The story so far:
The story begins when I first began to get good at chess. I couldn't beat one of my friends, and he beat me about 30 times in a row before I beat him for the first time. During the time that I was failing to beat him I was studying chess non-stop. Now I really only play for enjoyment, not for the rating. Improvement stopped when I didn't have a target to reach for.
I first saw Go several years ago on Yahoo! Games, while I was looking for other strategy games that were different than Chess. I was bored of chess, and from time to time I need a breather from Chess. I played eight games, and said, "This is so stupid. Chess is better.", and went back to chess. So, two years ago, I was bored and remembered a conversation that I had with a friend of mine, and she said that I'd like Hikaru No Go. Well, I watched the anime and in January of 2009 I played my first game on KGS. Again my play was uninspiring, and I lost every game that I played that month. Slowly, but surely I've improved to 12K. I don't play much online, but when I do it's about 50% win 50% loss.
Obviously, I can't spend 24/7 on Go. I'm much older than I was when I could play and study chess non-stop. I'm a poor starving college student
. I've got to go to class, do homework, study for tests, look for a job, and buy a new car (I unfortunately totaled my car recently). I've got competing interests for time, so I can't spend all of my time on Go. But what I can do is play all I can. Preferably, one a day. Also, I have the books Tesuji and Life and Death that I plan on working through. Also, I downloaded the Cho Chikun Tsumego Collections without answers available online. I will be working on problems as well as playing games.So, putting all of this together the plan, starting Monday, is:
1. Play at least one game per day. If I can't log in to KGS, then I'm going to play the computer. I know that playing the computer isn't the greatest thing to do, but I like the option of always having an opponent handy. I don't know anyone that is on my level personally, so the computer is going to have to do.
2. Do 50 Tsumego a day. This will be the difficult part of the plan. I don't like doing problems, and I don't see how they're going to help me improve. However, I'm willing to try it out. I haven't done a lot of tactical chess problems in my life, and that could be why I'm stuck. I don't have the answers to Cho Chikun's Encyclopedia of problems and I want to be able to eventually solve all of them, so I have a lot of work cut out for me.
3. Review the games that I play, win or lose. I'm going to do this in two passes. The first pass, a cursory look for both sides and the mistakes we made. The second pass a more in depth look at my moves and why I made them. This means that I'm going to actually have to think about my moves. I play way too fast and I need to change that.
4. Ask any questions that I have about the game on this forum. Most of you guys are willing to help answer the weaker players' questions. You've been very helpful so far. I even want opinions of people weaker than I am.
4a. Try to absorb the information that the stronger players present.
4b. Weaker players have the tendency to charge blindly into some situations. I want the courage they possess when they play in those situations. If I can't read something all out, then I'm going to need the weaker player's courage to actually play the move if it's the right one.
5. Keep playing my Malkovich Game with SinK and compare my progress with his. I'm not going down without a fight. For now, SinK is going to be my rival, so I'm giving myself the same deadline: December 31st at 11:59 p.m.
6. Have fun. This is the most important thing on this list, since if I'm not having fun, I'm not going to improve.
Bring it on.
just a couple of my thoughts/oppinions
Yes...In fact, later today. Life has been crazy the past few weeks.