@ Knotwilg: I didn't actually expect anyone else to write something here, so I want to say sorry that my answer took so long. ^^; Anyways, thanks a lot for your comments, they are much appreciated! I thought about what you wrote and what happened at the end of last year and I think I already tried to implement all of the points mentioned (apart from early resigntion, but if you're like 60 points behind after 90 moves because of a blunder and even without it you wouldn't have had a good chance I think it's ok to resign here - I don't want to win because I bored my opponent to death. )
What I really liked about your tips is the thing about taking small steps that help you get motivated again. I'm already trying with how I'm "training" at the moment although I'm not sure that I'm setting the right goals. But one has to start and maybe I'll stumble over a good one in the near future!

I'm a little behind with posting my progress due to crazy work and private life - and me doing the problems mostly late in the evening before I go to bed. Maybe I should try to find another timeslot for that next week...

Short playing log:
This week I only got to play two games - thanks to my work which keeps me really busy at the moment and thanks to another hobby that needs some attention too.. Hopefully, next week will be better!
Thursday I played my game in the German Bundesliga and it was a horrible game indeed including 3 large blunders on my side.. Even after the first one - a corner sequence which I though I had read out correctly but which turned out to include a fatal mistake (the famous one liberty problem) - I think I was not extremely behind. But the other two blunder broke my neck then, even though I don't think that my opponent was really much stronger than me. If it hadn't been for the blunders, I think I'd have good chances to win the game. Of course, pondering over that is futile now, the game is played. But next time I'm sure I'll be able to play a much better game and we'll see who will win that time.. Although I'm sure that I for my part will not write silly comments when my opponent makes a stupid move then..
The second game was played todax. It was a scheduled game, too, for a league a fellow Go player from our town set up for everybody's enjoyment. Settings are: no handicap, 60 Minutes basic thinking time, 30 stones in 10 minutes Canadian byoyomi and 7,5 komi. It was the fourth of five games in this season and my fourth win. However, this one was not something to be proud of, because normally I should have given my opponent handycap (since I neither know his name nor his declared strength, I cannot really say how many but I guess it'd be... maybe 3 stones). So I'll just think about the last game of the season next month and start bracing myself the looming promotion to the first league - where I'll surely be beaten to a pulp by players of 1d to about 3k. Another reason to not let things slide and continue the training! Unfortunately, that is easier said than ddone and I failed to do my weekly study and didn't really look into the games played. -this calls for twice the effort next week....


Week 1 / Day 5: Thursday April 16th

• at least 50 Tsumego: check (50 from Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia, start tomorrow at 252/900; plus 6 Daily Problems from the TsumeGo Pro App)
• play 50 games until June 15th: 1/50
• review at least 1 situation from each game and write down shortly what I've learned: -
• weekly Go study: -

Week 1 / Day 6: Friday April 17th

• at least 50 Tsumego: check (50 from Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia, start tomorrow at 302/900; plus 6 Daily Problems from the TsumeGo Pro App)
• play 50 games until June 15th: 1/50
• review at least 1 situation from each game and write down shortly what I've learned: -
• weekly Go study: -

Week 1 / Day 7: Saturday April 18th

• at least 50 Tsumego: not check (45 from Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia, start tomorrow at 347/900)
• play 50 games until June 15th: 1/50
• review at least 1 situation from each game and write down shortly what I've learned: -
• weekly Go study: -

Week 1 / Day 8: Sunday April 19th

• at least 50 Tsumego: check (50 from Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia, start tomorrow at 397/900)
• play 50 games until June 15th: 2/50
• review at least 1 situation from each game and write down shortly what I've learned: -
• weekly Go study: -

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Oh my.. many weeks have passed since my last post. And as you might have expected, nothing much related to Go has happened, other hobbies and my job have distracted me from my plans. I somehow continued with tsumego training here and there while commuting, but it was neither coordinated in any way, nor did I solve many more tsumego from Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia - I mostly switched to Tsumego Pro on my smartphone instead (point and click, mostly, to be honest...).

Still, there are a few noteworthy things to report: Although I didn't really train at all in the last 3 months, I won all my (very few - what was that about playing 50 games in 10 weeks...? ) games in the last few weeks - among them some quite important games. Last Monday was the day of the fifth and final game of a league a fellow player from Berlin organized. It was my fifth win and secured my top spot in the league. Which means that I'll get beaten to a pulp in the first league next season. However, next season won't start until next year, I guess, since the first league has many more players than the second and third league (the whole system is still in experimental stage) and they still have to play 4 or 5 games (it is 1 game per month). Until then there's still the Osaka Go Camp and much more time left to (maybe... ) study some more. we'll see!

The second and much more noteworthy experience was last night when our team in the German Bundesliga won the final game of the season - which meant that we earned a straight promotion from the fifth (and lowest league) to the fourth league for the first time ever! We never really focussed on getting to the fourth league, our goal was always to enjoy one serious game per month and see where that would lead us to. I'm excited and really looking forward to September when the next season starts!

This week an e-mail from the organizers of the Osaka Go Camp arrived in which they wrote that nearly 60 (!!) people already registered for this summer's camp. That's a lot! Last year there were less than 30 participants if I'm not wrong, so this is great news.

While whatching the first game of this year's Meijin title, I also noticed that the sixth game of this title will be played in Toba, a town a mere two hour's travel by train from Osaka. Since the second day of play is a free day in the camp (apart from an optional Osaka Castle trip), we decided that if there will be a sixth game, we are going to skip the Osaka castle trip (for this day) and travel to Toba instead to see if we can get a live commentary or a glimpse on the players or anything of the like. And if not (although that's not what we expect because there usually is an event for Go players there, isn't it?), we're going to have a nice day at the Pacific Ocean in a town with great tradition (for all like us who didn't know before: Toba and the reagion around is well known because of the invention of round cultured pearls and because of the ama, the women shell divers. These women have been diving for pearls for many hundreds of years already - of course without any gear whatsoever and until they reach a high age).

Although there is much left to organise before we leave for Japan in a few week's time, I'll try to fit in as much Go training as I can. I'd like to start with this game, it is my game from yesterday's Bundesliga match. Although it is a won game, I'd like to ask for a few mistakes I made since my boyfriend wasn't able to notice anything grave. But I'm sure I must have messed up something, like inefficient moves like L8. But maybe there's something on a larger scale? I hope you can give me some clues. Thanks in advance!

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