Life In 19x19

I started playing go in the summer of 2008, after watching the hikaru no go series. Since that was my summer before college, I literally studied go all the time. At the end of the summer I was around KGS 10-11 kyu. After I started college at the University of Michigan, I became a somewhat frequent player in the Ann Arbor go club. Although as a full time college student I could no longer devote a lot of time to go, I was still making incremental progress since there were a lot of strong players/teachers at the club. After one year of playing I was around KGS 7kyu, and after two years KGS 4kyu. However due to school work and due to development of other hobbies/pursuits I completely stopped playing for about five years.

In 2016, after learning that AlphaGo had defeated Fan Hui, I watched the entire AlphaGo vs Lee Sedol series. This event revived my interest in go, and I started to play on KGS again. I was however disappointed to find that I was getting stuck at around KGS 5kyu. There was this 2d player on KGS who would regularly offer even teaching games to DDK and SDK players. He would beat me easily every game, and then make comments like "you have no reading power or global awareness", "you play really slow, and even after a lot of time you still make s*** moves", "you are in the forever 5kyu club".

After the AlphaGo vs Ke Jie games, I have devoted nearly a month to studying go. I have been doing life and death problems, watching pro game reviews on youtube, playing in local club meetings twice a week. In the past two weeks I have easily spent 60+ hours per week to go-related activities. This past week I made an OGS account and played like 20 games in two days. I have been playing to the point that I could no longer sleep well, and I wake up every morning with go positions in my mind. I thought that with this much effort I would improve for sure, but my OGS results proved otherwise.

I am starting to have a lot of doubt in my abilities now. Maybe that 2d teacher is right - maybe I lack the innate visual memory and spatial pattern recognition to play this game at the level of say OGS 1d, KGS 1d, or IGS 1d. I am starting this journal to comment on and to keep track of some of my more memorable games.

I was black in this game.




This is an example of a game where I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. A huge blunder in the very very end cost me the game. I played tengen on move 2 because I didn't really want to play a handicapped game. Although in the end I thought this tengen allowed me to accomplish a lot. I thought things were going pretty well for me the entire time so I wanted to play safe and cautious... but not cautious enough

lowiq60 wrote:In 2016, after learning that AlphaGo had defeated Fan Hui, I watched the entire AlphaGo vs Lee Sedol series. This event revived my interest in go, and I started to play on KGS again. I was however disappointed to find that I was getting stuck at around KGS 5kyu. There was this 2d player on KGS who would regularly offer even teaching games to DDK and SDK players. He would beat me easily every game, and then make comments like "you have no reading power or global awareness", "you play really slow, and even after a lot of time you still make s*** moves", "you are in the forever 5kyu club"

Once upon a time I was fortunate enough to play in an on stage band at the Santa Fe Opera. I heard the following story backstage. It may be apocryphal, but it is based upon historical fact.

A young tenor found himself in the same opera with one of the world's great tenors. He was able to hang out with his hero backstage. One night he was in the great tenor's dressing room just as the great tenor left to go onstage. Before leaving, he picked up a man's photograph on his dressing table and spat on it. Later the young tenor asked him why he had spat on the photo. The great tenor replied, "He was-a my first teacher. He tell me I cannot-a sing."

This may be counter-intuitive, but I think your focus on rank is interfering with your progress. There is no shortcut for improvement, and if you get frustrated by how long it's taking you to rank up, that frustration will negatively affect your play. Consider Ryan Li's recent win over Chen Yaoye. If you read the interview with Li (https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/6imxf4/ryans_interview/), you'll see that he did so well against a top pro because he had already made it further than expected and was very relaxed. He didn't "need" to win to satisfy his own expectations for himself. Consequently, he scored a stunning upset.

My recommendation would be to set aside the goal of winning each game you play, and instead set as your goal to simply learn something new from each game, win or lose. This means reviewing afterwards to study sequences that you were doubtful about and explore variations, or ask someone to review with you.

Things not to do: don't play 20 games in two days (play one or two serious games a day at most), and don't accept teaching games from someone who just takes the opportunity to insult and belittle you. Sounds like someone who is insecure and can only feel good about himself by mocking others.

I think you will not only improve much faster, but sleep better as well, with a different attitude.

PS FYI - It may help to know that most people are at least two stones weaker on OGS than on KGS. KGS 4k will be around 6-7k OGS.

lowiq60 wrote:There was this 2d player on KGS who would regularly offer even teaching games to DDK and SDK players. He would beat me easily every game, and then make comments like "you have no reading power or global awareness", "you play really slow, and even after a lot of time you still make s*** moves", "you are in the forever 5kyu club".

That is not a teacher that is just an a**hole.

I've recently hit a bit of a plateau myself so I can sympathize. Obsessing about results can affect your enjoyment of the game so I've personally just let it go. The results will improve when they improve. In the meantime I can enjoy my games.

About the 2d teacher -- I don't want to judge - perhaps he/she had very good intentions and was just brutally honest. There is something honorable about this person willing to play many even games with players many ranks weaker.

In any case here is another game that I played during those two days. I won the game even though I really should have lost. My opponent (white) played very very aggressively so I was psychologically scared the entire game. I played somewhat aggressively in the beginning and but played passively during the middle game. Both my opponent and I misjudged a life-and-death situation...

lowiq60 wrote:I won the game even though I really should have lost.

If your opponents never make mistakes, you are going to lose. You really won the game.

lowiq60 wrote:About the 2d teacher -- I don't want to judge - perhaps he/she had very good intentions and was just brutally honest. There is something honorable about this person willing to play many even games with players many ranks weaker.

Well you're more generous than I am as this is usually called sandbagging

I thought sandbagging would be 2d playing on a 7k account.

This game bumped me up to 7k on OGS so I will include it in this journal.

I'll add my first two correspondence games played on OGS to the journal. I was black in both games. In the first game I made several huge reading/tesuji mistakes that put me significantly behind. I fought hard to come back but all of my attempts fell short. In the end I think my opponent is just stronger/played a lot better than me. I won the second game but it wasn't nearly as intense.




Second game

I will add another correspondence game to the journal. This game is not technically over yet but a very narrow loss for me (by 1-4 points) is all but certain. I am disappointed in the outcome here because at various points of the game I thought I was actually ahead. My current OGS rating is 1495, so a win here would bump me up to 6k.

lowiq60 wrote:"you are in the forever 5kyu club".

My prediction is you will break out of that faster than your "teacher" will learn manners.

Hello,
Your teacher has some strange conceptions,for sure there is no special talent needed to become 1 dan.You just need the proper mindset and the proper learning method,first if you want to improve you have to do your best,concentration on finding the best move is really important,also in life death problems,if you do not concetrate its useless,besides should never play blitz(if you want to improve) since its only reinforce your bad habits and its hard to focus in such games,its better to play no game than to play blitz,if you can afford it i advise yunguseng doyang,there are many high quality lectures and a great teacher who is really good at explaining ,and knowledge is extremely important at your level,also in general, your mind should be open for ideas you dont know,never judge a move just because you didnt see it,if you follow these advices and keep studying its quite impossible not to reach 1 dan,of course its not easy,but never doubt and and study hard:).

First live game played after a hiatus from go!

I made it to 6kyu on OGS with this win!!!! I cannot believe that three weeks ago I was worried that I was never going to improve again.




Now I want to follow an advice that is often given to beginners: lose 50 games as quickly as possible. My new immediate goal is to lose 100 games before 2018, and have almost all of those losses analyzed in this journal.