Life In 19x19

Bit of a shameless boasting... I made it to 1 dan finally. I got that surge of feeling when I attained something I've been looking up to for a long time, so I'm ganna go ahead and announce it to the entire forum. Couldn't have done it without this place anyways.

Only downside is I got the 1D on Fox server, haha... so my next goal will be 1D on KGS. Still feel like I got the goal, so still happy!

Sorry for making a big deal out of it! Thanks all!

Congratulations!

Is it possible to give some advices for beginners or DDK/SDK?

What shall they do for shodan road?

Congratulations...

It's good to see these: we've had so many people vocally aspiring for such an accomplishment, much less (of course) actually accomplishing it.

How did you do it? What seemed to be a major breakthrough? What has been your proportion of time spent on playing, reviewing and studying? What were the mental hurdles you had to overcome and how did you do that?

(My own story, from looooong ago:
- a rivalry
- with slow, serious games
- and reviewing
seemed to be the key)

Thank you guys!

The following are what I would say were the biggest factors for my improvement.

1. Reading - my reading definitely improved in growth spurts and not gradually. The following were the phases.
-Instinctive single variation reading - basically I was just starting to learn so I couldn’t read deeply, and read only 3 or 4 moves in single variations
-Reading every variation possible - realized that I was not reading so I actually began to pick out every possibilities (even those that typically wouldn’t make sense). This obviously took a long time.
-Weighted determination on where the best moves may be. I relied heavily on experience on this but I decided to be a bit more selective in my reading, and read deeper on certain variations.
-Counting liberties as part of reading - believe it or not, I only recently started counting liberties actively. This did wonders for my corner fights and bumped me up at least 2 stones, I would say.

2. Watching pro games with pro commentaries - I started Go 3 years ago, but I was very inconsistent in playing (life happens). But I would still watch go tournaments and listen to pro commentaries. This helped me distinguish favorable results from unfavorable ones. Even when I came back from 6 month long hiatus, I typically came back improved 1 or even 2 stones at lower levels. Often times, it’s easy to get what you want, but hard to want the right things.

3. Look up lessons on tips and tricks by pros. There are a lot of common, pre-researched key points and trick moves that typical players would not know. I personally love looking these up to understand and memorize the variations. These tend to throw off my opponents, and it’s a lot of fun for me!

I’ve done the typical play matches, review, and tsumego as well. But my improvements definitely came in breakthroughs as I came to certain realizations.

I am wondering... you say you read many variations, and that you play on Fox. What are your time settings there? Last time I tried (at 5k level) many people declined my game request with 30s byo-yomi, most of them wanted fast games (like 15s byo-yomi).

jlt wrote:I am wondering... you say you read many variations, and that you play on Fox. What are your time settings there? Last time I tried (at 5k level) many people declined my game request with 30s byo-yomi, most of them wanted fast games (like 15s byo-yomi).

It’s usually 10 to 20 min each with 30 byo yomi. I typically don’t have much trouble finding games on Fox.

I see. Maybe my opponents decline my requests because my winrate is a bit high and think I am sandbagging (I registered at a too low rank, things have become more even after I got promoted).

Congratulations!

As a Sho-dan, now you can finally begin to study go.

jlt wrote:I see. Maybe my opponents decline my requests because my winrate is a bit high and think I am sandbagging (I registered at a too low rank, things have become more even after I got promoted).

Same here. I registered as a 1d on Foxy and after 12-0 it became hard to find opponents. Then when I got to 3-4d, my actual level on Foxy so it seems, the losses came in and no more declines.

Well done Negapesou on reaching 1 dan!
I think we may have played on OGS once sometime last year, I dont feel so bad about my loss now! You must have been on the up and up ha

Congratulations! One day I'll get there too.