Life In 19x19

Hey there , hajimemashite.

First, a little about my go history: I started playing 2 months ago (Valentine's Day ), after becoming frustrated about the lack of English material available for shogi. As it turns out, I enjoy go more than shogi anyway, so it was perhaps a good thing!

My rank after 2 months is 8k on KGS, but I think my true strength is ~6-7k (I've won like 20 straight games on KGS). I don't play on KGS often anymore, so my rank indeed might be slightly outdated. I'm currently playing around 40-50 turn based games on DGS/OGS.

Now, my motivation is that my country's go association have issued a 'shodan challenge' - challenging people to go from their kyu rank to a higher rank (up to a maximum of 1d) in one year. I found this just after I started playing, and naturally being an ambitious person I was like "Oh, I'll try to go from absolute beginner to 1d in one year!" . My country's association offer mentors I think, but this year's shodan challenge doesn't start until June anyway, so I may as well go at it myself. There are two dan level players at my university club who are really helpful and I feel I've learnt a lot from - I'm very grateful for all of their kind and generous assistance.

I can't spend as much time as I'd like on go at the moment since I'm preparing for my final university exams (I will graduate with a maths degree in a couple of months ^_^ .) When I've graduated I'll be able to study go a lot over summer.

I'm trying not to set goals like "I want to be 4-5k by June" etc. since I feel that just puts unnecessary pressure on. February 2012 is far enough away that I don't feel any pressure yet as far as achieving my 1-dan goal is concerned.

Should I be confident? Mmm, I don't really know enough about how difficult it is, so giving an answer to that question is not easy. But I'm going to try my best to make it. After 1d, who knows what 2012 will bring .

Study and Other Stuff:

1) 100+ go problems per week (ideally 200+ but I have exams to prepare for currently so might not get to do 200+). This will be a mix of tsumegos, tesuji problems and endgame problems.
2) Study 'Attacking and Defending Moyos'. One of the dan players at my club commented that I have a very moyo/influence based style of play, so this book will be ideal I'm hoping.
3) Study 'The Direction of Play'.
4) Get stronger at fuseki. My fuseki skills are dreadful. It's like I'm 5k at middlegame/endgame, but 15k at fuseki. This definitely needs to improve. My games have a consistent theme of me coming out of the opening 20-30 points behind, but I manage to win it back in the middlegame/endgame usually. If I came out of the opening 20-30 points ahead, I'd like to think I wouldn't lose basically ever against a player my level. This obviously is a leak that needs plugging for me!
5) Continue to help my kohai. He is aiming to be around 5k, but currently is stuck around 20k. Hopefully he'll get some decent improvement in soon (he suffers from the '*Click* "Oh crap, I should've thought first..."' syndrome ...)
6) Keep introducing new people to go, as I feel that I should do everything I can to encourage the growth of this wonderful game.

That's all for now . Time for some maths study now for my exams ... More go later!

Good luck. (Keep us informed. Learning more about middle game as your study list suggests you do, is a good way to play a better opening very soon too, because you know what results to avoid and aim for.)

Thanks, Tapir . Just played a game on KGS now, quite disgusted with how I played. My opponent was very solid, I just couldn't seem to get a grip on the match. It was a 2-handicap game against a 10k player. He made a mistake in the middlegame and I killed a group of his - doing so was probably worth about 30 points. My opponent then resigned. I didn't feel like I deserved to win, but a win is a win I guess...

On the plus side, that win pushed me up to 7k . 7 ranks to go...

You. Played. Only. For two. Months? :o

Nice! =) Looking forward to your progress!

Just done around 50 go problems - some from 'Graded Go Problems for Beginners - Volume 3', some from GoChild. GGPfB3 is a bit easy, might move onto volume 4 instead. Or just do volume 3 quickly. That's perhaps a good idea - the book might get harder later on. It says the problems are aimed for 15-20k, but I somewhat doubt my student (who is 19k now, woo!) would be able to do a lot of them. Hmm... It probably is more like 10-12k level so far.

SoDesuNe wrote:You. Played. Only. For two. Months?

Nice! =) Looking forward to your progress!

Thank you and yes, only two months so far. Hopefully many more months to come!

My professional friend told me the following tip for studying Go problems from a book. Maybe it will help you.

Flip through the entire book, looking at the answers to give you an idea of what kind of shapes are presented. By the time you get to the end, you'll have forgotten the answers except for the strange, hidden moves that often pop up (which you might not be able to find normally without seeing them first - blind spots).
Then, go through the problem book as you would normally, reading until you find a solution and not looking at the answer until you are absolutely sure.

If you study hard and do your best to reach your goal, you can do it. Good luck!

As someone who made it to 1d in less than a year, it's possible.

You'll improve quicker if you focus less on rank. Use energy to focus on things that would naturally improve rank.

Koosh wrote:My professional friend told me the following tip for studying Go problems from a book. Maybe it will help you.

Flip through the entire book, looking at the answers to give you an idea of what kind of shapes are presented. By the time you get to the end, you'll have forgotten the answers except for the strange, hidden moves that often pop up (which you might not be able to find normally without seeing them first - blind spots).
Then, go through the problem book as you would normally, reading until you find a solution and not looking at the answer until you are absolutely sure.

This is the method I use. It's the quickest to pick-up shape and improve in tsumego. Do majority easy/medium problems.

Majority longer games are best for improvement. Do quick games to test improvement in intuition and fighting concepts.

Make always at least one goal for each game.

