Life In 19x19

So, what are you currently trying to focus your study on? It can be something specific you're working on, or just a vague area you want to improve, like openings.

Personally, I'm working on getting little benefits out of my opponent's positions. Probing attacks, tripod groups, and so on. It's a bit hard to work on, because I'm never sure when it's worth trying, but I'm seeing positions start to come up where I can try this sort of thing.

How about you?

Strategy -- more or less whatever I can get a grip off, but mostly whole-board thinking. I usually don't think strategically at all or not enough and see groups as themselves but -- for example -- do not use thickness for attacking. Recently I try to learn a bit more strategy by becaming a student of topazg and it seems I have already improved a stone; let's see if this is really so or just a temporary thing

Mic

i try to control myself.

i know i have enough reading skills to comeup with correct move everytime if i really put my mind to it. many times i get lazy on reading and overplay etc..
i try not to make obvious mistakes and play like professionals.

Helel, are you trying anything in particular to work on improving your reading? That's something that I could certainly use improvement on.

75% - the next move in the 3x3 Malkovich game
25% - the next moves in my ongoing DGS games

I've entered another presumably months-long break from go and I'm only fulfilling commitments already made.

I'm working on making use of the 3-4 during the opening.
Up until now, I've just played double star point almost exclusively.

Also, I'm working on developing the habit of seriously reviewing my own games.

Reading.

I've spent far too much time up to now on theory (e.g., reading strategy books) and not enough on practice. So I'm trying to concentrate 90% on tsumego and playing games.

I'm not studying anything right now, I feel that I need to play more and more frequently before going back to studying. My games are pretty unstable right now, and usually devolve into a huge fight. Sometimes I win it, sometimes I lose it.

I want to be able to lose the fight and come out ahead in territory/influence, but I still have a problem with that. I guess I need to reach a level/games where my intuition for influence and eye-stealing is not good enough and see what my opponents do.

Probably reading, since I don't usually read very deep, and even read less wide than I read deep.

Chew Terr wrote:Helel, are you trying anything in particular to work on improving your reading? That's something that I could certainly use improvement on.

I need a lot more reading skill and related L&D assessment. The closest thing I've been doing to work on this is going through Graded Go Problems 3 & 4 and not just picking an initial answer because it "looks right", but trying to read the whole sequence and even the wrong ones if I'm feeling into it. Works well with my bus dojo regimen...

If I could get that better, then I think I'd see better overall performance and less wasted sequences (or at least stop blowing my sente situations on plays that don't add up to much).

Bruce "Does 1 eye count for half points?" Young

A couple things: Learning what's important and what's not; learning how to hold on to sente; learning think strategically, that is, to lay a groundwork that leaves my position strong and in good shape for any fighting I have to do.

I also use books to work on reading skills, but these other topics are much harder for me to learn.

I'm trying to focus on regaining my study focus! But with my computer blowing up and being busy at work, I'm having a hard time. I might just have to accept that I won't be able to study go seriously for a couple weeks until I can get everything else back in order. But I hate that! I'm excited about go right now but can't seem to make time for it.

My focus is on reading improvement, approx. 80% of my study-time.

I'm going through "1001 Life and Death Problems" and "Tesuji" at the moment. After that I'll either grab "Graded Go Problems for Beginners Vol. 3" again or just start fresh the fourth volume. Besides that I am going to re-re-read "Get strong at Tesuji".

20% of my studying involves reading something strategic. Just finished "Kage's secret chronicles of handicap Go", nice read, nothing special, some good patterns. I'll go over "Opening theory made easy" in the next time and I will dig a bit into "38 Basic Josekis".

My goal is to improve three stones (actually only two, because I feel quite competetive against 5k, when I'm focusing) in one month : D


My future plan is to replay professional games (one a day). Still need to get a good source for commented games by Cho Chikun, Lee Chang'ho and Go Seigen.

I'm working on openings at the moment and studying some joseki. Trying not to think too much about global strategy just yet since I read somewhere that DDKs generally don't have to worry about that until they reach SDK level (is this true-ish?)

Fundamentals is my current study focus. Every few months I revisit fundamentals so that I can bring the new things I've learned into sync with the whole of my game. I generally do this by logging on to KGS and spending hours teaching DDKs, mostly those who have played only a handful of games so far.

It's become really useful for making me think about the flow of my game.