Life In 19x19

On KGS, I had 416 wins to 381 losses in ranked games(52%), going up one rank(1k to 1d).

Perception wrote:My record starting from when I registered my account on kgs in December 2009 is 60 wins to 47 losses. So that's 107 games total and I've gone from around 21k to around 1k in that time.

Amazing. What did you do (other than playing) to achieve this in such a short time? Or have you played mainly on other servers or IRL?

karaklis wrote:

Perception wrote:My record starting from when I registered my account on kgs in December 2009 is 60 wins to 47 losses. So that's 107 games total and I've gone from around 21k to around 1k in that time.

Amazing. What did you do (other than playing) to achieve this in such a short time? Or have you played mainly on other servers or IRL?

I do not think this is particularly short. I went from beginner to shodan in a little over two years and it was considered to be a little slow. And that was in the days of only playing once a week in the local club. These days, with 24x7 internet go, I would say that it is very eady to reach shodan in one year.

Hooey. Most players don't reach KGS 1k in a year. Perhaps most don't even reach KGS 1k. So it's not easy.

Perhaps you think it's easy for someone with talent, or someone who tries hard, or someone who studies the right way. But those really aren't what easy means by itself.

I think amazing isn't quite right, but easy is just as far off.

I think I could have probably made it to shodan by now but I took a bit of a break during the summer and only played a handful of games during that time (I stopped going to the local club and studying on my own as well). I also should have played more games. Even including the games that I played in real life at the club my total is still less than 175 or 200.

All I really did other than playing a few games is play through pro games; only Shusaku's games as the only game collection I had until recently was Invincible. For tsumego I had the 6 volume Lee Changho life and death series which I've been through the first 4 volumes of 5 - 6 times each and the 5th volume 3 times. I just finished the 6th volume for the first time today and on Wednesday this week I got the Lee Changho tesuji series (I'm up to volume 5 out of 6).

I also have Modern Joseki and Fuseki volumes 1 and 2 and The Middle Game of Go by Sakata Eio and I've read all three of those 2 - 3 times each.

The only other books I had until recently were Tesuji by James Davies and Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go by Toshiro Kageyama. I've read each of those 3 or 4 times.

I got The Go Consultants and Kamakura as gifts for Christmas and I got some Japanese tsumego books on my trip to New York a few weeks ago although many of the problems are too difficult for me. I think that covers all the books I own and pretty much everything I've done to improve up to this point.

So I think if I had played more games I would have probably made more progress but I don't like playing online. I get very anxious when I'm playing someone that I can't see or haven't met before.

My record for this year...so far...is 0 win, 0 loss. Happy new years, folks!

DrStraw wrote:

karaklis wrote:

Perception wrote:My record starting from when I registered my account on kgs in December 2009 is 60 wins to 47 losses. So that's 107 games total and I've gone from around 21k to around 1k in that time.

Amazing. What did you do (other than playing) to achieve this in such a short time? Or have you played mainly on other servers or IRL?

I do not think this is particularly short. I went from beginner to shodan in a little over two years and it was considered to be a little slow. And that was in the days of only playing once a week in the local club. These days, with 24x7 internet go, I would say that it is very easy to reach shodan in one year.

How encouraging to make 95% (or 99%?) of all players feel like they are a little slow or dumb or worse. Also, all people with more than 50% winning percentage either did improve some stones or are not ranked properly.

Yes, theoretically, if your winning percentage is well above 50%, then you're underranked. Frankly, I don't see how anyone could have a very high percentage for long on KGS, as the ranking system is pretty reactive. I must be missing something, because after many, many years of playing, I'm still just an SDK...

I study Go a lot more than I play on KGS, and thus I have won 66% of all my games on there for all time.

Bit of weird ratings math: if two KGS players have stable ratings of 2.1 (kyu) and 2.9 kyu, they should have different win percentages because they are handicapped the same.

tapir wrote:

DrStraw wrote:[
I do not think this is particularly short. I went from beginner to shodan in a little over two years and it was considered to be a little slow. And that was in the days of only playing once a week in the local club. These days, with 24x7 internet go, I would say that it is very easy to reach shodan in one year.

How encouraging to make 95% (or 99%?) of all players feel like they are a little slow or dumb or worse. Also, all people with more than 50% winning percentage either did improve some stones or are not ranked properly.

What utter nonsense. Where did I imply "slow or dumb or worse"? 95% of all players have no desire or no time to reach shodan. For many it is just a hobby and they don't dedicate enough time to it to every reach shodan. But for those who do have the desire and time then it should be easy.

DrStraw wrote:

tapir wrote:

DrStraw wrote:[
I do not think this is particularly short. I went from beginner to shodan in a little over two years and it was considered to be a little slow. And that was in the days of only playing once a week in the local club. These days, with 24x7 internet go, I would say that it is very easy to reach shodan in one year.

How encouraging to make 95% (or 99%?) of all players feel like they are a little slow or dumb or worse. Also, all people with more than 50% winning percentage either did improve some stones or are not ranked properly.

What utter nonsense. Where did I imply "slow or dumb or worse"? 95% of all players have no desire or no time to reach shodan. For many it is just a hobby and they don't dedicate enough time to it to every reach shodan. But for those who do have the desire and time then it should be easy.

Come on, read this forum. There are dozens of players who desire to reach shodan but did not (yet). Basically you say it is (1) very easy, (2) those who didn't don't want to. In this brilliant framework there is no room for all those players who tried to and failed to achieve this "very easy" task. And for sure, a lot of them won't tell you that they did want - because failing to achieve a very easy task when you tried means (1) you did something wrong or (2) you are just the wrong person to try.

KGS Rated Games 2010:
72/62
134 total
I may have improved one stone.

Lifetime KGS Rated Games:
221/210

According to IGS/Pandanet's "My Panda" page:

Games:251 Won:136 Lost:115 Draw:0 Won/Games:0.54

Started the year at 4k, ended the year at 3k+ after a brief stint at 2k. Don't really play on KGS.

By the way, if anyone else is struggling with getting those numbers from IGS: install Firebug and edit the search page, changing some of the year numbers in the search form to be more recent than 2007.

"it's easy, you just have to work on it eight hours a day"

There's a sense in which that can be true: suppose you had to file thousands and thousands of papers.

But in general, one doesn't call things easy when they require a great deal of time.