Life In 19x19

I am sorry no one commented your match above. I would, but I am 5 stones weaker than you

I am sorry no one commented your match above. I would, but I am 5 stones weaker than you

Well, i got my review from the GTL. In fact the commented sgf came just before the tournament in St. Augustin, it may have helped me.
At least i know that i didn't play that crappy as i thought - it's just my judgment thats crappy =).

The review is avaible here if someone want to have a look. The game was commented by a 2dan.

On the other hand, yesterday i played a game on KGS - and lost. I could have killed his corner-invasion, but didn't read deep enough and took the variation, that leads to a Ko - which resulted in disaster.
Well, to play more games and get more practice i joined the ASR League. So hopefully i will leave my current tournament-slump pretty soon

Well, to play more games and get more practice i joined the ASR League.

It helped. Though i have only 4 games played this month (minimum number to stay in the league), there is clearly more motivation to play. Also, most of these were played against weaker players - though i have put "give 1 review each week" in the list for my study, i never really did any reviews. Until i joined the ASR. Reviewing a game for a weaker player helps me to understand my own play. So the ASR has been, up to now, a major success for me.

So hopefully i will leave my current tournament-slump pretty soon

One Tournament may not be enough to say i'm out of the slump, but the games last weekend gave me a good feeling overall.
I played in the Berliner Kranich, and scored 3-2. While this score alone may be nothing spectacular, the games are (at least for me).
I said i would play the next tournament as a 3k, but in the end i decided against it and entered as the 2k i am.

Round 1
I got black against another 2k. The game seemed very easy for me. My opponent was intend on building a huge center moyo, sacrificing 4 stones in my territory. Actually i got all 4 corners and thanks to his generous sacrifice a really big side (probably as big as his moyo). In the end i won by around 40 points.

Round 2
Playing as white against a 1k. This game was very intense and may be the best i played at the tournament. I played for influence and got some nice moyo in the center. He managed to reduce it but got probably a bit greedy. I cut some part of his reduction-stones off and a big semai emerged. Somehow i managed to be 1 liberty ahead.
However i was behind by 10-15 points at this time. I'm confident in my endgame, so one option i had was to play the endgame and catch these points up. The other option i had, was attacking some strong-looking (but only 1-eyed) group in the center. I feared i was becoming to greedy, but i cut this group off and acutally managed to kill it.

Round 3
As a 2k standing 2-0 i got a 1d, which stood 1-1 - and i had to take white. The game progressed peacefully at first, i didn't want to make things complicated. But somehow a running battle between 3 weak groups emerged. Two of these weak groups were black groups, one was my white group on the outside. I probably could have let him connect his group and strengthen my outside. but i don't know if this would be good enough point-wise. Also maybe i was to intend on "attack". So when i threatened one of his groups, he mostly killed my weak group, securing his other weak group through it. So all i got from this, was another free move on his weak center-group. But thanks to his big kill, i was that much behind, i had to kill his group to stay in the game.
Probably i wasn't strong enough on the outside to actually do this, but he managed to save his group by connecting. I was left with a thin position in the center and around 20-30 points of secure territory, compared to his 60+ points of secure territory.

Still it was a nice game and i hope to learn much from it.

Round 4
Another 2k, again as black. He allowed me to play a cross-fuseki and i played a diagonal san-ren-sei (4-4, 16-16, 10-10). Maybe he was unsure of how to handle this, but i managed to get a nice amount of territory and by attacking a weak group, i got some nice influence to negate his major asset (a white wall, after a 3-3 invasion).
In an desperate attempt he invaded one of my corners. He couldn't live outright, but might have got a Ko (not sure if this would have been enough to win). Instead he played differently and died outright. (Probably thought the resulting position would be a seki)

Round 5
Again as white against a 1k. I played again for influence, but maybe some of the exchanges were bad for me, i would have to analyse the game to tell. The chance i got, was a weak group of his, which i chased towards the center. This group became pretty big and drove through the small amount of points i had in the center. In the end, after struggling for a long time, he managed to get a second eye.
I tried to use my resulting influence to attack another group, but this one managed to live very easily. No luck for me, as i was behind by a huge amount of points.

