Life In 19x19

Bantari wrote:

lorill wrote:were you hibernating ?

I assume your question is to me.
Answer: No, i was not hibernating.

Another example, I mentioned in my other post:
I left one club as a 4d, and arrived half hour later at another club as 9d.
Beat That!!!!
Lol.

Well... Let me try. I left one country as 4k, and arrived in another country as 3d. But I didn't manage that in half an hour

SinK wrote:As a 22kyu KGS play with about 2-3weeks of Go under my belt what is a reasonable one year goal? Is SDK too ambitious or not ambitious enough. Since really what matters is study hours rather than absolute time I should add I can easily see myself maintaining 3-5 games/week, 50-100+ problems/week and reading any number of Go books (I love to read and in part I want a decent go goal so I can decide how many go books should go on my reading list) and I will be joining my universities Go club and so may get to see combat in UK go tournaments.

What will you do if you don't meet your goal? What will you do if you realize that you set a too low goal? Stop the rank obsession and get started with the learning obsession.

What you wrote there with 50-100 problems/week is fantastic. Playing stronger players at the uni is great too. Cram in some quick online games as well in order to get the volume up a little. 3-5 games a week sounds like they are slow ones when I compare with your other plans. Gaining experience with fast games should not be underestimated.

I think setting a rank goal is fine. Everything else should come naturally if you're dedicated to making that goal. Just don't let that goal become an obsession, or when you don't advance as fast as you'd like, or when you drop a rank, it can be devastating.

SDK in a year should be pretty easy, just take advantage of all the resources that are available. Be sure to join the KGS Teaching Ladder (found in the Lessons category of the Rooms list). And most importantly, be willing to put in the work.

DudeG wrote:I think setting a rank goal is fine. Everything else should come naturally if you're dedicated to making that goal. Just don't let that goal become an obsession, or when you don't advance as fast as you'd like, or when you drop a rank, it can be devastating.

I'd say setting a studying and playing goal is way better. Start with a plan ("I'm going to solve X tsumego per day/week and play Y games per day/week") and keep up with that plan as much as life allows you to.

The problem I see with having a rank goal - at least, that would be my case - is that if you fail to reach it, it could be quite demotivating ; if you do reach it in, say, 9 months instead of a full year, you'd slack off and lose your momentum.

Obviously, your mileage may vary. Using that technique, I went from 30k to 8k in a year ; the next year, I went from 8k to 6k. Any rank goal I may have set in that second year would have been a hard blow for me.

It's an utter crapshoot. Whatever your level is, you can improve a lot. Unless your goal is 5d, it's probably possible. Unless your goal is 18k, it's not guaranteed. It's hard not to think about the rank you'd like to be (Five years in, I still imagine that this year I'll finally break 2k kgs), but it's a distraction.

If you set a goal, it will be a distraction. Either it will tell you "I have done enough" when you could improve faster, or it will be an unrealistic goal that tells you that you've failed while you're still improving.

As far as things that calm my worries about improvement, I've always liked something Dieter (of senseis' library) wrote:

To speak of myself, I never played server Go until one year ago. Hence, my rank progress has been rather linear. I became 12k after one year, and progressively 9k, 6k, 4k, 3k, 2k, 1k, 1d, 2d. The last five years I have been improving one grade a year. I would have thought for someone to be 9k after two years it would be rather impossible to become a dan player, if they don't change their way or amount of playing and learning. But to my surprise and relief, it isn't.

My strength went in consecutive years:

14k - 5k - 2k - 1k - 1d

My strength went in consecutive years:

5k - 5k - 5k - 5k - ...

I'm pretty active, and take regular lessons from stronger players on KGS

I seem to go up a rank every 1-3 months. In DDK, you will improve quite a lot faster than that though.

My strength went in consecutive years:

8k - 7k

Got to know the game 2003
2006 9 kyu
2007 5 kyu
2008 5 kyu
2009 4 kyu
2010 3 kyu

How much do I put into it? As much as a job, family and other things (sports, movies, ...) allow.

Well i learned Go in September 2002. In the beginning i literally spent all my free time on KGS. At any time i was either, sleeping, eating, working, or on KGS.
I improved pretty quickly and was 12k/13k in january 2003, where i stopped devoting that much time on Go. In Fall 2003 i became 9k, promoted myself to 8k in summer 2004, 7k a year later. In 2005 i stopped mostly playing, i went to some tournaments in the area, but that was all Go i was playing that year. Still in 2006, after my break, i came back as 4k. Its been a slow road since then, took me around a year to get to 3k, a year and a half to become 2k, which i am since february 2009.

I try to improve the pace a bit, but i still would be happy if i could improve around 1 stone per year.

It took me 10 months to reach sdk. Being in charge of a club, i can tell you i've seen several people climbing up. Some take longer than me and some do it way faster. The faster i've seen was reaching 6k in 4 month. But as an average, i would say that people who took go as their main (and most of the time, only) hobbie reached sdk in 6~7 months.

I think your goal sounds good, and you can adapt it as you go.
I disagree with the idea that the goal will slow you down if its is too easy or frustrate you if its too hard. I've set goals for me too and sometimes i've succeded and sometimes i've failed: Either way, the only conclussion that came to my mind in that moment was setting a new goal, and keep playing, enjoying and trying to improve...

2000: learned the game, reached ~30 kyu
2001: started playing on kgs a lot, found SL, reached ~20 kyu
2002: reached ~10 kyu
2003: reached 8 kyu, played in my first tournament
2004: reached 6 kyu
2005: reached 5 kyu, fairly inactive
2006: reached 1 kyu, played more IRL tournaments
2007: reached 1 dan
2008: stayed 1 dan
2009: stayed 1 dan
2010: hope to reach 2 dan?

12.1997 - learned rules and played first game
06.1998 - 9 kyu
07.1999 - 1 dan
09.1999 - 2 dan
04.2000 - 3 dan
06.2000 - 4 dan

http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/Pl ... y=10874842

According to KGS history:
Started october 2007, SDK in february 2008(eventhough I hit 10k in 1 month), 5k after 1 year... But that's where I hit the plateau. A year ahead, october 2009 I'm barely a 3k(I stopped playing many many times since 2007 though, when I didn't progress fast enough for my liking) and skip ahead to now, almost a year again and I'm around 1d. Now I will be trying to do the impossible though and go a full year without quitting! Aiming to hit 3D before Bordeaux

But rank obsession is bad I guess.. If I hadn't cared so much about it, I probably wouldn't have quit so many times and maybe I would've played more games. I was afraid to play if I didn't study a lot in between, trying to make certain I would win. Oh well.