hl782 wrote:Super rough these days. Tygem 3D, KGS 1-2D are hard. I'm about... 5-25 in my last 30 games on Tygem? Probably 8-32 ish total if you include my last games from KGS as well. I'll probably push back on my Tygem 4D goal by end of the year for a few months. It doesn't seem very practical at the moment.
Give it time. You had some stellar progress the last months, you just might be at a point now where the gaps in your existing knowledge hamper your progress because now your opponents are strong enough to benefit from them.
I'd take a good look at a couple of typical losses and figure out, when stuff went wrong and if there's a common denominator.
Still in the midst of a long slump/lack of improvement on online games, but I did go to the local go club this past weekend, and won all 4 of my games. I easily beat a 1-2 Dan guy, and then won 3 in a row vs a Tygem 6 Dan (2 games with 3 stone, and 1 with 2 stone handi respectively).
I found it odd that I kept winning my handi games, but still lose most of my even games online. Maybe its just a self-conscious thing.
In terms of tsumego, I finished both Volume 5's of the LCH series again, but they are still hard (the shapes are not immediate to me yet). I'm still holding off on the volume 6 for now.
I think it's hard to become stronger by yourself without a teacher. If you can afford it, I can highly recommend joining the Yunguseng Dojang run by teacher In-Seong Hwang, who is the best go teacher I know. Also, he's very strong. He's an amateur, but he's at least as strong as the European pros.
gennan wrote:I think it's hard to become stronger by yourself without a teacher. If you can afford it, I can highly recommend joining the Yunguseng Dojang run by teacher In-Seong Hwang, who is the best go teacher I know. Also, he's very strong. He's an amateur, but he's at least as strong as the European pros.
I'm actually taking weekly lessons from Mark Lee (AGA 9Dan), but I'm beginning to think studying individually is better. Maybe slower progress though.
Yes, if you have good discipline and good self-reflection, studying individually can work. But top athletes still tend to have a coach. They need it to point out weaknesses that they cannot see themselves. A good coach can give personal advice to focus your training on some specific issues. It makes your training more effective.
Also in that respect, In-Seong does it really well. He really focusses on your personal issues (he has over 70 students, but he still manages to remember each one's weak and strong points). I had been declining for many years, but my game and my results clearly improved after getting personal advice from him to change my playing style and focus on issues where I am weakest at.
Fixing the weakest aspects of your game is the most effective way to improve, but it can be difficult to see those for yourself, because the weakest aspects of your game tend to be close to the strongest aspects of your game and you want to keep the latter.
For me, my weakest point was my overaggression and impatience during the game. But fighting was my strongest point. So the most important thing for me was controlling myself. I should play more patiently. Play a calm opening and take points instead of trying to pick fights whenever I can. Fights will come anyway, so I don't need to force the game in that direction. Another eye-opener for me was that In-Seong showed that my opening wasn't really good, while beforehand I thought it was a stronger part of my game. So I had to change my positional judgement.
So I needed to have a different state of mind and a different perception of the board while playing. I couldn't change it overnight ofcourse, but it did improve over time (with In-Seong hammering it in, every time I lost control of myself again in my league games) and it helped me to get out of my long slump. It doesn't mean I win all the time now (I need to work more on my reading and endgame skills), but my games are more stable now and I feel better and more confident while playing.
Alas, I'm lacking time nowadays to be a league player in the Yunguseng Dojang, but I will surely continue when I have time again.
First, I've decided that I'll put my lessons with Mark on delay for now - this is primarily due to a few reasons. 1) It's nearing performance review cycle at work, so I need to focus my primary attention on that, and 2) I felt that the lessons would be more beneficial when I'm a higher level player (at least minimum of Tygem 5-6D).
I feel that I can get that far by independent study, as Mark repeatedly has told me that I have the intuition/instincts of a 6D, but the reading skill of a 1D (lol).
On my go, I've actually won a bunch of games on Tygem recently, and I am currently +4 games away from a promotion to 4 Dan. It's odd that I've gotten better results when I haven't really read any go books or solved any problems, but maybe my poor results in the earlier months was a result of overexertion syndrome. I'll post some games up for inspection later in the week.
hl782 wrote:I feel that I can get that far by independent study, as Mark repeatedly has told me that I have the intuition/instincts of a 6D, but the reading skill of a 1D (lol).
That's actually a good sign. Misreading is easier to correct than poor judgement.
Bonne chance!
Edit: I am reminded of the game that 6 year old Fujisawa Hideyuki played to become an insei. Segoe stopped the game because he was impressed by a one space jump little Hideyuki-chan had made in the center.
The Adkins Principle: At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins
I'm off to a 5-9 start on my first 14 games as a 4D on Tygem, but I take comfort in that all of my losses were actually "quality" losses. I don't think I'll get demoted as long as I am careful.
In terms of problems, I plan on actually going through the GGPD Vol.1, 2, and 7. I'm just aiming to do 10-15 problems a day - nothing too fancy, but just nice consistency. Ideally, I'd be able to hit 6D Tygem by end of 2020, but that does seem challenging. Realistically, 5D is more likely.
There are many more challenging, difficult problem sets that I would love to do but I don't think my floor is there yet.
Happy new years to all! 11 days in, and I still haven't solved a single problem, nor played a game on Tygem. So much for new year's resolutions.
On KGS, I am currently at 1.94 Dan, nearing my goal of 2D. However, roughly 6/10 of my progress came from anchor adjustments, so I'm not exactly sure how qualified I feel about my current rank. But, I did beat some 1Dans rather comfortably recently, so I find a bit of solace in that.
Attached is a fun game I played recently. I've attached a few comments on points I thought became obvious to me after the game, but not during it. It's related to killing, vs not killing and winning more comfortably.
Here's a game I played vs. a 2D on KGS today. Attached are some comments. There were some moments that he let me off the hook, but overall I think I played pretty well.
hl782 wrote:Here's a game I played vs. a 2D on KGS today. Attached are some comments. There were some moments that he let me off the hook, but overall I think I played pretty well.
This game turned out to be my promotional game. I am now a 2 Dan on KGS.