Conclusion
The two games against fellow 2k seemed pretty easy, the two games against the 1k were very intense and exciting. Maybe i am actually improving. My goal to play as a 1k at the Bonner Tournament won't be fullfilled (as i'm unsure wether i can attend Bonn at all - and the next tournament i play, Essen in january 2011, i will still attend as a 2k), but things are looking good, and who knows how much the ASR will help me till then?

I would judge opponents, especially those from Berlin, by rating not by rank. Not that rating is necessarily correct for fast improving players etc. but still it is probably twice as accurate and most people don't improve so fast as they tend to believe. I played my first tournament there and got elated after a 4:1 result. After instant self-promotion I had a hard time for one whole year with really bad tournament results, still playing as 2k with 4k rating. And psychologically it is probably healthier to have decent results and rank up slowly with increasing rating than claiming an oversized rank and then having to pass through a valley of tears with 1:4, 0:5 results in between. I know that it is hard to resist self promotion, and they even tell you to do so. But tournaments are much more fun when you are playing at an appropriate level than when you are desperately trying to defend your oversized rank. Desperation can increase so much, that people drop out of playing after bad results. So my advice would be: don't self promote to 1k unless you are at least above the standard 2k rating (1900).

I would judge opponents, especially those from Berlin, by rating not by rank. Not that rating is necessarily correct for fast improving players etc. but still it is probably twice as accurate and most people don't improve so fast as they tend to believe.

Yes, very often an "easy" opponent has a lower rating than a "tough" opponent, even if they both have the same rank. But in the tournament the pairings were done based on rank, not on rating - also how correct the rating is depends a lot on how many tournaments the player hase attended.
Before the tournament i had a rating of 1697, i had promoted myself to 2k when my rating peaked at 1827 or something like that - so i lost a lot of rating-points by then.
The ratings of my opponents were: 1820, 1961, 2134, 1684, 1956
The positive result of this tournament is, an opponent with a 19xx rating seems to be doable/exciting opponent for a even game, where last year a 19xx-opponent meant: Very hard game, i will probably lose.

So my advice would be: don't self promote to 1k unless you are at least above the standard 2k rating (1900).

I won't self-promote myself after this 3-2 now, i won't even promote myself if i play 4-1 the next tournament. Looking back at the promotion from 3k to 2k, it may have been a bit early. As a 2k i had far more 1-4 and 2-3 than 3-2, my rating graph shows pretty well how bad i have been doing since i promoted myself.
Therefore, i don't think i will even promote myself to 1k if i hit the 1900-rating, if i'm (very) close to the default 1k-rating of 2000 i will think about a promotion..

That is the spirit! (My experience was pretty similar with slightly different numbers. And I won't make the same mistake again. Even I try to self-promote in between, I will rate myself down again if it doesn't work out.)

Happy new year everyone.

I was busy the last month with other important things, and didn't got time for my go-study. (Or to be precise, wasn't in the mood to spend my free time with serious study)
I only played one ASR-game in december and therefore dropped out of the league. I will join again if things settle down (which they should around march-april). Apart from this one game on KGS i went to a go-club in Berlin the week before christmas.
Played 3 games, two against 6 stones, one against 4 stones. Only won one, but i had fun in all games.

I didn't made any new year resolution, but i hope to do a bit more for my go in january. Actually i started today with an audiogolesson, "All about invasion", as i seem to be very rectulant with invading i hope that a bit more knowledge on this subject will give me more confidence to try invading in real games.

Apart from this lecture, i played a game through automatch today. As my first opponent left the game during the 10-second countdown, i was promoted to 1k by the system through this empty win.
I got a japanese 1d? on my next try and it was a very interesseting game. He played some strange moves, but in the end i managed to kill his corner and won.
If anyone want to have a look and comment, be my guest.


#10: I don't think i ever saw this being played before. Maybe my answer was to soft.
#31: This is cleary a big mistake on my part. I thought attacking the white group around G16 would be difficult (actually i thought killing was impossible, and therefore an attack pointless), but the way i blocked i became extremly overconcentrated and he got way to much.
#50: Someone care to guess why he played there? I don't have a clue.
#68: Ignoring #67 was probably the mistake which allowed me to get back into the game. With the moves i got on the lower side e8 became almost pointless, my group became strong and i got to make a nice amount of points at the bottom.
#81: I was to lazy to read. I was afraid of the cut but thanks to e2 i had nothing to fear, i should have gone with k5 and fight.

