hane works, so even with "a" he's not connected.

I honestly don't know, it doesn't seem that great for White in points terms, but White did approach and get pincered, so he can't expect an overwhelming result. I've always thought that separating the corner from the pincered stone plus pressing down to the second line is a pretty good result from a corner approach, and Black's third move seems to be dubious once it dies, even if there is aji left.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Problem
$$ ------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . 1 . . . . .
$$ | . . . 3 2 . . . .
$$ | . 7 X X O . . X .
$$ | 5 O O X O . . . .
$$ | . X X O O . . . .
$$ | 6 X O B . . . . .
$$ | . 4 O . 8 . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . .[/go]

Assuming is saved for later, I'd certainly take this end result as ok if I was White and I had to face that marked stone.

EDIT: Actually, is such an annoying sente that I'd assume Black would push one more before playing , even though that lowers the aji of the marked stone.

Sorry, I meant that black has a few options. He doesn't die if he plays another move to strengthen his outside stone.



I'm not sure... After the sequence up to black has real sente now. He could use it to play at the upper side. If you cut the pincer, shouldn't you be able to attack this. Besides in my first diagram about this topic was markes as "impossible" and I really never so it before (It feels bad for sure). However, with this result, is whites position really superior ?

Yes. I definitely think white is better even if black makes an extension on top.

That's really intresting. During my game study yesterday I found this joseki:



If I compare the both positions:

The difference might be that black had the first move in corner.

Yeah, I really missed that...

Also, there's cut aji in this joseki.

Doesn't this more or less equals illucks argument that black played first in the corner ?

I'm currently preparing for my last exam tomorrow for this period, therefore I'm currently not playing much. Instead I'm reading books and doing some problems whenever I have time. But after the weekend I would like to play some games with a hour thinking time. I finally want to get rid of my problem with the thinking time at tournaments... Would anyone like to play such a game ?

At this weekend I played 9x9 tournament with handicap (and there are lot of players which are ~20k). I went 3:1 so it seems like a good start into my tournament season

I'm still searching opponents for 1h hour 19x19 games !

Today I played a game on Tygem which was a really good reading training. I won this game, but I still have some thing I wonder about (comments in the gamefile)