Eighteen months, sure a long time since i last posted here. After the EGC 2012 in Bonn life took over you could say. The preperations for my master thesis and then the thesis itself left me with little motivation to seriously play go or improve my go-skill.
But now that is (hopefully) going to change. I finished my thesis just before christmas and once i find a job and settle into a routine, playing and studying go should become a part of my routine as well. At least that's the plan for now.
Let's start this new journal entry with a small recap. As mentioned in the last post i had joined the Yunguseng Dojang, an online teaching course/league by In-seong. I had joined as a spectator at first and then later as a full league member for one season (i think). This experience had some good points and some bad points, so let's start with the bad ones.
I didn't play enough during that time. When i was in the league i had to play five league games during a month and these were actually almost all games i played during these three months. As we all know, for teaching to be really effective one has to play and try out the new things learned during a lesson. Because i played so little during that time, the actual effect on my strength was limited - and because i didn't saw the situation improving for the near future i quit after this one season.
But it actually also had some good points. Despite my laziness in playing, some information from the lessons actually sticked and i can still remember them now. Also In-Seong helped me in correcting a huge mistake in my perception of my weaknesses. I always thought i was weak in fighting, but apparently that was one of my stronger parts. My reading is (or was) good, but i think i lack a bit in the tesuji-department. My other grave weakness as pointed out by In-Seong during my time in the league is joseki. My joseki-knowledge is limited to the most basic josekis it seems. Which is too limited for my level, my opponents apparently can often play joseki unknown to me which leads to mistakes and leaves me in a bad position after the opening.
I enjoyed the time in the dojang and fully intend to join it again this year. Maybe even as a spectator in march, but i plan to join the league again in april, when the next season starts.
Back to the present. I played several games on KGS over the holidays to see where i stand and get back into shape. Maybe i was unlucky with my opponents but almost all games turned out to be pretty aggressive fight-intensive games. And despite my strength in fighting i fell apart in most of them. I account that to not playing and not doing tsumego for the last year, so getting back into my old shape is one of my first goals.
For this i plan on going through
"Graded Go Problems for Dan Players - Vol.1 Life and Death" again. I remember being really comfortable with the difficulty of these problems. Some being very easy but most of them solvable with a bit of reading and some being really hard to crack.
My girlfriend got me the next two books from this series for christmas, so now i also have:
"Graded Go Problems for Dan Players - Vol 2 Tesuji"
"Graded Go Problems for Dan Players - Vol 3 Joseki"The great thing about these two books is, that they cover two of my weaknesses i plan to correct this year. The actual goal is to become as comfortable with these two books as i already am (or was) with the first one.
I will try to post reguarly in this journal a weekly schedule seems to be the best option. I will formulate a weekly schedule and will post each week wether i have succeeded in keeping the schedule or not. There will be no goals, short- or long-term. Keeping the schedule will be the only goal i try to achieve and then the results will show themself over time.
Weekly ScheduleI will try to achieve all of the following per week:
1. TsumegoOne hour each doing problems from the three "Graded Go Problems for Dan Players" books.
2. TheoryAt least one hour studying new theory. This can be studying tesuji (Davis - Tesuji / Shuko - Dictonary of Basic Tesuji 1-2), studying new josekis (Takao Shinji - Dictonary of Joseki 1-3) or watching lectures.
3. PlayingIn order to apply the new theory of point 2, and practice reading in real game application playing is important. So i will try to play several games per week. This means at least three games as a bare minimum but i will try to play at least four per week on average.
Outlook for the coming weekI'm going toe the Kisei Event in Madrid the coming weekend, together with my girlfriend. While that will give me plenty of opportunity itself for my planned scheduled (the side-tournament is 4 rounds alone) i will try to keep my schedule before flying to Madrid. As i said i feel a bit rusty after a year-long pause and i want my first tournament of the year not to be a total disaster. So getting in (better) shape before that is my current plan for this week.
To finish this first journal entry after a long pause and hopefully the first of many regular entries i will post one of my games from the holidays. I may have been a bit too greedy at several points in this game, but i think it shows my current problems quite well. It was an automatch game with 25minutes + 5x30s, so no blitz game. (I rarely play blitz)
(;GM[1]FF[4]CA[UTF-8]AP[CGoban:3]ST[2]
RU[Japanese]SZ[19]KM[0.50]TM[1500]OT[5x30 byo-yomi]
PW[MagicMagor]PB[tommatstu]WR[2k]BR[3k]DT[2013-12-31]PC[The KGS Go Server at
http://www.gokgs.com/]C[MagicMagor [2k\]: hi
tommatstu [3k\]: hi
MagicMagor [2k\]: have a nice game
]RE[B+Resign]
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;W[pd]WL[1495.793]C[tommatstu [3k\]: ok
]
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tommatstu [3k\]: thx
])