I'm back.

My bachelor thesis is finished, moved in with my gf, and since yesterday, have internet in my new home.

Time to start some serious go-study again.

I managed to get in two games in the ASR yesterday, which brought me up to the minimum 4 games and got me promoted to delta. There seems to be more players around my strength in my new class, than last month, which means the ASR should become more interesseting for me.

On the part of real-life go, tomorrow i will attend a tournament. My first one this year, hopefully i'm not too rusted. I haven't really played that much in the last months, but overall i feel that the rise from 2k to 1k on KGS is justified, so i seem to have made some progress.

I will also start my master in two weeks, which means a 1-hour train-drive each day per direction. So roughly 2 hours a day or 10 hours a week, i can devote to tsumego =).

Potsdamer Panda 02.04.11 - 03.04.11
I finally did it
I played 3-2 in the tournament, but more important (for me), i won against a 1d in an even game in round 3. So i finally got my "Dan-Trophy" (game is posted below).
Overall a really nice tournament.

Baduk Embessador Cup 30.04.11 - 01.05.11
Because there weren't that many players, i got into the top-16, which resulted in a total slaughter (well, what can i expect against a 4d?), but in the end i managed to win at least one game against an equal 2k.

Apart from these two tournaments, the last month was very quiet in go-things, i only managed to get 2 games in the ASR and therefore dropped after april.
Hopefully the next month i will be a bit more active.

The Dan-Trophy
I'm white, the game was played with 7 komi (the sgf-software uses 7.5 as standard-komi).

Note: I don't treat this thread as a "study journal" anymore, because i don't really study in that sense any more. I will try to treat this thread more as a personal go blog in the future.

A bit more than 4 months since my last post in this thread says everything there is to say about my go-studys.

But maybe i have found a (hopefully the only one or most important) reason for my lack of regulary study. I took the game too serious.
This can be illustrated by my biggest handicap - i didn't play enough, in fact i rarely played at all. And if i played, it was like only one game during the day, maybe 2-3 games during the whole week. Followed by one or more weeks with no games at all.
The reason was, as i believe now, that the games were exhausting. Playing on KGS with automatch every game was 25 minutes per player. (The next timesetting for automatch would be 10 minutes, which is a bit too fast for my taste) I didn't always used these 25 minutes, but at least i mostly tried to play a serious game. Meaning a lot of reading, evaluating the position, counting etc... Which leads to these games being extremly exhausting, and me being rectulant to play another one after i finished one.

But then late in august i decided to try out Tygem. The registration and installation was smooth and i could easily find a game as a 2k. In the end, i played a total of 7 games on tygem that day. To a more active player this may not seem much, but it was more than i played in one month (excluding tournaments). These games were a bit faster than my normal KGS game. Something between 20 and 10 minutes basic time per player, however they never seemed too fast.
I managed to treat these games different than the ones on KGS. On tygem i was playing, in the most literal sense. I was just having fun, experimenting. Though i still tried to win and played what i believed to be a good move, there was no selfmade pressure to "play at your best", like there always seem to be when i play on KGS.
I don't know why these two server are so different to me, maybe because there isn't the same sense of community on tygem like there is on KGS. Maybe i haven't grown so attached to my tygem-account (yet?) as i have to the KGS-account, so losing doesn't hurt me that much.
Of course, the next question may be, wether i can transfer this to KGS, and also play there free of pressure like on tygem?

I don't know, and frankly i don't care. I'm just happy to enjoy playing go again, without all the pressure of trying to improve too seriously.

For now i'm off - to play another game on tygem (which will be third today)

A bit more than 4 months since my last post in this thread says everything there is to say about my go-studys.

Well, a new record . *counts* 8 months since the last post.

I just downloaded all sgfs still left on my micro-sd card (I use a nintendo ds to record all my tournament games) and there were still games from last spring.

