In the year 2019...

[Ian Butler]

So what are your ambitions/good intentions/New Year's Resolutions for your Go in the year 2019?

For me, I have 5, spanning 5 difficulty categories: super-easy, easy, intermediate, difficult, impossible. Getting 1/5 is a given, 2/5 is easily doable. Getting 3/5 would be good, 4/5 a great year and I added the impossible level because it sounds fun. This'd be like learning all the Taisha variations, or beating Shin Jinseo in a jubango. You know, something like that

Super-easy: Enjoy playing/studying Go. That also means shoving Go aside at the right moments, too.
Easy: Go through at least 100 Pro Games.
Intermediate: Do L&D every single day for at least 15 minutes!
Difficult: Detach from online rank. Stop letting that little number next to your avatar & username determine your actions. Tough one, but maybe the most important one.
Impossible: Reach stable shodan playing strength.

Tell me your resolutions. Don't use the same format if you don't want to, obviously

[jlt]

Playing: what I like most is to play on a real board, I do that about once a week in my club or in tournaments. Concerning online games, I have bursts of intensive play followed by long periods without any games. I know it's not a very healthy habit but I am not able to hold a more regular schedule.

Pro games: during the last few months I have replayed at least 100 moves of about 100 pro games until I could remember them for at least a few hours (and remembering forces me to understand at least one purpose of each move). The only effect on my play is that I think more about playing forcing moves before responding, and play tenuki more often, but apparently this didn't improve my rank. Maybe my method wasn't right, and I should actively guess the next move instead of just watching.

Life and Death: I do a few easy L&D every day, which is fine, but when I am not in a good state of mind and look at more difficult problems, I tend to jump to the solution without checking variations carefully enough. That's a very bad habit that I should change.

Thinking about rank: before a game, I am also a bit afraid that my rating decreases, but then I tell myself "it doesn't matter if I lose, but it has to be a good game". Once I put my first stone, I completely forget about my rank and only think about the game.

Reaching x kyu or y dan: on this forum or IRL, I have seen many DDKs or low SDKs saying that they want to reach 1 dan in 1 year. Almost everyone failed. So my goal for 2019 is more modest: gain at least 1 stone. And if I don't progress in terms of strength, I will at least progress in terms of knowledge.

[dfan]

This year was a really good go year for me.

I played in the American Yunguseng Dojang all year, playing a serious game every week that I got reviewed by a very strong teacher, and made flashcards with the mistakes I needed to learn from. That really kept me in a nice rhythm so my enthusiasm didn't peter out.

I continued to play and have fun with my local go friends.

I went to the US Go Congress for the first time and had a fabulous time, even though my results didn't fully live up to my expectations.

I may be stronger than last year, though it's so hard to tell. I definitely feel much more confident during every phase of the game, and I finished the AYD season on a 6-0 streak that was largely against 1k and 2k opponents. And I finally got my GoQuest account to 1d.

Most importantly, I continued to be excited by go all year, thanks to AYD, my local friends, and you folks.

So basically I just want to do more of the same in 2019!

[kyulearner]

-Replay/memorize first 100 moves of 100 pro games or more
-Use spaced repetition and repeat 16 books (4 on opening, 4 on tesuji, 4 on basic life and death, 2 on endgame, 2 on joseki/joseki deviations/joseki follow ups)*3 times
-Tackle a more difficult tsumego daily, and gain a reading ability of 2 more moves (vs 6,7-ish moves at present)

-Discard the habit of being lazy on reading, especially under stressed conditions
-Obtain the habit of counting when making strategic/direction of play decisions
-Discard the mental trait of a greedy player and obtain a balanced view of territory vs influence/thickness
-Play less and review more

-Participate in tournaments as 2d (Japan) and gain more than 50% wins

[yakcyll]

Hey, cool! I wonder how many of those we'll be looking back at in twelve months and saying to ourselves, 'Damn yes, I did this!'

For me, there's a couple goals and plans:
* Reach 1d KGS by March,
* Attempt to reach 1d EGF by the time the Summer Go School in Poland rolls around (second half of August),
* Enroll in the EYD for the second quarter,
* Organize and manage two Warsaw Go Tournaments (the winter edition coming up soon, on the 12th),
* Begin incorporating reviews of professional games into the general routine.

The rank goals are stated with full awareness of the very limited time I have to reach them. My biggest accomplishment this year however was to slowly shift from being oriented at results to being oriented at effort and with this I feel that the more ambitious I get, the more I will accomplish, without the unnecessary anguish this time. Back in December last year I had no official rank and started with 15k KGS; reaching 8k/4k respectively feels like solid progress.

[Leon]

I have two go related goals for the new year:

1) Install Leela and Lizzie and use them to review my games

2) Get a stable EGF 3d rank

[WiseMouse]

I have 3 goals.

1. Participate in AYD, including watching all the reviews of the leagues above me. This will probably be my league and 3-4 more.
2. Play 300 games this year with at least 10 minutes main time. This is just the slowest and second slowest automatch settings on the servers I play.
3. Solve 26000 problems this year.

[Xai]

I’ve been trying to return to Go recently but all I’ve done is rewatch all of Hikaru no go and play Tsumego... so I have simple and obtainable new year resolutions:

1. Play less Hearthstone and play 1 game of Go per week
2. Review the 1 game per week on my pc with an a.i.
3. Tsumego while I eat breakfast instead of twitter

[Galation]

Hi, your post caused me to think.

Last year I've made less than 30 life and death problems, mainly because I do want to make BIG things.
i.e. studying the position, research the problems I've made wrong, work only when I am in best conditions and can muster 100% of attention on the task, that is rarely the case, due to my work pace, my children, all the appointments and duties...

I decided to make a minimum commitment for this 2019: also when I came home late, and I can spare just minutes on it, I will make at least One TsumeGo every day.

I will only register the wrong ones for later analysis (just for information, I like to put the position on the goban and take a picture that I use as rotating wallpaper on my smartphone).

If I sustain this minimal task, I will have made 365 problems by the end of the year: 10 times last year's result. Possibly 365 wrong attempts.

It is not a so big goal, but I will probably improve more this way than waiting for the perfect moment for studying.

So, thank you for asking, my friend!
Galation