For improvement: Make learning from each game the focus. Focus of winning/losing is the wrong priority.

Koosh wrote:Flip through the entire book, looking at the answers to give you an idea of what kind of shapes are presented. By the time you get to the end, you'll have forgotten the answers except for the strange, hidden moves that often pop up (which you might not be able to find normally without seeing them first - blind spots).
Then, go through the problem book as you would normally, reading until you find a solution and not looking at the answer until you are absolutely sure.

That's an entirely new method for me. Quite contrary to all those "don't you ever look at the answer pages"-suggestions : D

I'll give it a try when going through "Making Good Shape".

Update! It's pretty much two months to the day now since I stopped playing/studying go with any kind of seriousness due to exams (my KGS graph looks horrendous now, flatline ...)

However! Now exams are over and I can focus on my 1d goal again. But, I'm going to try to get to 1d by the end of summer instead of by next February. Topazg recommended this goal, and said that if I can do this, it's a good indicator that I could become really strong.

Anyway, I played some games on KGS yesterday, smashed some 6-7k players around, and now have a rank of 5k. Which means only 5 ranks to go until shodan! Not quite sure how I magically improved ~2 ranks since I last played, but can't complain! I've also done a few problems very recently at 3k-8k players on GoProblems.com, and some on GoChild. And have started reading 'All About Thickness' and 'Direction of Play'.

My 21st birthday was on 15th May, and as a present I got my very own go set. Really thrilled with that, I haven't been able to even see it yet though as I'm at university!

So, 2.5 months, 5 ranks. That's one rank every 2 and a bit weeks. It's going to be tough, but I'm going to do my best to make it happen!

Time to do some study on GoProblems.com - Simba out for now.

Simba wrote:Update! It's pretty much two months to the day now since I stopped playing/studying go with any kind of seriousness due to exams (my KGS graph looks horrendous now, flatline ...)

However! Now exams are over and I can focus on my 1d goal again. But, I'm going to try to get to 1d by the end of summer instead of by next February. Topazg recommended this goal, and said that if I can do this, it's a good indicator that I could become really strong.

Anyway, I played some games on KGS yesterday, smashed some 6-7k players around, and now have a rank of 5k. Which means only 5 ranks to go until shodan! Not quite sure how I magically improved ~2 ranks since I last played, but can't complain! I've also done a few problems very recently at 3k-8k players on GoProblems.com, and some on GoChild. And have started reading 'All About Thickness' and 'Direction of Play'.

My 21st birthday was on 15th May, and as a present I got my very own go set. Really thrilled with that, I haven't been able to even see it yet though as I'm at university!

So, 2.5 months, 5 ranks. That's one rank every 2 and a bit weeks. It's going to be tough, but I'm going to do my best to make it happen!

Time to do some study on GoProblems.com - Simba out for now.

Good luck, Simba! We need to get some more practice games in, and skype reviews!

I am aware that we are curently playing a malkowich game! When you first started talking about shodan in a year I was concerned but not scared, now I am! My goal was 5k within a year wich I missed by 1.5 stones (ok, theoretically I still have 5 days) I'm currently stuck at the 7k/6k borderline The sad thing is, I can't even pull the age card since I'm also 21 (our bithdays are less than a month apart) If you would accept I would like to be your training partner/aprentice (only half joking)


btw, where is topazg?

Thanks Chew , yeah, a game on KGS or OGS sometime would be fun when you have time!

Mnemonic: Do you have Skype? We could play some on KGS and review the games together afterwards if you like . Topazg is quite busy with real life/family stuff at the moment - he is taking a break from go mostly but should be back sooner or later ^_^ .

logan wrote:Make always at least one goal for each game.

Hi, could you give examples of goals to make for each game? I think having a goal each game would be interesting, but, I can't think of any to make before I play that wouldn't compromise flexibility. The game (to me) seems to defy this kind of thinking. I would like to try playing some focussed, goal-oriented games. Or do you mean general goals such as: 'no misreads this game'?

singular wrote:

logan wrote:Make always at least one goal for each game.

Hi, could you give examples of goals to make for each game? I think having a goal each game would be interesting, but, I can't think of any to make before I play that wouldn't compromise flexibility. The game (to me) seems to defy this kind of thinking. I would like to try playing some focussed, goal-oriented games. Or do you mean general goals such as: 'no misreads this game'?

I try to have small goals for games, so that I can feel accomplished, even if I lose the game as a whole. I kind of break things into two categories, 'goals' (which can be determined in advance) and 'achievements' (cool stuff that just happens randomly. Yes, I'm a nerd.)

Various goals include things like, "As black, play an opening you're less comfortable with". "Go the whole games without losing any groups on accident (Conscious sacrifices are fine)". "As white, guess what black's opening is before it's entirely clear". "As white, prevent black from making black's preferred opening". "Figure out who has more ko threats at least once during the game". "Count at two or three major points during the game". "Select all four corner joseki based on the rest of the board". "After the game, review all four corner joseki and investigate any missteps from either side". "Use your time. Ideally, be in byo-yomi, if the game gets to counting". Most of these are the sort of thing you can plan or attempt from the beginning of the game. Many are things that are more for long-term learning than to actually help me win that individual game (like learning new openings).

Things I put in the achievements category are the type of stuff that would be amusing to see in the go client of your choice. "Make a seki." "Kill 20 stones with one play". "Kill 35 stones over the course of the game". None of these would be good to aim for, but they're just cool things to see.

Awesome. Thanks for the suggestions. I like the idea of 'achievements' too.