But it's not the case, that were no go-related highlights in these last 8 months.
I finally broke the 1900 in GoR. My rating peaked at 1910 (dropped by 41 points after last weekend, but still), so my long-term goal of achieving a correct GoR is somehow fullfiled. Even though i would be a "weak" 2k now. (According to my GoR - according to most german 2k, i'm quite stable)

Kidocup 2012
The Kidocup took place last weekend and i'm quite happy with the tournament. It was 7 rounds with 75 minutes each (+ 20/5 canadian byo-yomi). I "only" managed to win 3 of these 7 games, but it was interesseting how the progression was during the tournament. As the initial pairings were done based on rating (and with 1910 i was the second-strongest 2k that pre-registered) i managed to loose the first 3 games.
I still seem to have trouble to get into "tournament-mode" and really think during my games. In these first three games i probably only used around 15-20 minutes of my time.

But after that i managed to win three games in a row. Including a win against a 1d (although a weak one, rating just below 1900). All of these games were quite intense. I made some stupid blunders, but so did my opponents and i got lucky.

Unfortunatly the last game was a loss again, otherwise i would have gotten a price. I don't know if i can call the last game a good one. While i didn't made any obvious serious mistakes (well maybe in one corner i played some crappy moves) i clearly can't say why i lost. Somehow in the middle game is was seriously behind and had to kill one of his groups, which backfired.
I will attack that game and i will probably send it to the teaching ladder.

The Kidocup also brought a nice boost in motivation to do something more with my go. One of the things i'm planning is joining a paid study-programm. More specificly i'm thinking about joining the Yunguseng Dojang. Thanks to a side job at the university money shouldn't be such a big problem. The only downside is, with the current term still running i don't have the time to join right now and therefore plan to join this fall. Which will be after the EGC in Bonn.

Also, one of the korean professionals, that attended the Kidocup is currently in Berlin and i'm invited to a small event this evening with barbeque and simultan games against the pro. =)

I only hope my motivation can survive the last two months of the current term.

Edit: I just updated the first post, as i have somehow reached my long-term-goal (well it took me roughly 2 years). From the 4 goals i formulated, i managed to achieve only two. Well better than nothing. Though it seems, i need to formulate new goals. (Well, one would be beating a player with a rating above 2000 in an even tournament-game)

Games
The fith round of the Kidocup 2012. Probably the most intense game i played that tournament.


The last round against a 1k (which managed a 5-2 thanks to this game).

MagicMagor wrote: Edit: I just updated the first post, as i have somehow reached my long-term-goal (well it took me roughly 2 years). From the 4 goals i formulated, i managed to achieve only two. Well better than nothing. Though it seems, i need to formulate new goals. (Well, one would be beating a player with a rating above 2000 in an even tournament-game)

Congrats! It's always great news to hear of someone even partly achieving their goals. On to the next ones!

I'm still alive. Though i didn't managed to play a lot of go the last month. (Well i played nearly no go at all)
University studys took a lot of my time, but the semester is nearing its end. My master thesis is coming up next semester, which means a bit more flexible schedule (i hope). So fitting some time for go into it should be possible.

Thanks to a side job i took at the university (preperations on my master thesis), i could convince myself to spend some money on go-teaching.

And so i joined the Yunguseng Dojang. Currently a spectator i hope to start next season in september as a player. Unfortunatly i was a bit late and ended on the waiting list, though pretty high up.

I probably won't take much out of this before the EGC, which is starting in two weeks, as i still have university this week and an exam next week. But i plan on watching a lot of lectures in august =).

For the EGC, i seem to be a bit rusty, as two games i played today showed. I haven't played so crappy in a long time.. (Even though i won the second one, my last attempt to kill him big succeded.. after everything before was an utter failure)

So just letting you know i'm still there and haven't forgotten this journal. Maybe i can formulate some new goals before the EGC.

Eighteen months, sure a long time since i last posted here. After the EGC 2012 in Bonn life took over you could say. The preperations for my master thesis and then the thesis itself left me with little motivation to seriously play go or improve my go-skill.

But now that is (hopefully) going to change. I finished my thesis just before christmas and once i find a job and settle into a routine, playing and studying go should become a part of my routine as well. At least that's the plan for now.

