Life In 19x19

Gresil wrote:I was trying to lampoon Tryphon's logic. Plateaus is entirely valid English.

I think you misunderstood my point. I was just saying that, for a French (what I am), it's very unusual and weird to read and write plateaus (it's so weird, that I didn't recognize the word at first glance). I have no doubt that it is perfectly valid in English and didn't want to correct anybody's spelling.

Tryphon wrote:

Gresil wrote:I was trying to lampoon Tryphon's logic. Plateaus is entirely valid English.

I think you misunderstood my point. I was just saying that, for a French (what I am), it's very unusual and weird to read and write plateaus (it's so weird, that I didn't recognize the word at first glance). I have no doubt that it is perfectly valid in English and didn't want to correct anybody's spelling.

Why? In the post just above, there are plenty of words that come from French: point, recognize, doubt, perfectly, valid....

IAmNotWhoYouThinkIAm wrote:
What took so long? It has been very difficult maintaining a facade for over a year. There are times when I almost posted out of "character" by "mistake". But the challenge was too much to resist after a conversation one night about how easy it was to create a personality and be anonymous on the web.

I have long harbored the suspicion that Sakata was the evil (or shall I say, grumpier) twin of DrStraw. It must have been fun to let your inner grump loose. I hope he's not lost for good...

daal wrote:It must have been fun to let your inner grump loose. I hope he's not lost for good...

Yes, it would be very disappointing to lose "Sakata"

I've been stuck in the KGS 6-7k range for close to three years now.

Déjà Vu wrote:

daal wrote:It must have been fun to let your inner grump loose. I hope he's not lost for good...

Yes, it would be very disappointing to lose "Sakata"

Based on your picture it looks as though you would be eminently qualified to apply for the position of Honorary Sakata. Of course, thinks are not always what they seem on the web.

Tryphon wrote:But english and americans today say "overcom" or "overcame" ?

He was overcome with grief/sorrow/happiness.
He overcame his idleness and became a dan player.

UK English usage anyway.

kirkmc wrote:

Tryphon wrote:

Gresil wrote:I was trying to lampoon Tryphon's logic. Plateaus is entirely valid English.

I think you misunderstood my point. I was just saying that, for a French (what I am), it's very unusual and weird to read and write plateaus (it's so weird, that I didn't recognize the word at first glance). I have no doubt that it is perfectly valid in English and didn't want to correct anybody's spelling.

Why? In the post just above, there are plenty of words that come from French: point, recognize, doubt, perfectly, valid....

I don't know really why. Maybe it's personal, I wonder if others french in this forum found "plateaus" weird. Point, recognize, doubt, perfectly and valid are much more commons, and were "englishized" (in french, except point, their writing and pronunciation are a lot different from the word they came). Plateau doesn't bother me, that's the final "-s" that is shocking

I'd have learnt that past participle looked like german ones in old english (gecomen)

Whoa, this thread turned into quite a misunderstandingxplosion.

IAmNotWhoYouThinkIAm wrote:What took so long? It has been very difficult maintaining a facade for over a year. There are times when I almost posted out of "character" by "mistake". But the challenge was too much to resist after a conversation one night about how easy it was to create a personality and be anonymous on the web.

Several people commented on it quite early on, on GD.com. I've done a certain amount of sniggering about it in person, too, with other club-members who also followed the situation. I didn't actually comment on the boards as I was respecting your apparent wish to be "anonymous".

To drag myself back on topic - I haven't so much hit plateaux as spent most of my Go time with an almost flat grade, interspersed with patches of rapid improvement. Or at any rate that is how it has felt.

Specifically, at 15k, at 11k, at 8k, and now at 5k. I know I'm stronger than I was a year ago, it's just a shame I can't seem to prove it on the board ...

In my day, the existence of plateaus was confounded with periods of not playing because of lack of someone to play with. I spent about two years as a 2 kyu, playing only a few games, but then I moved to Hawai'i and quickly became shodan. If I had been playing all along, would I have had a plateau at 2 kyu? Who knows? I spent over a year as 4 dan, but was that a normal slow-down or a plateau?

Anyway, here is what I count as plateaus: shodan, 3 dan, 4 dan, 5 dan.

When I first started playing it took me a while and many games to improve past 20k. I'm around 15k right now, but playing some people who are about 14k or 13k I'm finding that they way I currently play just isn't good enough. I think I may be in another plateau : I do tsumego, replay pro games and read on go theory but everything just seems so abstract. Hopefully I'll improve...

I never noticed a plateau until I hit 5K and got too busy with my kids that I never attended any tournament for about 15 years. Of course way back then progress was so slow that I only gained a stone every tournament which was about 2 or 3 time a year. Today many of you would call that a plateau every stone, but back then playing opportunities and study material was so rare that I though my pace of improvement was fairly fast.

In August 2009 I *finally* reached 7k on KGS after being at a plateau back and forth between 8k and 10k for over two years. Now I'm starting to play and study a lot more often, so I hope my rate of improvement will increase (so far so good, I reached 6k last month).

It makes me wonder - does anyone think "plateaus" are only caused by playing/study frequency? During my "plateau" I would sometimes take one or two-month breaks from Go, so it's not a big surprise that I did not improve too much. Then again, I'm sure there must be other factors which affect people. It also took me 18 months to pass 20k on KGS, Perhaps because I studied with other 25k players and our "teacher" was 17k... Although I was surprised that 20k-12k didn't take too long (I think the KGS rank adjustment was around this time).

Nikolas73 wrote:It makes me wonder - does anyone think "plateaus" are only caused by playing/study frequency? During my "plateau" I would sometimes take one or two-month breaks from Go, so it's not a big surprise that I did not improve too much.

I dunno, I seem to improve a stone every time I take a break for a year... I think it has to do with forgetting bad habits.

I'm a weird case, in that I pretty much started out at 10k (I probably read through the entire Elementary Go Series twice before I had played a dozen games), but that was definitely a plateau right there, as I learned to actually play the game instead of read about it. Then I went from 10k to 6k or so really fast, as I went on a huge winning streak - I didn't feel much stronger, but suddenly everyone I played seemed to be making stupid moves all the time. Since then it's been pretty slow.