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My name is Jeffrey Kinderman. I'm a resident of Carbondale, Pennsylvania which is located in the north eastern part of the state very close to Scranton and I also go by the alias on KGS, badger1243. I've been playing Go since about 9th or 10th grade in High School when my math teacher introduced the game to us in a Strategy Club. Unfortunately I was the only one of my class mates to really take interest in the game, let alone continue to play and learn it. It wasn't long before I even surpassed my math teacher, being the only other person in the entire area of my knowledge who plays, but to be fair he was also never very serious about the game and only really studied life and death which was the only edge he ever had over me xd. Eventually I learned about online go servers such as KGS and Dragon Go Server, DGS being my primary one for quite a long time. I liked DGS because it was a simplistic correspondence based server that didn't require me to commit to hour long games like on KGS because I didn't have that kind of time and I didn't like playing blitz or fast speed games much either. I started studying under a SDK player on DGS for a lengthy period of time known as Fred Flemming, I believe, and we primarily played teaching games and studied theory and proverbs via email, all of which I still have saved and look over every once in a while as they were very helpful and very knowledgeable. This experience boosted my skill to about a 15kyu KGS level of play and from there, after graduation, I was able to commit more time to playing rated games on KGS where I was able to attain 10kyu. Since then however, I haven't played a lot due to a lot of irl concerns, I'm now 19 going on 20 and working a stable job and getting house with a roommate and worrying about well, a lot of other stuff, but Go has always been in the back of my mind. A big part of the reason I didn't play as much as I would like to was because I didn't see the point in playing online when I had no one irl to play with at a competitive level, and believe me I've tried a lot of different strategies to getting the attention of players in the shadows to trying to introduce new people, but none of it was very successful. When I heard of the PA State Championship happening down in Philly it gave me a burst of inspiration to pick up my studies and play a lot more and more seriously online than ever before so I can finally play with and hopefully hold my own against other players in person. So recently I finally pushed my anxieties to the side, along with the help of some encouragement from Justin Teng, who I've met through discord and the Open Study Room to finally just start playing. So far I've worked a lot of my rust off from my hiatus and I've already made it back up to 10kyu rating on KGS hoping to push into and maintain a SDK rating as my first short term goal. My long term goal however would be a dan rating and in general starting a club of sorts to play with others and introduce new people to the game.
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badger1243