Let's start this new journal entry with a small recap. As mentioned in the last post i had joined the Yunguseng Dojang, an online teaching course/league by In-seong. I had joined as a spectator at first and then later as a full league member for one season (i think). This experience had some good points and some bad points, so let's start with the bad ones.
I didn't play enough during that time. When i was in the league i had to play five league games during a month and these were actually almost all games i played during these three months. As we all know, for teaching to be really effective one has to play and try out the new things learned during a lesson. Because i played so little during that time, the actual effect on my strength was limited - and because i didn't saw the situation improving for the near future i quit after this one season.

But it actually also had some good points. Despite my laziness in playing, some information from the lessons actually sticked and i can still remember them now. Also In-Seong helped me in correcting a huge mistake in my perception of my weaknesses. I always thought i was weak in fighting, but apparently that was one of my stronger parts. My reading is (or was) good, but i think i lack a bit in the tesuji-department. My other grave weakness as pointed out by In-Seong during my time in the league is joseki. My joseki-knowledge is limited to the most basic josekis it seems. Which is too limited for my level, my opponents apparently can often play joseki unknown to me which leads to mistakes and leaves me in a bad position after the opening.
I enjoyed the time in the dojang and fully intend to join it again this year. Maybe even as a spectator in march, but i plan to join the league again in april, when the next season starts.

Back to the present. I played several games on KGS over the holidays to see where i stand and get back into shape. Maybe i was unlucky with my opponents but almost all games turned out to be pretty aggressive fight-intensive games. And despite my strength in fighting i fell apart in most of them. I account that to not playing and not doing tsumego for the last year, so getting back into my old shape is one of my first goals.
For this i plan on going through "Graded Go Problems for Dan Players - Vol.1 Life and Death" again. I remember being really comfortable with the difficulty of these problems. Some being very easy but most of them solvable with a bit of reading and some being really hard to crack.

My girlfriend got me the next two books from this series for christmas, so now i also have:
"Graded Go Problems for Dan Players - Vol 2 Tesuji"
"Graded Go Problems for Dan Players - Vol 3 Joseki"
The great thing about these two books is, that they cover two of my weaknesses i plan to correct this year. The actual goal is to become as comfortable with these two books as i already am (or was) with the first one.

I will try to post reguarly in this journal a weekly schedule seems to be the best option. I will formulate a weekly schedule and will post each week wether i have succeeded in keeping the schedule or not. There will be no goals, short- or long-term. Keeping the schedule will be the only goal i try to achieve and then the results will show themself over time.

Weekly Schedule
I will try to achieve all of the following per week:
1. Tsumego
One hour each doing problems from the three "Graded Go Problems for Dan Players" books.
2. Theory
At least one hour studying new theory. This can be studying tesuji (Davis - Tesuji / Shuko - Dictonary of Basic Tesuji 1-2), studying new josekis (Takao Shinji - Dictonary of Joseki 1-3) or watching lectures.
3. Playing
In order to apply the new theory of point 2, and practice reading in real game application playing is important. So i will try to play several games per week. This means at least three games as a bare minimum but i will try to play at least four per week on average.

Outlook for the coming week
I'm going toe the Kisei Event in Madrid the coming weekend, together with my girlfriend. While that will give me plenty of opportunity itself for my planned scheduled (the side-tournament is 4 rounds alone) i will try to keep my schedule before flying to Madrid. As i said i feel a bit rusty after a year-long pause and i want my first tournament of the year not to be a total disaster. So getting in (better) shape before that is my current plan for this week.

To finish this first journal entry after a long pause and hopefully the first of many regular entries i will post one of my games from the holidays. I may have been a bit too greedy at several points in this game, but i think it shows my current problems quite well. It was an automatch game with 25minutes + 5x30s, so no blitz game. (I rarely play blitz)

Yeah, go for it, I wish you all the best! But, please, don't go too fast! Or I won't ever be catch up with you.. As I'm weaker than you I don't dare to review the game (or did we already have a look at this game together?), but I hope that someone will write a few comments for you.

Hopefully, Madrid will be a great experience for you, too ( ), and also provide plenty of motivation for you.